Is Bush on vacation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm glad to see Bush handing the country over with more grace than Clinton did.

And here's hoping that Obama is still not futzing with the Senate over Cabinet confirmations next August. I am sure Bush knows that if continuity of govt. had been a big concern of both the Clinton administration and the Senate, 911 warning signs might have been noticed sooner (although I am not convinced that our imagination was sufficient at the time to see planes going into towers). When there is no one in charge, ... I don't want a repeat!

There's a documentary by Discover Communications that I saw recently while in California; don't know if the programming is the same across the country. Five days after Bush's inauguration in 2001, the head of one of the intelligence agencies sent a memo for a meeting with "Principal" of the administration, basically asking for a meeting with Dubya for urgent matters regarding Al-Quaeda. These meetings were ignored until 9 months later.

I'm sure there was a behind the scenes transition and it wasn't a message of, "And oh, BTW, there's a small matter of terrorism ...." as Clinton is walking out the swinging doors. The Clinton Administration provided the information and warning and so did Bush's own administration. Bush and his team's priorities were elsewhere - deregulating, helping industry, oil industry more specifically.

[Anonymous]

I believe these were generalized threat assessments, nothing along the lines of "they are planning to fly commercial air planes into important buildings" or the like.

I agree that we probably did not have sufficient imagination at that point to make the leap from plowing a boat into the USS Cole and flying a jet into the Pentagon.

In any event, I am happy the transition appears to be progressing smoothly and cooperatively. Hats off to both gentlemen.