Republicans Create Fake Comparison Between Bush and Obama Intelligence Briefings

Conservatives frequently create false equivalencies to try to justify their absurd arguments and hide the fact that their belief system cannot be justified in a reality-based view of the world. After 9/11 liberals waited for the facts and generally were willing to support George Bush when the country was attacked. In contrast, conservative responded to the attempted attack over Detroit by fabricating arguments to attack Barack Obama. One argument floating around the conservative blogs is a distortion of reports that Barack Obama received an intelligence briefing before the attack, trying to create a false equivalency with the reports which George Bush ignored before the 9/11 attack.

Mike Allen of Politco puts this report in perspective:

Did the President have a briefing on December 22 on holiday threats? You bet he did. He demanded it. The holidays are traditionally a time of increased threat reporting and the President wanted to be sure his team was on top of that reporting — doing the fine work it had done, for example, on the Zazi and Headley cases earlier in the year. In fact, the President demands regular counterterrorism and homeland security briefings that bring together the whole team representing the heads of the government agencies charged with intell and homeland security. Did the December 22 briefing include a warning of an attack? No. It did not. And despite the provocative headline on his story, the Newsweek reporter does not report that there was one. Because he couldn’t. Because there wasn’t.

Both presidents received an intelligence briefing regarding terrorism, but otherwise the stories are very different. There is no comparison between Barack Obama requesting a report at a time of anticipated increased terrorist risk and George Bush ignoring an intelligence briefing warning of an impending terrorist attack while he was on vacation.

Steve Benen adds:

About a month before 9/11, George W. Bush was briefed on the threat posed by al Qaeda, bin Laden’s intentions, etc. The Bush White House responded by doing very little. I get the sense conservatives are still a little sensitive on this point, and would like a comparable situation with Obama.

This isn’t it.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    Gary says:

    Bush’s vacation time is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.  Let me say that.  That was just Michael Moore’s movie fluff.
    Ditto for is Obama’s vacation time.  One does not have to even LIKE Obama to recognize this point.
    Per Tom Ridge, the Bush admin ordered him to do Yellow Alerts frequently, for political purposes around elections and legislation and such.  There was no other purpose or gain for us to run around terrified, except KEEPING us terrified.
    What alarms me is the vacation from approx 8:10 AM to the time of impact at the Pentagon at 9:37:45 AM.  That’s about 90 minutes.  Not a single jet fighter intercept.  That makes no sense whatsoever.  Even proud military veterans I know could not find a rational way to explain how NOTHING was done for an hour and a half on Sept 11, 2001.   I suggested maybe Osama Bin Laden slipped into NORAD and put RUFFIES in the coffee pot, sneaky SOB.
    Partisan bickering and misdirection still serves it’s purpose.

  2. 2
    David Bortman says:

    » Republicans Create Fake Comparison Between Bush and Obama … http://bit.ly/4JgppU

  3. 3
    David Bortman says:

    » Republicans Create Fake Comparison Between Bush and Obama … http://bit.ly/4JgppU

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    There are a lot of myths about 9/11 to promote conspiracy theories as above. What we do know is that Bush failed to respond competently about warnings. While Michael Moore used this, the issue is not really about Michael Moore movie fluff but Bush’s failings.

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