So the Presidential Daily Briefing is out. Absolutely nothing in it that would have allowed anyone to know or do anything about 9/11. Is it any wonder that Condi rolled her eyes at the question "and what was the TITLE of that PDB?"
Posted by Justene Adamec at April 11, 2004 04:54 AM | TrackBackYes, that was the same degree of apathy, the same lack of curiosity the Bush administration demonstrated when it was shown that document.
Which is why I'm not exactly eager to have folks like you responsible for the defense of the nation.
Posted by: m.croche at April 11, 2004 06:18 AM (Permalink)He'd feel different if you would just finally listen to Die Frau ohne Schatten.
Posted by: Patterico at April 11, 2004 09:02 AM (Permalink)The whole thing is ridiculous! There would be no way we knew where and when it would be. Even if we beefed up our security nationwide, we had no idea how it really was going to happen. Any president in power at the time would have been blamed by the other side. If we are to blame someone, we should blame the Clinton Admin since they took money away from National Security!
Posted by: amanda at April 12, 2004 12:12 AM (Permalink)Amanda - very few people want to blame *anyone*. Most of us watching at home just want to know what happened, along with why didn't we know enough to prevent it?. Not so that we can blame someone, but so that we can make sure that next time, we do know enough.
Posted by: aphrael at April 12, 2004 08:33 AM (Permalink)Justene - I'm perplexed as to why this wasn't released sooner, and even more perplexed in that unless there are missing pages, a more informative and detailed report could have been provided by any above-average undergraduate political science student based entirely upon public knowledge and speculation about al qaeda.
The PDB disturbed me, in other words, because it seemed shallow and lacking in information; is this really the best our intelligence agencies were able to do in the summer of 2001? If so, then something was *terribly* rotten in the core of those agencies, and we should find out why, and fix it.
Aphrael,
I don't know but I had assumed that the spartan bit of info is the nature of presidential daily briefings. I assume that the indepth reports go to the cabinet members and the President gets this highlight reel. He then asks for more info either orally from the cabinet members or by requesting the full reports.
Posted by: Justene at April 12, 2004 11:22 AM (Permalink)