. . . Full of S**t”– uh, I mean, “Fit to Print.”
Bill Clinton was President for 8 years of ceaseless terrorist attacks on the U.S. — 8 years that featured ineptitude, an innate resistance to responding militarily to a belligerent that had declared war on us, and not merely a proclivity but an established, official policy — put unapologetically in writing — that prevented the criminal investigators and prosecutors who had handled 8 years of prosecutions (i.e., the people who knew more about the enemy than anyone else in government) from conferring with the people whose job it was to assess and prepare for the threat posed by that enemy (i.e., the intelligence community). By contrast, George W. Bush was President for 8 months prior to 9/11, much of which was spent in disarray because Clinton’s Vice President, Algore, refused to acknowledge for 6 weeks that he had been defeated in the 2000 election — thus delaying, in many cases well into the summer of 2001, the appointment and confirmation of executive branch officials whose positions were pivotal to the nation’s preparedness.
Nevertheless, today’s lead “news” story is a Kerry 2004 Campaign ad (gratis) that, to use the Times’s own screaming page one headline, depicts a Bush administration in “Chaos” on the morning of 9/11. Anyone who bothers to crawl into the paper beneath page one will find a Kerry 2004 hitpiece, under the stealth heading “NEWS ANALYSIS”, which analyzes that the commission “has called into question nearly every aspect of the [Bush] administration’s response to terror, including the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were somehow the same foe[,]” because, the Old Grey Trollop elaborates, “[f]ar from a bolt from the blue, the commission has demonstrated over the last 19 months that the Sept. 11 attacks were foreseen, at least in general terms, and might well have been prevented, had it not been for misjudgments, mistakes and glitches, some within the White House.” You would have to wade down to paragraph 16 in order to learn, in passing, that “The [commission] staff has been critical of the Clinton administration, too, pointing out missed opportunities in the late 1990’s, when that White House shied from what might have been opportunities to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda.”
Welcome to McCain-world, home of campaign-finance reform, where the First Amendment is repealed, outside-the-club voices get increasingly muffled as Election Day nears, and a Newspaper of Record — along with its network news echo chamber — overtly, energetically, and shamelessly shills for the Democrats to return to power.