Billmon is one the great progressive bloggers. I don’t even hold it against him that he was one of the founding members of Daily Kos (since I was banned from the site myself for “conduct unbecoming”–but that’s another story). Hardly a week goes by when Billmon doesn’t make me laugh out loud with one of his savage and funny eviscerations of Cheney Administration policy.
The latest bit of hilarity comes in a post of his that covers the claim published in State of Denial by George Tenet that he briefed Condi Rice on the likelihood of an Al Qaeda attack within the U.S. in July, 2001. After the book’s publication, Rice denied Tenet passed such information on to her. Richard Ben Veniste bolstered her claim when he told the media that in Tenet’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission that he never mentioned such a briefing with Rice.
Yet the McClatchy Newspapers verified that Tenet briefed Philip Zelikow and Richard Benveniste (surprise, surprise!) on the Rice meeting. Not only did the briefing take place, but Tenet produced a Power Point presentation for Zelikow and Benveniste which he’d provided for Rice that included precisely this warning about Al Qaeda. Yet somehow the information Tenet provided Benveniste and Zelikow never made it into the final 9/11 Commission report.
Here is Billmon’s hilarious conclusion:
I don’t know what Ben Veniste’s story is, but now would be a good time for him to tell it. As for Rice, well, I’m not sure even Uncle Ben could make her taste good now.
It’s a funny thing — Tenet being such a loyal team player and all, even while they were filling the tub with cement and letting it dry around his feet.
It’s like my grandfather used to say: A mule will work for you twenty years just for the chance to kick you once. It looks like Tenet aimed straight for Condi’s head.
Billmon had a mighty smart grandpa. He (the blogger, not the grandpa) is the Jonathan Swift of the blog world. Swift too was dark, dyspeptic and hilarious. Perhaps the world’s greatest satirist. Billmon is one of the blog world’s most entertaining and thoughtful bloggers. Bless him for his light, and for his scabrous wit.
Maybe Bush is better off that the Foley story is drowning out his “Terra” talk (some bloggers expressing wild conspiracy stories the Foley leak was to distract from t he Woodward book).
The most damning is the story (I’ll find a link if necessary) that Ashcroft stopped taking commercial flights and chartered planes after receiving this same briefing…