DAY 250 - SIEGE OF AMERICA

The "Blame Clinton" mentality is one of the reasons that the Bush White House ignored the clear picture that was beginning to emerge of the Al Queda plot to attack America directly. The elements of the picture were all there but because the Bush people could not bring themselves to credit - or even examine - anything that resulted from the preceding administration the information was not synthesized.

They wanted to characterize the Democratic response to Bin Laden as "Wag the Dawg" so they could hardly give credence to the intelligence that produced the investigative reports that pointed to the 911 attack. If the Bush administration missed the picture it was in large part due to the "get Clinton" mentality that had infected Republican thinking for six years and since the advent of Gingrich payback. They were too busy worrying about how to spin the tale of missing keys on White House computers to bother with studying old Clinton Era intelligence reports that would have pointed the way.

Or did the White House miss the picture?

It emerged yesterday that the plan to respond to the expected terrorist attack by first bombing and then invading Afghanistan had been hatched, polished and, on September 10, 2001 had reached the desk of the National Security Advisor for her vetting before sending it to the Oval Office for approval. All it needed was an act of terror to provide an excuse for implementation. When the first plane hit the plan was waiting on Ms. Rice's desk.

I suspect that Ms. Rice was telling the truth when she said that they expected a garden variety highjacking. The cost-benefit ratio of such an event suited. It would provide the causa belli that would justify the military course of action upon which the Administration had already determined. I believe that no one imagined that 3000 people would be sacrificed to expiate American hubris.

It was an exercise in arrogance that filtered foreign policy and national security questions through a narrow partisan vision of the world, one that ignored inconvenient facts and excised information that did not support that myopism. It was said of an earlier English speaking politician that he remembered everything and learned nothing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.