August 6, 2001 - We Will Never Forget

Today is a day to remember the 7th anniversary of the PDB delivered to President Bush. The one he received with the comment:

"All right. You've covered your ass now."

The one about which Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, said:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."

The day after he received the memo the Washington Post noted, "Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday" .

Per ThinkProgress,

Here's how the administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:

-- [President Bush] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so. [p. 260]

-- We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated in the PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. [p. 262]

Today -- 2,557 days later -- Bin Laden still remains free and "determined to strike in U.S."

Tell me now.

How is it that Republican administrations keep us safer?

How is it that invading Iraq made us safer?

Don't give this administration a 3rd term.

For more information, please check GWU's The National Security Archive.

H/T to ek hornbeck, the smoking gun, ThinkProgress, and Crooks and Liars.