Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Now is the time once again to ask this question:
Just what, do you suppose, was in the President's Daily Briefings in August of 2001?
I mean, I try my best not to be too "tinfoil hat" in my analysis of this but, heck folks, we all now know that the president was told that the intelligence services were concerned that al-Qaeda might hijack aircraft.
However, and I've said this before, I've always had my suspicions that one of the PDBs in August raised the possibility that these airliners might be used as weapons.
If that were true then the administration would be absolutely open to the criticism that they stood idly by, that the president "cleared brush" for a month in Crawford I remind you, even after being told these airliners could be used as terror weapons.
This revelation would completely destroy the administration's argument that "we did everything we could" to prosecute the war on terror before 9/11. It would destroy, once and for all, the "no one could have foreseen the 9/11 attacks" argument that they've so often repeated.
This is just the sort of revelation that W's sycophants would want to softpedal in their "executive summary" of the August 2001 PDBs -- which is, I remind you, what the 9/11 commission has ultimately agreed to accept in lieu of access to the raw PDBs of August 2001.
I'm not suggesting that this revelation is what is contained in the raw PDBs from August of 2001 -- but it certainly would explain just why the administration has been so reticent to allow the commission access to them, right?
Right?
UPDATE In response to this post, Atrios suggests there's a simple solution to this controversy: release the relevant portions of the raw PDBs.
I agree. What's in them that they don't want us to see?
I mean, I try my best not to be too "tinfoil hat" in my analysis of this but, heck folks, we all now know that the president was told that the intelligence services were concerned that al-Qaeda might hijack aircraft.
However, and I've said this before, I've always had my suspicions that one of the PDBs in August raised the possibility that these airliners might be used as weapons.
If that were true then the administration would be absolutely open to the criticism that they stood idly by, that the president "cleared brush" for a month in Crawford I remind you, even after being told these airliners could be used as terror weapons.
This revelation would completely destroy the administration's argument that "we did everything we could" to prosecute the war on terror before 9/11. It would destroy, once and for all, the "no one could have foreseen the 9/11 attacks" argument that they've so often repeated.
This is just the sort of revelation that W's sycophants would want to softpedal in their "executive summary" of the August 2001 PDBs -- which is, I remind you, what the 9/11 commission has ultimately agreed to accept in lieu of access to the raw PDBs of August 2001.
I'm not suggesting that this revelation is what is contained in the raw PDBs from August of 2001 -- but it certainly would explain just why the administration has been so reticent to allow the commission access to them, right?
Right?
UPDATE In response to this post, Atrios suggests there's a simple solution to this controversy: release the relevant portions of the raw PDBs.
I agree. What's in them that they don't want us to see?
