WTF Is It Now?!?

"an administration both incompetent and dishonest"

Well, there goes Karl Rove's strategy of using 9/11 to sell the Republicans as the party of national vigilance in the midterm elections.

Just one day after the GOP tried to shake the money tree with a photo of President Bush evincing "gritty determination" as he was shuttled around the country on Air Force One after the terror attacks, the administration was forced to admit that while Bush was relaxing at his Crawford ranch in early August, he was briefed about a potential Osama bin Laden hijacking plot. And yet the Bush team, which believed that President Clinton had fruitlessly overpersonalized the struggle with bin Laden, did not go into high alert.

There are many vexing questions about this stunning news, but one of the biggest is why it took eight months for the White House to admit it had received early warnings about the day of infamy. Immediately after 9/11, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press that Bush officials had "no warnings" of the al-Qaida offensive. Now it turns out they were awash in clues, from the CIA briefing given to Bush, to the flare sent up by an FBI agent in Phoenix about the suspicious number of Middle Eastern men in flight training schools, to the silent scream from a Minneapolis FBI agent, who flat-out warned that suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was the type who "could fly something into the World Trade Center." With Moussaoui now facing trial as the so-called 20th hijacker, it's clear the Minneapolis agent pretty much nailed the plot on the head.


"Hell no, Unca Dick, you can't
make me come back! No, no, no! An' tell
Aunt Condi ah need a new paira pants!"