I usually don't much like these kinds of things, because they normally come off sounding like just another version of one side saying to the other, "You're hypocrites! You're hypocrites!" Stock stuff in politics, and therefore usually thoroughly unenlightening.
But this little "what-if" thought experiment by Nick Confessore at the TAPPED blog is an exception. He's looking at the Administration's various statements about how no one told them anything about any attacks that might occur by Bin Laden's al-Qaeda And even if they did, they didn't give them the names of the participants, the plans of the attacks and the exact dates and times, so there's nothing they could have done differently anyway. Except that we're much safer now, because they've learned from the mistakes prior to 9/11. Except that there weren't any mistakes made. Except by Bill Clinton.
Confessore suggests this mental exercise:
I find it interesting that Bush was applying such a high threshold of exactitude to al Qaeda-related intelligence, especially in light of events since 9/11. I want everyone reading this to perform a little thought experiment. In the intelligence report quotes above -- and in every such report you see quoted in the press from here on out -- replace "Osama bin Laden" with "Saddam Hussein" and "al Qaeda" with "Iraq."
Now imagine what would have happened during the spring and summer of 2001 if the Bush administration had reliable intelligence that Saddam's forces were preparing a terrorist attack on U.S. soil or to hijack a plane. Imagine if the administration had been given reliable intelligence that Saddam had a network of agents who had resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and that this network maintained a support structure that could aid attacks. Can anyone possibly believe that the president would have waited to know exactly "who was going to attack us, when and where and with what" before taking action?
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