corrente

In the Guardian. How come a best selling author like Sidney Blumenthal can't get published in a "respectable" paper like Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson? Anyhow:

Rice now claims about terrorism that "we were at battle stations". But Bush is quoted by Bob Woodward in Bush At War as saying that before September 11 "I was not on point ... I didn't feel that sense of urgency".

Heh heh. Bush hagiographer and fluffer Woodward accidentally lets the truth slip out. Sweet!

Cheney alleges that Clarke was "out of the loop". But if he was, then the administration was either running a rogue operation or doing nothing, as Clarke testifies.

Bush protests now: "And had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11, we would have acted." But he had plenty of information. The former deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, the only member of the 9/11 commission to read the president's daily brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before September 11. Bush is fighting public release of these PDBs, which would show whether he had marked them up and demanded action.

Or, even that Bush marked them up and said to take no action. That would be a really good reason to expose the originals, wouldn't it?

The administration's furious response to Clarke only underscores his book. Rice is vague, forgetful and dissembling. Cheney is belligerent, certain and bluffing. In Clarke's account, as in the memoir of former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill, Bush is disengaged, incurious, manipulated by those in the circle around him; he adopts ill-conceived strategies that he has played little or no part in preparing. Bush is the Oz behind the curtain, but unlike the wizard, the special effects are performed by others. Especially on terrorism and September 11, his White House is at "battle stations" to prevent the curtain from being pulled open.
(Sidney Blumenthal via The Guardian)

Let the public read the PDBs! (Tom's right.) And the CSGs too, of which there are tapes (back).

UPDATE Thomas Blanton at Slate has more. He goes into detail about why, despite their "mystique", the PDBs are nothing special in national security terms, and concludes:

Releasing the PDBs would tell us what Dubya knew and when he knew it. That's the real reason you won't see them anytime soon.

UPDATE Hobson asks: Where do we write?

My thought is MoveOn since they have the organization to mount a petition drive. Though there isn't one yet, we could suggest it to them. In fact, I just did. Readers? Better ideas?