May 8, 2010
After being told about the first plane hitting.Prorev.com
The Republicans latest partisan claim regarding terrorism and the Times Square car bomb attempt is that the Obama Administration has just been lucky that recent terror attacks have failed. John Boehner said as much in his usual partisan comments the other day.
So does that mean they think Bush was just unlucky with 911? Under most circumstances it shouldn't matter if Mickey Mouse was in the White House, the counter terrorism professionals who do their job do it the same way regardless of who is in the White House.
But George W. Bush was the exception. Bush not only hamstrung the counter terrorism professionals he ignored the intelligence and warnings he was given by those professionals that would have without a doubt prevented the 911 attacks.
The reason we were hit was not because we had Mickey Mouse in the White House, but because we had Alfred E. Neuman in the White House, a "What me worry" president who dismissed terrorism as a threat, ignored the warnings and intelligence he was given warning him we were about to be hit with an attack and 8 months earlier actually prevented the professionals from doing their job as well as they could by demoting Richard Clarke and disbanding the Principles Meeting where the heads of all departments relevant to terrorism, the Attorney General, Director of the FBI and CIA, ATF, Border Security, met every day to discuss the latest intelligence on terrorism.
Memos like the Phoenix Memo which under Clinton would have been sent right to the top at FBI headquarters and alone would have prevented 911 never got out of the Phoenix office.
Republicans are skating on very thin ice whenever they say a word about terrorism. If Obama is lucky that the over 280 attempted terrorist attacks ( according to law enforcement sources) have been thwarted , then they want you to believe Bush was unlucky with 911. But he wasnt. He was just criminally incompetent, reckless, irresponsible and inadaquate for the job he held.
Bush ignored all the dire warnings leading up to Sept. 11th, , hamstrung the counter terrorist professionals because he and Republicans didnt believe terrorism was a real threat and whether Republicans like it or not, for the rest of his life will have the blood on his hands of 3000 Americans killed on 911 and almost 5000 soldiers killed in Iraq unnecessarily as a result of using 911 as the excuse to invade.
Obama hasn't been lucky. Obama has little to do with the day to day or operational aspects of counter terrorism. And Bush wasn't unlucky. Bush was irresponsible, incompetent, reckless inept and guilty of the worst case of gross negligence by a president with regards to national security in American history. Its all confirmed by proof in the 911 report, proof that the press had been too cowardly to call a scandal, except, ironicall for one damning front page headline in the conservatively owned New York Post, that read in giant bold type : "Bush Knew".
Obama is no bargain. He is almost as inadequate to the job of President as Bush as he has shown in other areas like healthcare, financial reform, immigration and just about anything else where he is constantly caving in and pandering to Republicans because he cant stand political pressure and has no convictions. But to disparage the great work being done by NYPD, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the CIA and the FBI and to call them "lucky" just to try and throw cheap political mud at Obama, which is the Republican conservative politcal way of doing anything, isn't going to sit well with most people. And like the last two failed terrorist attacks, Republican political bombs will fizzle. Or blow up in their faces.
