For the sake of argument, suppose there had been a 9/12 or 9/13 or some other terrorist-attack date already frozen in calamitous infamy. Can anyone not envision – at some point — this kind of account from a (Pulitzer Prize-winning) news story?
Sources tell (insert major national newspaper of record) that in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States didn’t avail itself of all the tools at its disposal to prevent a recurrence.
Sources, who requested anonymity, cite the failure to fully implement a surveillance program, under the aegis of the National Security Agency, which had the electronic wherewithal to monitor communications between people in the United States and overseas whenever terrorism was suspected. Moreover, it is also charged that the Administration failed to make maximum use of a financial-monitoring program that can scrutinize messages within an international database of money-transfer records.
“I’m shocked, shocked,” responded Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., “to learn that we haven’t done all we could have done to protect ourselves. Does it take a second atrocity for us to respond proportionately? That’s obscene.
“How do you tell the family members of all those who lost their lives from the dirty bomb in Los Angeles that we didn’t do enough to safeguard our own? How do you defend the rationale that the Administration apparently thought we were better off erring on the side of domestic civil liberties – even though the ultimate civil liberty is the freedom to remain alive? How do you explain that in an asymmetrical war with Islamic terrorists for whom death is martyrdom, we failed to utilize some of our most sophisticated, non-nuclear, pre-emptive weapons? How do you reconcile common sense with any of this? Is America’s epitaph going to be: ‘But we meant well?'”
According to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY., “This Administration, for all of its patriotic tough talk about the ‘War on Terror,’ is guilty of gross negligence and dereliction of duty in the defense of America’s homeland. As far as I’m concerned,” declared Schumer, “this is an impeachable offense, and the president of the United States has blood – Americans’ blood – on his hands. This is his watch – and he hasn’t been watching out for America. He cut and ran from his responsibility to protect the American people to the fullest extent possible.”
“In a time of war,” stated the Rev. Jesse Jackson, “we need a commander in chief – not a commander in grief. We are a great-nation – led by an abomi-nation.”
Then, again, maybe the media wouldn’t have handled it that way.