The Staton Jones Report

Bush has a distinct advantage over Clinton when it comes to recovering from credibility gaps: people readily believe that Bush was too stupid to know better.

For example, a steady trickle of evidence suggesting that the Bush Administration ignored clear warnings of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was met with claims of ignorance. Either the warnings didn't exist, or they weren't that clear. Oh, and, no, you can't see them.

FreeRepublic — the home planet of "Freepers" — serves as a bottomless repository of strident support for everything the Bush Administration says or does. For a couple of years, this meant parrotting the party line that the FBI and CIA failed to alert the executive team of the threat, denying Bush and his staff the opportunity to respond to it.

Then came Richard Clarke.

Clarke documented strenuous efforts to get the attention of the Oval Office and the clueless, "eyes glazed over" response those efforts garnered. The frenzy of Clarke-bashing from the likes of the Freepers has caused — as do many of their frenzies — a rip in the fabric of Logic and Reason.

In an effort to prove how clued in the Bush Administration was, a Freeper posted an AP Newswire Story from July 25th, 2001. This news item features bin Laden bragging about a big surprise due in the coming weeks, and describes the U.S. reaction:

The State Department issued a "worldwide caution"on Friday, saying U.S. citizens and interests abroad may be at risk of a terrorist attack from extremist groups. It mentioned groups with links to Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization as a possible source of a threat.

See! The Bush Administration knew everything! In fact, John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines the very next day, July 26th, 2001. Well, now we know why, but we're still left with Dan Rather's question as to why the American public wasn't similarly protected.