Bushies Focusing Their Delusions

Today, Condoleeza Rice is claiming that the Bush administration did "at least as much" as the Clinton administration to fight al-Qaeda before 9-11.

I doubt there will be any investigation of Rice's claims, but Rice is wrong and she knows she's wrong. That's a nice way to say she's lying.

Before 9-11, the Bush administration was completely focused on promoting missile defense as their most important defense priority. Missile defense was one of those peacetime defense scares where people like Donald Rumsfeld promoted the idea that Chinese and North Korean missiles were a threat to the U. S. that could be met once and for all by anti-missile missiles. It was all non-sense. North Korea has only the crudest nuclear bombs, if that. They're at least as long a way from having nuclear missile technology as the U. S. is from having a functioning missile defense. When North Korea does have missile technology, it will be easy for them to evade missile defenses. It turns out that evading defensive missiles is a lot easier and cheaper than developing them.

Because they were focused on selling the whole missile defense delusion, the Bush administration downgraded the reality of the terrorist threat. In fact, Bush's national security team dismissed the concerns of the Clintonistas, pushed counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke out of the "principals meetings" down to the deputies meetings, and laughed off the warnings of both Clarke and George Tenet. Just as George Bush spent all of August, 2001 on vacation in Texas, the Bush security team was taking a vacation from counter-terrorism.

Unfortunately, the reality of 9-11 didn't disconnect the Bush team from their delusions. They merely switched from missile defense to invading Iraq.