Happy Death Men

From today's New York Times:

"American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.
Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found."

But I'm confused, our National Security Advisor at the time, Condelezza Rice, made the following declaration back in May of 2002:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

Oh well, add it to the laundry list of things Bush, Inc. didn't do to protect us from Osama and his thugs.

And remember how Dubya insisted that he wanted bin Laden "Dead or Alive"? A feature from last weekend's New York Times Magazine ("Lost at Tora Bora") reveals that during the battle at Tora Bora in December 2001, when we had the opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, we left most of the fighting to warlords with past links bin Laden -- only committing about three dozen U.S. troops to the mission!

"Now, as the last major battle of the war in Afghanistan began, hidden from view inside the caves were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-trained, well-armed men. A mile below, at the base of the caves, some three dozen U.S. Special Forces troops fanned out. They were the only ground forces that senior American military leaders had committed to the Tora Bora campaign."

So, here's the guy that ordered and financed the hijacking of three passenger airlines, which are then slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (and they intended to hit the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House, had not the passengers of Flight 93 not fought back), killing over 3,000 American citizens. It's the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor -- and we only send 30 Special Forces after bin Laden and outsource the rest of the job to tribal warlords that may still have some allegiance to him? And people still think that Dubya is some great leader-patriot? Read on, my friend:

"Defending its decision not to commit forces to the Tora Bora campaign, members of the Bush administration - including the president, the vice president and Gen. Tommy Franks - have continued to insist, as recently as the last presidential campaign, that there was no definitive information that bin Laden was even in Tora Bora in December 2001. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19, 2004, Op-Ed article in The New York Times. Intelligence assessments on the Qaeda leader's location varied, Franks continued, and bin Laden was "never within our grasp." It was not until this spring that the Pentagon, after a Freedom of Information Act request, released a document to The Associated Press that says Pentagon investigators believed that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and that he escaped."

The real kicker? We haven't known for certain where bin Laden has been hiding out since (although it is assumed he is in Pakistan, but we can't press President Musharraf to hand him over, because he certainly would be overthrown and replaced with an Islamic fundamentalist regime).

But don't question the competence of your leaders! It's unpatriotic! Nothing to see here, now move along! Gotta go pin a medal on Brownie...