Commission warned Bush, From Salon.com

Commission warned Bush
But White House passed on recommendations by a bipartisan, Defense department-ordered commission on domestic terrorism.

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By Jake Tapper

Sept. 12, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- They went to great pains not to sound as though they were telling the president "We told you so."

But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/

heards any of this. I wonder if everybody else has and somehow I just missed it.

I read the article, but would be interested on some background about it.

"Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day."

"We predicted it," Hart says of Tuesday's horrific events. "We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers -- that's a quote (from the commission's Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999."

On Tuesday, Hart says, as he sat watching TV coverage of the attacks, he experienced not just feelings of shock and horror, but also frustration. "I sat tearing my hair out," says the former two-term senator. "And still am."

Rudman generally agrees with Hart's assessment, but adds: "That's not to say that the administration was obstructing."

People have such a short attention span and bu$h essentially got a 2 year pass on 9/11 already. So we can go back and look over the record more closely now, and see how asleep at the switch they were. One good point mentioned in this article that has come up again now with Clarke's book is that Cheney was put in charge of a committee to deal with counter terrorism. This committee never met, not even once. Let's remember what their priorities were. Secret energy meetings plenty, anti-terrorism protection zero, zilch, nada.

(snip)
Bush also directed Cheney -- a man with a full plate, including supervision of the administration's energy plans and its dealings with Congress -- to supervise the development of a national counter-terrorism plan. Bush announced that Cheney and Allbaugh would review the issues and have recommendations for him by Oct. 1. The commission's report was seemingly put on the shelf.
(/snip)


Sonia