The Mahablog: Why We Blog

Carolyn Kay of Make Them Accountable reminds us how much President Bush enjoys his August vacations.

“[T]here's no need to learn what was in that top-secret briefing that the president received as he settled down for his monthlong vacation at his Texas ranch on Aug. 6 [2001]. Reports at the time show that Mr. Bush broke off from work early and spent most of that day fishing. [Emphasis added.] If he had received foreknowledge of an attack that morning, he would have acted upon it, and no Democratic leader has said otherwise (despite Dick Cheney's smears to the contrary).” [Frank Rich, “Thanks for the Heads-Up”, The New York Times, May 25, 2002]

Since this is Rich, I suspect the quote above was in a tongue-in-cheek context. Although we wouldn't learn for a couple of years that the memo Bush glanced at that morning was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," in the spring of 2002 Time and Newsweek both ran long investigative stories about how the Bush White House failed to take terrorism seriously before 9/11 in spite of copious warnings that something significant was about to happen.