Good point about the "no plan." Hadn't read that material. I gather that's why he spent so much time on the semantics of plans and lists in his testimony. I thought she was referring to his testimony before the commission in which he works back and forth between labels.
As for your comments about my points being minor, I think his activities on 9-11 were not controversial. I mention them only because everyone on your side of the political aisle believes he is an inveterate, vicious liar. Yet in that first chapter no one has come forward with major claims discrediting him. My own guess is that was all activity viewed by multiple folk.
On the second point, the contrast of activity between the Clinton administration's pre millenium activity and the Bush administration in the summer of 01, I have little doubt that topic will be central to the commission's report. Not only is it not minor, it may well be one of the two or three most important moments. His argument here and that of others who make the same one, has to be seriously assessed, not be the subject of political bashing.
He claims that the Clinton administration not only went on full alert but by virtue of holding daily meetings of "principles" (lovely term) they managed to cross over the barriers and shake out information from lower down in the agencies that would not otherwise have percolated up. That lead to the apprehension in Washington State, some other folk in Boston, and a bit more ambiguously, a plot in Jordan.
He argues the Bush administration by failing to follow that model missed an opportunity to percolate information about the two guys in San Diego up, the FBI Phoenix report up, and one other thing which escapes me as I type, they missed an opportunity there. He has been careful to say there is no assurance had the Bush folk followed the Clinton model, it would have shook out that information. But it might well have. That's his point.
I anticipate this distinction will be a large point in the final commission's report.
Though I have every reason to believe there will be more than enough blame to go around. |
