Bush Pleads Ignorance
Wow! Wolf Blitzer interviewed Richard Ben-Veniste about the Cole. Ben-Veniste said that during the 9/11 hearings, when he asked President Bush why he didn't respond to the Cole attack, the President responded that he didn't want to launch a cruise mille attack for fear of missing him and bombing the rubble. Ben-Veniste followed up with what about the Taliban. The United States had warned the Taliban, indeed threatened them on at least three occasions that if bin Laden, who had refuge in Afghanistan were to strike against U.S. interests then we would respond against the Taliban. He asked the President why wouldn't you go after the taliban to get them to kick bin Laden out of Afghanistan. The President told him that no one had told him we had made that threat. Transcript
Quicktime Video 6.81MB 8'25
Quicktime 7 required
Comments
Ignorance + Arrogance = Disaster
Yeah, you’d hate to see innocent rubble bombed!
"And for the record, the Bush administration barely paid attention to bin Laden before 9/11, as documented by the 9/11 Commission and other inquiries. On Jan. 26, 2001—six days after Bush’s inauguration—an FBI report for the first time conclusively tied the USS Cole bombing in Yemen to Al Qaeda. A few weeks later, CIA Director George Tenet raised the stakes, calling bin Laden's global terror network "the most immediate and serious threat" to U.S. national security. Yet there was no retaliation for the Cole or any other Al Qaeda attack for eight months—the “principals” did not even hold a meeting on how to deal with the terrorist group—despite Tenet’s increasingly urgent warnings about an Al Qaeda attack in the summer of 2001. Even today, the Bush administration is spending more time, resources and energy on supposed state sponsors of terror, like Iraq, than on the terrorists themselves."
Exerpt taken from:
Clinton Loses His Cool. 25 Sept 06
Was the former president justified in blasting a Fox News interviewer who questioned his administration’s counterterrorism record?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15002956/site/newsweek/page/2/
what a surprise, Bush is claiming ignorance. Its sad, but I can almost beleive that no one told him, after all, why bother when Chaney is really running the country?
Important to note he uses the word 'conclusively'.
But regardless do you think it would be reasonable to go to war weeks before an election, imagine how that could have looked, potentially it could go both ways for the dems; good or bad. Either way it would have been a contentious issue of the highest order.
I do not trust Richard Ben-Veniste either, although I know that he is supposed to be the good guy that "forced" Condi to give up the title of the PDB (hint: because she wanted to).
It is obvious to me that the 9/11 Commissioners are still hiding stuff from us.
"...for fear of missing him, and bombing rubble" What the fuck does that even mean?
I suppose What happens in the White House - stays in the White House.
I agree with President Bush on this. Rubble is a very rare substance that needs protection. Can you imagine the demonstrations on the streets if they missed his cave and hit some innocent rubble who had no business in the matter? I'm surprised you don't know about President Bush's Save The Rubble Foundation (now accepting Paypal donations). Sure, the US got hit on 9/11, but at least no rubble in the remote mountains of Afghanistan was hurt.
[/sarcasm]
"Ignorance + Arrogance = Disaster"
But then Disaster - Arrogance would = Ignorance. Just doesn't seem mathematically plausible.
Post a comment