Friday, April 09, 2004

Another Let Down: After all the hype and all the accusations, we learned nothing new from Rice's testimony. Both sides are spinning it as spinners do. But we have further confirmed that there was no warning of the 9/11 attacks ahead of time.

But that doesn't stop both parties from blaming each other. I said earlier that we shouldn't blame Bush or Clinton, we should blame Al Qaeda.

That doesn't mean we can't take a good hard look at ourselves to see what mistakes we made. But we shouldn't put all our faith in the one man who happens to occupy the office of the president at any given time. His job is only to make decisions based on information he receives.

Don't blame Bush for sitting in a classroom with kids while the World Trade Center was hit. He didn't know because the intelligence agencies failed to find out. Don't blame Bush for not finding WMD in Iraq. He didn't lie or mislead anyone. The intelligence agencies did a crappy job with the information they gathered under Bush and Clinton.

I do blame Bush for not overhauling the intelligence agencies as a result. They couldn't stop 9/11, and they messed up on the WMD issue. Even if Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of WMD through February of 2003, we have no idea where they are now. And that is an embarrassing mistake.

I don't expect them to be omniscient. In fact, an all-knowing, all-seeing intelligence force is scarier than anything Al Qaeda can muster. But we've had two major intelligence failures, as well as others that have been overshadowed. But Bush has done nothing to fix the intelligence problems. Tenet should not still be head of the CIA. We've got a new war to fight, and we need reforms to match the new threats.

What's worse, I'm not hearing anything from Kerry about overhauling the intelligence agencies either. This would be an excellent issue for him to run on. It would resonate with people as a major problem to fix to fight the war on terror, yet it wouldn't seem so blatantly partisan, like blaming Bush for everything from 9/11 to loss in jobs.