The White House finally decided to release that famous Presidential Daily Briefing from Aug 6, 2001. Of course, they waited to do it on a Saturday, and on a holiday weekend to boot. I think they are seriously hoping that this story will get lost in the rush of holiday traffic, but let's hope not. There is some really important material in that PDB.
As Josh Marshall said, there is really nothing "thermonuclear" in the document, but there is several very delicate points of warning that were directed to the President. Reuters reports, "President Bush was told a month before Sept. 11, 2001, that al Qaeda members were in the United States and the FBI had detected suspicious activity 'consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.'"
You would hope that this kind of information would put the President on high alert, but according to the Washington Post, he was quite relaxed on the day after receiveing the PDB. "The day before, the president had received an intelligence briefing warning 'Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.' But he seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday."
Now, it is certainly true that we don't want our presidents to be physically shaken by every piece of delicate intellgence they receive. Also, I do not want to make it sound like I believe Bush would not have done evertything in his power to stop the attacks if he believed they were coming. Here in lies the problem, Bush didn't believe they were coming. No one in his administration, at least nobody that was being heard, did. The problem is, it doesn't sound like they ever really took the threat of Bin Laden seriously. After countless warnings from the Clinton administration, after countless warnings from the CIA director and the Counter-terrorism professional Richard Clarke, this administration did nothing, and the United States paid the price.
Should a president be held responsible for attacks on the homeland during his watch? Was Bush, or his administration culpable in their negligence? Well, that is one serious question that we will have to answer as a nation this November.
However, 9/11 was not Bush's only failure. If you turned on your T.V. sets at any point this week, you got to see first hand a glaring example of this administration's ineptitude.
November is too far away.