{"id":1184,"date":"2004-04-09T09:30:09","date_gmt":"2004-04-09T16:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/bush-heard-bin-laden-determined-to-strike-inside-the-united-states-before-30-day-vacation\/"},"modified":"2006-02-27T18:56:37","modified_gmt":"2006-02-28T01:56:37","slug":"bush-heard-bin-laden-determined-to-strike-inside-the-united-states-before-30-day-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/bush-heard-bin-laden-determined-to-strike-inside-the-united-states-before-30-day-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush heard &#8216;Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States&#8217; before 30-day Vacation!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Mercury News | 04\/09\/2004 | Rice testimony narrows focus\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/mld\/mercurynews\/news\/world\/8392567.htm\">Mercury News | 04\/09\/2004 | Rice testimony narrows focus<\/a> By David Von Drehle, Washington Post<\/p>\n<p>Among Democrats, many believed that Rice&#8217;s testimony had pushed the trail of blame directly to George Bush. &#8220;Just one month before terrorists claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, <b>President Bush was on a <i>30-day vacation<\/i> in Crawford, Texas<\/b>,&#8221; said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. &#8220;He was informed by his national security team that Al-Qaida operatives in the United States had the ability to hijack passenger airplanes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cummings was referring to one of the hot spots of Rice&#8217;s testimony: She tangled with commission Democrats over the nature of <b>a highly classified briefing Bush received Aug. 6, 2001<\/b>. Ben-Veniste characterized the briefing as a dire warning of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden&#8217;s desire to strike America. He underscored his point in one of the day&#8217;s most dramatic &#8212; and tense &#8212; exchanges.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I ask you whether you recall the title of that&#8221; briefing, Ben-Veniste said.<\/p>\n<p><b>&#8220;I believe the title was, `<i>Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States<\/i>,&#8217; &#8221; Rice answered.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It did not warn of attacks inside the United States,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"mine\"><p>Let&#8217;s see that briefing. Why would the daily briefing, with such a prescient title, be an historical report? mjh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a title=\"Cool, Calm Condoleezza Rice\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A62757-2004Apr8.html\">Cool, Calm Condoleezza Rice<\/a> by Tom Shales, washingtonpost.com<\/p>\n<p>Rice clashed with Democrats Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey. It&#8217;s a tossup who was more hostile. &#8221;Please don&#8217;t filibuster me,&#8221; Kerrey admonished Rice as she rattled on. &#8221;It&#8217;s not fair. I have been polite, I&#8217;ve been courteous.&#8221; &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>It wouldn&#8217;t be unthinkable to call the Bush administration <i>the most vindictive<\/i> since that of Richard M. Nixon.<\/b> Rice, however, puts the nicest possible face on that vindictiveness and is easily one of the administration&#8217;s most effective communicators. She&#8217;s also among the least likely to come off as <b>fanatical, cranky, intemperate, or possessed<\/b> by the delusion that she and God are on a first-name basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mercury News | 04\/09\/2004 | Rice testimony narrows focus By David Von Drehle, Washington Post Among Democrats, many believed that Rice&#8217;s testimony had pushed the trail of blame directly to George Bush. &#8220;Just one month before terrorists claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was on &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/bush-heard-bin-laden-determined-to-strike-inside-the-united-states-before-30-day-vacation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bush heard &#8216;Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States&#8217; before 30-day Vacation!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}