from the center for american progress:

terrorism ã? bush administration ‘paying no attention’:
l. paul bremer, a republican and the senior coalition official in iraq, had this to say about the bush administration in late february, 2001: “”the new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. what they will do is stagger along until there’s a major incident and then suddenly say, ‘oh, my god, shouldn’t we be organized to deal with this?’ that’s too bad. they’ve been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they’re not taking advantage of it. maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit.”” bremer, who served as president reagan’s ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, and sat on a commission which explored the issue in 1999, chided the media among others for not paying attention: “”there’s been remarkably little attention to the major recommendation the gilmore commission made for a substantial reorganization of the government’s approach to terrorism,”” bremer said. “”journalists shouldn’t let politicians get away with that.””

from the center for american progress:

the most vivid display of the administration’s widening credibility gap came when cbs’s bob schieffer asked rumsfeld “”if iraq did not have wmd, why did they pose an immediate threat to this country?”” rumsfeld retorted, “”you and a few other critics are the only people i’ve heard use the phrase ‘immediate threat.’ i didn’t…it’s become kind of folklore that that’s what happened.”” schieffer repeated his question but rumsfeld challenged the reporter saying, “”if you have any citations, i’d like to see ’em.”” at that point, nyt columnist tom friedman read rumsfeld his own words, pointing out that the defense secretary had told congress on 9/19/02 that “”no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people”” than iraq and that “”some have argued that the nuclear threat from iraq is not imminent [but] i would not be so certain.”” rumsfeld replied “”mm-hmm. it–my view of–of the situation was that he–he had–we–we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that–that we believed and we still do not know–we will know.””

from the center for american progress:

“”after 9/11 ã? white house flies bin ladens out of america:
in the immediate wake of 9/11, all flights in the united states were grounded. but as the new book “”house of bush, house of saud”” notes in its first excerpts on salon.com, the flight ban had one exception: the saudi relatives of osama bin laden. as secretary of state colin powell acknowledged, members of bin laden’s family were put on flights that “”were coordinated within the u.s. government”” and allowed to go back to saudi arabia. according to the excerpt and to gerald posner’s “”why america slept,”” ãŠthe white house-authorized flights out of the united states also included saudi prince ahmed, who a top al qaeda terrorist said “”knew beforehand that an attack was scheduled for american soil”” on 9/11. the white house’s decision to allow the saudis to leave came at the same time vanity fair notes “”arabs were being rounded up and interrogated”” all over the country and attorney general john ashcroft was asserting that the government had “”a responsibility to use every legal means at our disposal to prevent further terrorist activity by taking people into custody who have violated the law and who may pose a threat to america.”” law enforcement officers were asking why these family members ã? some of whom had direct ties to osama bin laden ã? were allowed to leave and wondered “”how could officials bypass such an elemental and routine part of an investigation during an unprecedented national-security catastrophe? at the very least, shouldn’t osama’s relatives have been questioned to provide some information about osama’s finances, associates, or supporters?””

from the center for american progress:

media
cheney interview analyzed

vice president dick cheney yesterday gave rare interviews to cnn, fox and msnbc, in an effort to “”restore public confidence”” in his integrity. recent public opinion polls have “”shown his popularity falling, in part as a result of his strong support for waging war against iraq, his insistence that wmd would be found and his past leadership of halliburton, a company widely criticized for its role in post-war iraq.”” but an analysis of cheney’s key assertions yesterday shows that far from restoring confidence, his statements raise even more questions.

war on terror ã? why no action?:
cheney repeatedly cited the menace of suspected terrorist abu musab zarqawi, who he says is currently orchestrating terrorist attacks in iraq. but he did not explain a new report showing that “”long before the war the bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill zarqawi himself ã‘ but never pulled the trigger.”” specifically, the pentagon drew up three separate plans to attack zarqawi after it was revealed he was “”producing deadly ricin and cyanide,”” among other things. but in each separate instance, the “”white house killed”” the proposal because “”the administration had set its course for war with iraq.”” as one former national security council member said, “”people were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists.”” this is consistent with the comments of jeffery record, professor at the u.s. army war college, who said “”the invasion of iraq was diversion from the more narrower focus on defeating al qaeda.””

wmd ã? ingoring the painfully obvious:
cheney was asked why, if no wmd have been found, he said before the war “”there is no doubt that saddam hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. there is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”” cheney responded by saying “”my statements tracked with what we were getting from the intelligence community. you look at the national intelligence estimate on iraq’s wmd, and my statements, they track almost perfectly to that period of time.”” but in looking at the nie and other intelligence cheney was getting, his unequivocal pre-war statements clearly distorted the intelligence picture, and even took steps to hide doubts about its case from the public. as knight-ridder reported, “”the public version of the nie was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts”” about the white house’s wmd case, meaning “”the public was given a far more definitive assessment of iraq’s plans and capabilities than president bush and other u.s. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies.”” knight-ridder also reported that “”president bush and his top aides made pre-war claims about iraq’s weapons programs that weren’t always backed up by available u.s. intelligence and painted a threatening picture that was far starker than what american spies knew.”” as an american progress backgrounder shows, the administration was repeatedly warned that its wmd case for war was weak.

economy ã? whitewashing the record:
despite eight million americans out of work, stagnating wages, and a new abc news/money magazine poll showing consumer confidence took its biggest plunge in more than 18 years of polling, cheney said “”the economy is recovering significantly”” and that “”the economy’s in very good shape.”” while 760,000 jobless workers exhaust their unemployment benefits and hundreds of thousands simply give up their search for work because the economy is so bleak, cheney said the national 5.6% unemployment rate is “”not bad.”” the indifference to the nation’s economic problems expressed in cheney’s comment was echoed just a few months ago when president bush told michigan its economy㊔”looks pretty good,”” despite the fact that the s