re: #1158 elbruce

Look - imagine you’re the President. You just made what turned out to be the biggest fuckup in the history of Presidenting. You tell everybody it’s that guy’s fault for giving you bad info (never even mind “the buck stops here”). Then a year later, you bestow the same guy with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

What part of this picture doesn’t fit?

Imagine you are the President. You are in charge of keeping American safe. Russia gives you this information. What do you do?

(CNN) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country warned the United States several times that Saddam Hussein’s regime was planning terror attacks on the United States and its overseas interests.

Putin’s comments in Kazakhstan came amid a new debate in the United States about the extent of ties between Saddam and the al Qaeda terrorist network triggered by a preliminary report from the commission investigating the September 11 attacks.

“I can confirm that after the events of September 11, 2001, and up to the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received … information that official organs of Saddam’s regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations,” Putin said.