Bush ignoring urgent warning about Qaeda 'comeback'

Déjà vu? Bush again ignoring urgent Qaeda warnings...

RAW STORYPublished: Saturday February 24, 2007

Comparing the debate on the "surge" or escalation of US troops in Iraq to a "sideshow" like media coverage of pop star Britney Spears' shaving of her head, New York Times columnist Frank Rich worries that, just like in August of 2001, President Bush is ignoring urgent warnings by counterterrorism officials about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Referring to "last week's terrifying but little-heeded front-page New York Times account (link) of U.S. 'intelligence and counterterrorism officials' leaking urgent warnings about al Qaeda's comeback," Rich writes in his latest Sunday Times column, "ask yourself: Haven't we been here before?"

"If so, that would be the summer of 2001, when America pigged out on a 24/7 buffet of Gary Condit and shark attacks," Rich writes. "The intelligence and counterterrorism officials back then were privately sounding urgent warnings like those in last week's Times, culminating in the President's Daily Brief titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' The system 'was blinking red,' as the CIA chief George Tenet would later tell the 9/11 commission. But no one, from the White House on down, wanted to hear it."

Rich believes that Bush "doesn't want to hear it now, either," which is "why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public."

LinkHere