"George Bush, still President, is engaging in a legacy tour of media outlets. This comes
despite his earlier having said he did not know how history would judge the Iraq
war "because we'll all be dead."
Actually, many people are already dead because of Bush, and that is
the point to keep in mind when he talks about his legacy.
Among the themes Bush is striking are that through action at
home and fighting "them" over there, not over here, his administration
stopped terrorist attacks and prevented another 9/11. There is a surface
plausibility to those claims, as there has often been with the messaging
served up by the Karl Rove spin machine.
But let's look beneath the surface of the assertions.
Bush stopped terrorist attacks? Yes, some of the many alleged plots cited by the White House probably would have matured into attacks had not the U.S.
intelligence community acted. Many were more aspirational than operational,
and others were the pure inventions of FBI informants. (In the Miami
Liberty City case, an FBI informant apparently bribed people who previously
had no interest in Al Qaeda.
When they swore the oath to Osama Bin Laden, they were then arrested for doing so.)
But even if taken on its face as true, should having stopped terrorist attacks earn this President a Harry Truman-like reassessment down the road? I can attest from firsthand knowledge that the Clinton
administration stopped numerous terrorist operations that would have resulted in American deaths. Yet I don't hear Bill Clinton running around boasting about that. Clinton has other things to lay claim to - a balanced budget, huge job growth and eight years without a major war. If you
don't think the Clinton administration stopped a major terrorist attack
in New York City, you might want to talk with the blind sheik, who was involved in
a plot to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George
Washington Bridge and a federal building housing the FBI. But that would
be tough to do because Omar Abdel-Rahman is in solitary in a federal prison in Colorado.
There wasn't a second 9/11? That's obviously true, but it misses the
point. First, we must remember that Al Qaeda terrorists are patient, deliberate planners who often wait years between strikes. Second, there was
the first 9/11 - and it happened on Bush's watch. Without rehashing the
entire 9/11 Commission Report, the historical
record is pretty clear by now that Bush did virtually nothing about the
repeated warnings to him that those cataclysmic attacks were coming.
Unfortunately, I can personally attest to that as well. "
Lord - Even if Obama's only COMPETENT, he's gonna look like FDR next to this jackass.
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