Trigger's Getting Nervous...

Because they're going to need a few more dead horses soon; these are beaten to the bone. From yesterday's bullshit session press briefing with Tony Snow:

Q Even at that, you don't think it's -- so did the President fail in his mission?

MR. SNOW: No, I don't think so. It's interesting, we're going to have a lot of political conflict this year. Perfectly understandable, acceptable, predictable. That's the way it works. But yesterday gave the American people a chance to reflect on September 11th and how it froze us in an instant and made us understand that there was something out there we hadn't seen before, hadn't even expected, didn't have any suspicion that it existed. And that was a network of terrorists who would use any means possible, including things that are -- at least for you and me -- unimaginable, which was to turn airliners into weapons of mass destruction.

Yep, it's your friend and mine, the "unimaginable," "no one could have forseen" card.

Ahem.

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US

The following is a transcript of the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

[...]

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

Back to you, Tony.

It also revealed that there was an ideology abroad that said that freedom is a terrible thing and that people were going to twist and pervert the Koran in an attempt to create a holy war, when, in fact, theirs was an ideology of despotism and terror, and that they were serious about it; that they had plans; that they were organized and that they were trying to kill Americans. We all realize that. Before that day, I daresay very few people in this room were then focusing in any serious way on Osama bin Laden.

Ahem.

The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Well... I can think of one person who certainly wasn't focusing in any serious way on Osama bin Laden.

(Happy cross-posts to you... until we meet again...)