{"id":6464,"date":"2006-01-27T15:37:39","date_gmt":"2006-01-27T20:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6464"},"modified":"2006-01-27T15:37:39","modified_gmt":"2006-01-27T20:37:39","slug":"it-wouldnt-have-helped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-wouldnt-have-helped\/","title":{"rendered":"It wouldn’t have helped"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to his warrantless-search program, Bush’s honesty has been in short supply. He’s misrepresented his legal authority, his predecessors’ decisions, Congress’ authorizations, and his administration’s congressional briefings. But there’s one particular distortion<\/a> Bush has emphasized that’s more annoying than the others.<\/p>\n

“In the weeks following September the 11th, I authorized a terrorist surveillance program to detect and intercept al Qaeda communications involving someone here in the United States…. We know that two of the hijackers who struck the Pentagon were inside the United States communicating with al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we didn’t realize they were here plotting the attack until it was too late.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s been a favorite White House talking point all week. Scott McClellan has repeated it<\/a>; Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, emphasized it<\/a> on Monday; and the president defended it<\/a> in his press conference yesterday.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, of course, the claim is completely wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In speech after speech, President Bush claims that if the National Security Agency could have wiretapped two Al Qaeda operatives living in San Diego, the 9\/11 attacks might have been thwarted. That’s a whopper, critics say.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t realize they were here plotting the attack until it was too late,” Bush said Wednesday at NSA headquarters.<\/p>\n

“It’s not true,” ex-9\/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey, president of the New School in Manhattan, told the Daily News. “We knew about those two guys – the CIA lost them.” […]<\/p>\n

“The problem was the CIA and FBI not communicating and not picking them up,” said Thomas Kean, the commission’s former chairman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The president’s falsehood on this one is particularly offensive, at least to me, because it’s so breathtakingly cynical. The message is about as subtle as a sledgehammer: we should all embrace Bush’s warrantless-search program because it could have prevented 9\/11. To oppose the program is to oppose the president’s drive to keep us safe.<\/p>\n

It’s utter nonsense and the White House knows it. The administration didn’t need warrantless, legally-dubious searches to track the 9\/11 terrorists down; intelligence officials already knew about these guys. And we didn’t need warrantless, legally-dubious searches to warn us about the attacks; the NSA intercepted warnings<\/a> of the attacks the day before, but they weren’t translated until Sept. 12, 2001.<\/p>\n

If the White House wants to try to desperately spin their way out the mess they’ve created, fine. But is it too much to ask that they refrain from crass, baseless exploitation of 9\/11? Don’t answer that; I already know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to his warrantless-search program, Bush’s honesty has been in short supply. He’s misrepresented his legal authority, his predecessors’ decisions, Congress’ authorizations, and his administration’s congressional briefings. But there’s one particular distortion Bush has emphasized that’s more annoying than the others. “In the weeks following September the 11th, I authorized a terrorist surveillance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}