April 12, 2004

Bush defends memo stance

President Bush said yesterday a declassified briefing document on al Qaeda that he received 36 days before the September 11 attacks "was no indication of a terrorist threat."
   
 "I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America -- at a time and a place, an attack," the president told reporters after attending church at a military base.
   
 "It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was: Is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?"
    
Mr. Bush defended his administration's take on the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing (PDB) -- a 1½ page document that senior administration officials said Saturday contained mostly already known facts from clandestine operatives, foreign governments and news reports.
    
"That PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America -- well, we knew that," he said.
    
"Of course we knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where, and with what."
[...]
Mr. Bush also said his administration — as well as that of President Clinton — would have acted immediately if intelligence had provided more specific information about an attack.
   
 "Look, let me just say it again: Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack. I would have done everything I can. ... Had there been actionable intelligence, we would have moved on it," he said. "The previous administration would have acted. That's our job."

If you know and love President Bush the way I do, you know that he means what he says about "moving mountains" to have prevented 9/11.
And he was open and above-board all this time with the American people about what he knew and when he knew it.
(I do think he's being overly gracious about what the Clintoon Administration would have done, but that's the Bush way. The Dims and Billary won't return the favor.)
The hue and cry from the Left was loud and long late last week for the Bush Administration to publish this memo, so convinced that it contained the "smoking gun" (Aren't we tired of that expression?!) that would nail Bush for impeachable negligence or some other crime of omission or commission as POTUS.
I knew there would be nothing damning in it: the Bush Team doesn't work like that.
If you'd like to read it for yourself, go to this page at the CNN website for the link to the PDF file: Bush: Memo had no 'actionable intelligence'