Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Bush: "I was not on point..."
An Eschaton reader passes this along:
posted by Blicero : 3/24/2004 02:22:00 AM
From Woodward's book "Bush at War," page 39.Kind of amazing. I guess Woodward turned out to have been (unintentionally) a lot more hard-nosed than he seemed!
"Until September 11, however, Bush had not put that thinking [that Clinton's response to al Qaeda emboldened bin Laden] into practice, nor had he pressed the issue of bin Laden. Though Rice and others were developing a plan to eliminate al Qaeda, no formal recommendations had ever been presented to the president.
"I know there was a plan in the works. . . . I don't know how mature the plan was," Bush recalled. . . .He acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his national security team. There was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11. I was not on point [before that date], but I knew he was a menace, and I knew he was a problem."
posted by Blicero : 3/24/2004 02:22:00 AM
