Okay, so now we're assuming that BEFORE January of 2001, our intelligence and defense information was an open book to those trying to figure out if we were getting all the right data or not? Did I somehow miss the complete disclosure of all the CIA intelligence on the previous WTC attack, the Cole attack, and the release of all of Clinton's private papers on this?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the terrorist planning of the 9/11 affair long predates the Bush Administration, and nobody caught it back then either. Rice was not the only person in America who did not expect the hijacking of airliners loaded with passengers and flown into buildings, a scenario that was not the one described in the famous "warnings" discussed by the tinfoil brigade.

As for the investigation, Bush is fully aware that even if he spent 2000 hours in front of one commission or another, that the conclusion from his opponents would still be, "questions remain." The Democrats don't give a rat's ass about intelligence failures. They are looking for a weapon to use in the election. Period.

This is giving me a headache, because I'm arguing with people who for some reason can't take a concept past more than one level of abstraction, if they even manage that first one.

For example, a perceptual mentality would now respond that somehow I was hauling Clinton into this as a distraction.