Olbermann Buys Into Warnings Conspiracy Theory

The worst political commentator in the world on the supposed warnings that Bush received:

Olbermann then ran through a list of pre-9/11 warnings of potential al Qaeda hijackings, noting, "A president's daily brief as far back as December 1998 said bin Laden was 'preparing to hijack US aircraft in hopes of trading hostages for jailed radicals.' ... The August 6, 2001 brief, of course, told President Bush -- if he read it -- that there were 'patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.'"

Olbermann did not mention either the use of airplanes as weapons by the Japanese kamikaze suicide pilots during World War II or the abortive al Qaeda plot of the 1990's known as Project Bojinka, which would have involved both blowing up airliners and crashing a plane into CIA headquarters in Virginia and which may have been the inspiration for 9/11.

Hmmmm, if there was a 1998 PDB on hijackings, didn't that come during the Clinton Administration? And given that Operation Bojinka was uncovered in 1995, shouldn't the Clinton people have required the airlines to reinforce the cockpit doors? Aren't they to blame?

And the answer is no, not any more than the Bush Administration is to blame. Hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to see the warnings that should have been heeded, after the fact. Richard Clarke (no Bush apologist) pointed out in his book Against All Enemies that the counter-terrorism unit receives information about thousands of threats in a year. Obviously only a tiny percentage turn out to be real.

If you're searching for someone to blame for 9-11, start with guys like KSM, Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, Osama Bin Laden.