House of Cards

ABC reports that the FAA had 52 pre-9/11 warnings about al Qaeda:

The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks.

The report by the 9/11 commission that investigated the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaida's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings pinpointed what would happen on Sept. 11...

Al Felzenberg, former spokesman for the 9/11 commission, which went out of business last summer, said the government had not completed a review of the 120-page report for declassification purposes until recently.

What the ABC report doesn't mention is how many of these warnings were passed along to the NSC (or, conversely, how many were passed to the FAA by the NSC), but considering that ANY potential hijacking could be considered a matter of national security, you've got to conclude that at least some were. The question then becomes, "What the hell would it take for Condoleezza Rice to do something?" A goddamned calling card?

"Al Qaeda requests your presence at a tragedy of epic proportions..."

Sadly, I doubt that even THAT would have moved slugs like Rice to take any countermeasures. Just as bad is the lukewarm mush that comprises any Democratic response.

Democrats should be--and should have been--hitting this administration on questions of competence from the moment Rove decided to turn 9/11 into a political loyalty test. Wrapping the flag around themselves like a security blanket as soon as the 2002 election season started can be considered, yes, a smart, if not brilliant tactic; however, the failure of the Democratic Party to correctly assess responsibility for the tragedy speaks volumes. Team Bush was asleep at the wheel--and setting the stage for careening off the cliff with the quagmire in Iraq--which continues unabated despite a curious lack of interest in the media of late. I guess the "election"--the results of which are being delayed (hmmmm), has taken the country off the radar screen.

On the other hand, when you look at today's headlines, like Korea announcing that yes, it has a few nukes, or the trade deficit that's expanding like the waistline of your average MacDonald's CEO, maybe the Iraq tragedy is just too much for editors to handle--after all, only one US solider was killed in the last 24 hours, which by Bush standards must qualify as a smashing success.

But "success" in Bushworld is by any other measure pure incompetence. Incompetence for another four years.