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Barack Obama appeared on MSNBC's Hardball last night and was asked about the way he would handle the 3 a.m. phone call. The transcript: MATTHEWS: Let me give you a scene that may face you in the next year or two, where the national security adviser calls you at 3:00 in the morning and tells that you a couple of jet -- commercial jets have been hijacked. And they believe it is al Qaeda. And, as we know, al Qaeda always tries a second time. They tried for the World Trade Center after '93. They came back in '01. Yup. That's right, Barack Obama glibly stated that he didn't "think anybody predicted 9/11." Some thoughts: 1. Maybe Obama needs a tutorial from former Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, who just endorsed him yesterday. Heck, even Hamilton knows and has to acknowledge that 9/11 was predictable. Not that Obama conferring with Hamilton should give any of us warm, fuzzy feelings since Lee Hamilton is largely responsible for the 9/11 Commission's Final Report being a total whitewash. To put it mildly, as Vice Chair for the 9/11 Commission, Hamilton was not interested in transparency, he was not interested in accountability, and he was certainly not interested in telling the truth to the American public. So why is a guy like Hamilton so interested in Obama being president? Take further Hamilton's words of endorsement for Obama where Hamilton said, "Obama will strengthen our ability to use all the tools of American power, and relentlessly promote the American values of freedom and justice for all people. (Remember those words, folks, "power" and "relentlessly promote" and recognize that they have nothing to do with the sort of foreign policy Obama is currently trying to sell to the American public.) 2. Perhaps Obama might better strengthen his image of having a handle on national security issues by not sounding so much like the disgraceful, incompetent former Bush Administration National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Recall that Ms. Rice stated that "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." In other words, that before 9/11 nobody in our (entire) intelligence community could have predicted that something like 9/11 could happen. (i.e. the Bush administration's 9/11 talking point) I am not even going to bother listing the hundreds of cites/articles/studies/reports/military exercises, drills/testimonials/PDB's/SEIB's or even television shows that disprove Rice's statement. I will just mention my personal favorite -- the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S."
Kristen Breitweiser, 9/11 widow and activist, is known for pressuring official Washington to provide a public accounting to the American people of what went wrong on the morning of September 11 and in the months leading up to the disaster that claimed the life of her husband and more than 3000 others. Breitweiser did not seek to be an activist. She was a stay-at-home mother in suburban New Jersey and a George Bush supporter. Yet Breitweiser and the other so-called "Jersey Girls" transformed by their grief and outraged by a lack of accountability are widely credited with forcing the creation of the 9/11 Commission and were instrumental in insuring the passage in Congress of the national security reforms it recommended. She testified before the Joint Inquiry of Congress in September 2002 and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in August 2004 with regard to national security reforms. She campaigned as a primary surrogate for the Kerry-Edwards Breitweiser was born and raised in Monmouth County, New Jersey and is mother to her seven-year old daughter, Caroline Whitney and their golden retriever, Cooper
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