SAMUEL?….Does anyone know why all the news reports about today’s congressional testimony refer to Bill Clinton’s national security advisor as “Samuel” Berger? I don’t remember ever seeing a news account before today that called him anything but “Sandy.”
As for the substance of the hearings, here is Shorter Congressional Testimony?: we all tried really hard and paid oodles of attention to terrorism before 9/11. Really.
UPDATE: As several commenters have pointed out, Clarke is the exception to this rule. He admitted that both he and the governments he worked for hadn’t done enough.
And why the snark? Two reasons:
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Terrorists hijacked a bunch of planes and killed 3000 people on 9/11. In retrospect, of course we didn’t do enough before then to stop al-Qaeda, and it’s hardly shameful to say so. But none of these guys have the self-respect to admit it.
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I’m all for point scoring, but I just don’t think all this blather about whether we took al-Qaeda seriously before 9/11 is meaningful. See the first point above. It’s what happened after 9/11 that should be getting more attention.
