Is our government getting anything right? The Washington Post has a TSA screw-up story:
Just two days into an experimental program that would place undercover air marshals in train, bus, ferry and other mass transit stations, the Transportation Security Administration yesterday said its test has been scaled back, owing to confusion over the rollout.
TSA officials had planned to deploy teams of air marshals, local law enforcement officers and bomb-sniffing dogs at seven locations around the nation this week to test whether the agency could deter criminals in public transportation stations and conduct surveillance of suspicious activity...
SAME SPEECH, DIFFERENT DAY, over, and over, and over again
In today's speech, President Bush repeated his claim that Senators and Congress Members saw the same intelligence he did before the war. Unfortunately, the American people aren't buying this. Bush let the elected officials see just enough information. If they had seen it all, they would not have voted to authorize the war.
The Boston Globe now is reporting that Democrats ...want to force the White House to release the daily intelligence briefings that President Bush reviewed in the months before the US invasion of Iraq -- an attempt to undercut the president's claim that lawmakers saw the same reports that he did before voting to authorize the war.
Bush has said repeatedly in recent weeks that the senators and House members who gave him the the power to depose Saddam Hussein by force did so because they'd all seen the same CIA assessments and agreed that Iraq's weapons program was a national security threat.
But congressional Democrats point out that they didn't have access to the Presidential Daily Briefs that summarize American intelligence for the president each day -- briefings that were seriously flawed, according to an independent panel. The White House won't allow lawmakers investigating breakdowns in prewar intelligence to review the daily briefs submitted to the president before the invasion...
PATIENCE????
The New York Times says that ...."President Bush said Wednesday that Americans would have to remain patient and should expect more bloodshed as Iraqis struggled toward stability and democracy."
I'm sorry but I cannot remain patient. We are losing more of our young people everyday. How can you ask a parent who has a son/daughter in Iraq to remain patient? By the way, Mom and Dad, your kid may need to go back again, and again. If the Iraqis are voting for a government tomorrow, start withdrawing some troops the next day.
READING IS FUNDAMENTAL
Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News did a big interview with President Bush. I think Williams had too many softball questions. Williams asked the President if he read news magazines (no) and newspapers. I want to highlight some of these Q & A's:
President Bush: I don'I see a lot of the news. Every morning I look at the newspaper. I can't say I've read every single article in the newspaper. But I definitely know what's in the news. Occasionally, I watch television. t want to hurt your feelings, but it's occasionally. I'm working at that point, as are you. But I'm very aware of what's in the news. I'm aware because I see clips. I see summaries. I have people on my staff that walk in every morning and say, "This is what's — this is how I see it. This is what's brewing today," on both the domestic and international side. Frankly, it is probably part of my own fault for needling people, but it's a myth to think I don't know what's going on. And it's a myth to think that I'm not aware that there is opinions that don't agree with mine. Because I'm fully aware of that.
Williams: But you, yourself, said to a reporter, I think it was Brit Hume, that you'd prefer to get the news orally from your aids?
President Bush: Well, that's one way to look at it. I mean, I read the newspaper. I mean, I can tell you what the headlines are. I must confess, if I think the story is, like, not a fair appraisal, I'll move on. But I know what the story's about.
Let me interpret this for you: HE ONLY READS THE HEADLINES OF THE NEWSPAPER. HE SEES NEWSCLIPS AND GETS SUMMARIES. He only knows what people tell him. In other words, our president is reading The Cliff's Notes on the news! This also means that he does not get an outsider's analysis of the news or events. No wonder people say he lives in a bubble.
