Posted on 04/25/2013 4:10:38 PM PDT by Kaslin
On Wednesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe -- formerly of Newsweek -- claimed that President Bush "ignored all the warnings about al-Qaeda wanting to attack the homeland" before 9/11 as he mocked Republicans for praising Bush's record of preventing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil after the 9/11 attacks. As he alluded to Republicans criticizing President Clinton for not handling al-Qaeda more aggressively during his presidency, Wolffe asserted:
You couldn't just say that 9/11 came out of nothing. It wasn't a total surprise because, in their narrative, Bill Clinton and, by extension, all Democrats somehow lost the plot, they didn't take terrorism seriously because there was the U.S.S. Cole, there were the African embassy bombings, al-Qaeda was there and they didn't take it seriously because they were all doing that lawyerly stuff about respecting the rule of law and not torturing people, and so President Bush came on the scene and heroically understood the danger, only he understood it after, after he ignored all the warnings about al-Qaeda wanting to attack the homeland. So they don't understand their own story.
Host Lawrence O'Donnell had introduced the segment:
As was inevitable in the Republican world in the age of Obama, some Republicans are pulling out their terrorism scorecards and rating President Obama much worse than George W. Bush as protector-in-chief of the homeland. Of course, all Republican terrorism scorecards begin the day after the biggest and worst terrorist attack in our history, the day we lost 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. And on that day, the President of the United States was George W. Bush.
After bringing aboard guests Wolffe and former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, O'Donnell soon brought up clips of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino praising Bush's efforts to prevent terrorist attacks in the U.S.:
RUDY GIULIANI, ON ABC'S GOOD MORNING AMERICA: We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama.DANA PERINO, ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL: We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term.
Even though it goes without saying that such Republicans were referring to the success of the campaign the Bush administration put into effect after the 9/11 attacks, the MSNBC host posed:
Richard, they would say this. They would say this repeatedly, and they weren't putting in any clarification about 9/11. They actually were saying it that way, and that's the thing they're trying to drill into the public, none under President Bush. Except the biggest one in history.
Wolffe responded:
They except that. And, you know, it's one thing to try and spin the public, as Dana Perino did, actually pretty successfully. And know that it's spin. And it's another thing to believe your own spin. Just because you say something over and over again, does not mean to say it's true. And, by the way, if they actually believe their own storyline, you couldn't just say that 9/11 came out of nothing.It wasn't a total surprise because, in their narrative, Bill Clinton and, by extension, all Democrats somehow lost the plot, they didn't take terrorism seriously because there was the U.S.S. Cole, there were the African embassy bombings, al-Qaeda was there and they didn't take it seriously because they were all doing that lawyerly stuff about respecting the rule of law and not torturing people, and so President Bush came on the scene and heroically understood the danger, only he understood it after, after he ignored all the warnings about al-Qaeda wanting to attack the homeland. So they don't understand their own story.
They believe a certain selective piece of their own spin. And now they're projecting it on another President who, by the way, has a pretty good record when it comes to killing terrorists.
Dean then chimed in to accuse Republicans of being "downright unpatriotic" for criticizing President Obama. Dean:
I think it's worse. I think they're downright unpatriotic to do this to the President of the United States at a time when the presidency needs all the support he can get. Look, we can disagree about Obama's health care policy, whatever you want, but, you know, our country has been attacked, and these people have forgotten that they're supposed to be representing the United States of America, not the right wing of the Republican party. That's a fact.
Why is MSPMS still on the air?? With next to no viewers? Who funds them??? The DNC???
Bush was only in office for 8 months, and for most of that the Senate was blocking the confirmations of his deputy cabinet officers as retaliation for winning.
Also, because of the Gore election contest in the courts, Clinton refused to release transition funds to Bush, forcing him to wait until the start of his term to transition his staff into the White House.
But go ahead and Blame Bush for it anyway.
-PJ
Two words:
Gorelick wall.
Actually President Bush was less the 8 month in Office. The inauguration was January 20, 2001 and the terrorist attack was September 11, 2001.
Yeah, for the entire 9 months that he was in office. Meanwhile, Clintoon did what for eight years?
Fort Campbell, Kentucky has always had gate guards. All you had to do is show your military ID or Dependent card. Then you had to get your vehicle registered on post and affix some stickers to your windshield, plus show your ID card
Jamie Gorelick’s wall
To Dean: Don’t spit in the well.
You may have to drink the water.
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/20/98022006_tpo.html
USIS Washington File 20 February 1998
TRANSCRIPT: TOWN HALL MEETING ON IRAQ AT OHIO STATE FEBRUARY 18
(Albright, Cohen, Berger outline U.S. goals in Iraq) (11350
“....Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters a great
deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is
the greatest security threat we face. And it is a threat against which
we must, and will, stand firm.
In discussing Iraq, we begin by knowing that Saddam Hussein, unlike
any other leader, has used weapons of mass destruction even against
his own people. In fact, he is a repeat offender, having used them
both in the battle and against his people.’”
Sec.Albright ...
(I was at this town hall meeting. The CPUSA were chanting, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your racist war”)
The warnings were extremely ambiguous, IIRC. al Queda may have been mentioned, but there were no specifics. And there was information about them using planes, but not exactly how, and again, IIRC, that wasn’t shared among the players, because of the ‘wall’ put up by Jamie Gorelick, during the Clinton administration.
I sit corrected. Thanks!
That’s because Democrat staffers stole all of the “w”s off of the White House keyboards. Can’t spell warning without it.
The 9-11 hijackers were overstaying their visas, training to fly (but not land) planes, etc. while the FBI was on a wild goose chase investigating a non-existent “rash” of “racist Southern church fires” for political points as ordered by Bill Clinton.
Yeah, but the left keeps shouting that he didn’t have no WMDs completely ignoring that when the inspectors came in he put big boulders, so to speak in the road and did every thing he could do to delay the inspectors from doing their jobs and in the mean time he moved the WMDs to a different place. Perhaps to one the inspectors had already been, or as in 2003 before the beginning of the war to Syria via the Russian trucks and the Iraq civilian 747 Airplanes which he had converted to transport planes by taking the passenger seats out
Gorelick also walked away with a $26,000,000 bonus from Fannie Mae before “that” became Bush’s fault too.
Now Born on Third Obama is going to take credit for “finding (Saddam’s) WMDs in Syria”.
Of course, but the left ignored that the WMDs were put there
“Black churches are burning.”
In the final unmovic report, was all ‘liberaled’ up so to speak. WMD’s were changed to precursors, accelerants, and dual use materials. There was no way that WMD’s were ever going to be considered IN Iraq.
The level of hate toward our national interests by the left became the driving force of an assured bad outcome.
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