Bush Cuts Vacation Short (For Once)
So President Bush has called off his vacation two days early due to Hurricane Katrina. There’s nothing wrong with this on the surface, but it does make for an interesting comparison between his 2005 summer vacation and his 2001 summer vacation.
There has been criticism out there for some time that Bush was on vacation for an entire month in the weeks prior to 9/11, and that since he was on vacation he wasn’t doing all he could in response to the threat of al Qaeda. This is made to seem much worse on his part since he received a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States” during his vacation on Aug 6, 2001.
The defense of Bush has been that he wasn’t really on vacation, that the president is never really on vacation, and that he is still working while in Crawford, TX. As he said himself, “You don’t have to be in Washington to work.” This is a straw man defense because no reasonable person was really accusing Bush of doing no work for the entire month as if he was on a real vacation that an ordinary person would take. Everyone knows that as president he is still either surrounded by or in contact with his advisors and that he’s having meetings and is being briefed on important issues.
The criticism always was (or should have been) that when he is on vacation for an entire month he can’t be as on top of important situations as he could be if he was in Washington. And, this is something that has just been confirmed by President Bush himself when he cut this year’s vacation short to get back to Washington to oversee the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina - which is proving to be a catastrophic disaster worse than anticipated.
It just seems plainly obvious that you can’t get as much work done in Crawford, TX as you can in Washington, DC. That seems to be true as pertaining to planning a response to a natural disaster, and it seems to be true pertaining to planning a national defense against a terrorist enemy whom is “determined to attack inside the United States.”
Also, it is a ridiculous defense for the average person to say that none of us really knew that 9/11 was possible, so therefore it’s not fair to blame the administration. Of course we didn’t expect it as ordinary citizens, but we are not given access to classified government intelligence, the Bush administration was. We are not given briefings with titles about terrorists being determined to attack us. We are not told by informants in May 2001 that al Qaeda operatives are inside the United States planning attacks with explosives, the Bush administration was given that information. We don’t have terrorist czars warning us and requesting meetings with us to discuss the threat of terrorism, the Bush administration had one of these people, Richard Clarke, and they ignored him. The Clinton administration’s national security team didn’t brief every American citizen that al Qaeda was the biggest threat facing America - that was private information delivered only to the incoming Bush administration. As private citizens we were not told to stop flying commercial aircrafts in July 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft was told this and he did stop flying commercial prior to 9/11 because of a threat assessment made by the FBI.
This is not to suggest that Bush definitely could have or would have prevented 9/11 if he wasn’t in Crawford in August 2001, but he obviously was not putting in a full day's work on the issue. He did not view that threat as being serious enough to interrupt his month long vacation. However, the warnings listed above clearly show that there were many things that the president could've been spending more time on in August 2001.
There has been criticism out there for some time that Bush was on vacation for an entire month in the weeks prior to 9/11, and that since he was on vacation he wasn’t doing all he could in response to the threat of al Qaeda. This is made to seem much worse on his part since he received a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States” during his vacation on Aug 6, 2001.
The defense of Bush has been that he wasn’t really on vacation, that the president is never really on vacation, and that he is still working while in Crawford, TX. As he said himself, “You don’t have to be in Washington to work.” This is a straw man defense because no reasonable person was really accusing Bush of doing no work for the entire month as if he was on a real vacation that an ordinary person would take. Everyone knows that as president he is still either surrounded by or in contact with his advisors and that he’s having meetings and is being briefed on important issues.
The criticism always was (or should have been) that when he is on vacation for an entire month he can’t be as on top of important situations as he could be if he was in Washington. And, this is something that has just been confirmed by President Bush himself when he cut this year’s vacation short to get back to Washington to oversee the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina - which is proving to be a catastrophic disaster worse than anticipated.
It just seems plainly obvious that you can’t get as much work done in Crawford, TX as you can in Washington, DC. That seems to be true as pertaining to planning a response to a natural disaster, and it seems to be true pertaining to planning a national defense against a terrorist enemy whom is “determined to attack inside the United States.”
Also, it is a ridiculous defense for the average person to say that none of us really knew that 9/11 was possible, so therefore it’s not fair to blame the administration. Of course we didn’t expect it as ordinary citizens, but we are not given access to classified government intelligence, the Bush administration was. We are not given briefings with titles about terrorists being determined to attack us. We are not told by informants in May 2001 that al Qaeda operatives are inside the United States planning attacks with explosives, the Bush administration was given that information. We don’t have terrorist czars warning us and requesting meetings with us to discuss the threat of terrorism, the Bush administration had one of these people, Richard Clarke, and they ignored him. The Clinton administration’s national security team didn’t brief every American citizen that al Qaeda was the biggest threat facing America - that was private information delivered only to the incoming Bush administration. As private citizens we were not told to stop flying commercial aircrafts in July 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft was told this and he did stop flying commercial prior to 9/11 because of a threat assessment made by the FBI.
This is not to suggest that Bush definitely could have or would have prevented 9/11 if he wasn’t in Crawford in August 2001, but he obviously was not putting in a full day's work on the issue. He did not view that threat as being serious enough to interrupt his month long vacation. However, the warnings listed above clearly show that there were many things that the president could've been spending more time on in August 2001.
posted by The Animal | 1:37 PM
7 Comments:
Flame on, lib!
Quit yer crying Mike Moore supporter!
This blog sucks. For a good blog, go to www.Independencewire.blogspot.com
Have you ever heard of 'the summer white house'? Do a google search. It was common for presidents to leave Washintone for an entire summer. You are balancing on a thin wire....groping for straws.
"Groping for straws". Who cares what other presidents did 100 years ago. That was a different world, we weren't the most powerful country in the world with as many people or responsibilities, and we weren't at war. And, who says those people were necessarily good presidents? Ike, while a great general, was also criticized for playing too much golf, and even considering that Bush is far exceeding all other president's in the amount of vacation time he's had. That's a fact, not grasping at straws.
And, again, to reiterate what Bush keeps saying himself. We're at war right now. Find me another president who took these types of vacations during a war.
Clinton
Yeah, but Clinton wasn't a freaking moron. One day of Clinton thinking is worth five days of Bush thinking. Bush needs every day of work he can get, just to make up for his lack of intelligence.
Clinton never took 5 weeks off. And, Clinton never presided over a major war. He presided over an air war over Kosovo which lasted a couple months and where we didn't have one American death. This can't be compared to the war in Iraq. For the record, he didn't go on a vacation during that time.
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