Josh Marshall on the latest Time article:
The authors of this Time article go to great lengths to be fair to the Bush administration. But the upshot of the story is still pretty devastating. In the early months of the War on Terrorism we heard a heroic tale: the Bush administration had inherited a dawdling and feckless anti-terrorism policy from their predecessors. Through 2001 they were in a headlong rush to bring the country up to speed but couldn't quite make up all the lost time before the terrorists struck.
Let's call this the Andrew Sullivan version of events.
The truth was rather different. By definition some things didn't get done that should have been done in the late 1990s. But the out-going administration left its successors with a fairly detailed action plan for attacking al Qaida. Presidential transitions are unavoidably disorienting affairs. But there were more specific reasons the plan didn't get acted upon. The Bush team a) was more concerned with missile defense than terrorism and b) was unwilling to adopt a Clinton era plan until six or seven months hadbeen spent repackaging it as a Bush-era plan. And therein lies a tale.
Read the rest. He also addresses the idiotic Blame Rubin saga. He mentions Novak trying to bug Carl Levin with this -- what he doesn't mention is the absolutely priceless expression on Novakula's face when Levin threw the name Wendy Gramm back in his face. Novak looked like someone had strapped him down, taped open his eyelids, and subjected him to 24 hours of hot interracial man-on-man porn.
(that last phrase sure will increase my search engine hits).
