Bush's Counterterrorism Record: 0 for 1

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, December 18, 2008

Has President Bush kept America safe? The only conclusion supported by the facts at our disposal is no.

Bush yesterday tried once again to take credit for the absence of a major terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001. "While there's room for honest and healthy debate about the decisions I've made -- and there's plenty of debate -- there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe," he said. Listing four allegedly averted terror plots, he intoned: "We'll never know how many lives have been saved."

But Bush has yet to offer verifiable evidence that he's done anything to save even a single life. And there's no reason to believe the so-called plots he trumpeted yesterday were ever anything more than fantasy.

Indeed, when it comes to terrorist attacks on this country, the only one we know much about is the one that Bush did not prevent.

In the initial aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as the nation rallied behind its leader, there was little appetite for exploration into whether Bush could have done more to avert the destruction. But over time, it has emerged that he willfully ignored any number of warning signs, and that he certainly could have taken more proactive steps against the known threat that al Qaeda presented. So much so, that any retrospective of Bush's terror policies should start with what now appears to have been a significant failure on his part.

(More here.)