Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
"On September the 11th, 2001, America learned that vast oceans no longer protect us from the threats of the new era," Bush said on May 2 of last year, repeating a theme that has been and remains a regular part of his speeches.
Supposedly, the excuse for a narrative goes, the events of September 11, 2001 alerted us all to dangers that we had never considered before.
It was very early on when Dr. Rice -- the first week of the administration, Dr. Rice asked for the ideas that Dick Clarke had in mind, or the previous policies of the previous administration. But we wanted to go beyond that. We didn't feel it was sufficient to simply roll back al Qaeda; we pursued a policy to eliminate al Qaeda. And that's what the NSC worked on from very early in this administration. We took the threats posed by al Qaeda very seriously. And we acted on those threats. Certainly, during that spring and summertime, there was a spike in the terrorist threat...
We began very early on. I think it was actually the NSC deputies had met -- they met frequently between March and September of 2001 to decide and talk about many of the complex issues that were involved in the development of that strategy. And contrary to his assertion that he wasn't able to brief senior officials until late April, the first deputy level's meeting on al Qaeda was held on March 7th. And that's -- and Dick Clarke was the one who conducted the briefing. And the deputies agreed that the national security policy directive should be prepared at that point. And it was just less than six months later when the strategy was ready to go, on September 4th.
And yet they never considered the possibility of al Qaeda striking a target inside the United States.
The whole thing is nearly impossible to believe, but this is what one should expect since, for obvious reasons, the White House isn't going to come out and say they have manipulated people's ignorance, lack of critical thinking skills and genuine grief about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in order to get support for their "war on terror." posted by micah holmquist at 3/23/2004 08:35:00 AM
