Oh it is so lovely to know that the Administration's own documents vindicate Richard Clarke, the great patriot. The analysis from
Bill Schneider of CNN is indicative of how many may feel about the memo in the press tomorrow.
I know CNN is as conventional as it comes, so if this is going to be the CW, I say: Here here!
Here's what Schneider and Carol Lin were saying tonight on CNN:
I think it could be seriously damaging. What this says is, the White House knew what bin Laden was capable of planning, where he intended to do it, which was New York or Washington, D.C., how he was going to do it. There was only one thing missing, which was exactly when he was going to do it, which turns out to be September 11.
Critics and members of the commission will say, the White House should have been far more aggressive to prevent, what sounds from this memo, like an imminent strike, obviously years in the planning, but a real danger to the United States, particularly in New York and Washington. And they will, I think, make it a cause for very severe criticism.
LIN: Does the [memo] support [former chief counterterrorism aide] Richard Clarke's criticism of President Bush that he and his administration were not taking al Qaeda seriously?
SCHNEIDER: I think it sounds exactly like Richard Clarke. I think Richard Clarke's testimony sounds almost exactly like what is in this presidential briefing. He was repeating what the president had been told on August 6. And he was urging the president to take these threats very seriously.
As I say, just about everything that happened in broad outline is in this memo, the only thing missing is that it would happen on September 11.
<snip>
On the other hand, Osama bin Laden had already carried out attacks, not on the American homeland, but overseas on the USS Cole and the U.S. embassies [in Kenya and Tanzania], and he clearly was associated here, associated his organization with the attempts on Los Angeles International Airport at the millennium. So I think there are pretty clear indications that this wasn't hypothetical. This man had acted and had tried to act on the United States homeland.