While I ripped apart Richard Clarke yesterday (his double-talk really irks me), I think it's also important to point out the lack of cooperation coming from the Bush administration. At first, I really didn't understand why Dr. Rice wouldn't testify - why President Bush wouldn't testify - etc. But as we've seen the 9/11 commission sort out the facts from various sources, despite the claim to be non-partisan, this committee is anything but. We've got Senators blaming Fox News for releasing a document that was approved to be released by the National Security Council, we've got other Senators openly criticizing Richard Clarke before America, almost going so far as to call him a liar, and we've got people from both the far right and the far left on the committee.

I think we all know why 9/11 happened - I stated it yesterday - it was an institutional failure. The CIA failed us. The FBI failed us. The White House failed us. It wasn't Bush. It wasn't Clinton. It wasn't Clarke. It wasn't Tenet. It wasn't Rice. It was everyone. The whole government let us down, let down the families of over 3,000 people. And now, we've got this so-called "non-partisan" committee with a budget of $15 million trying to pinpoint a specific point of failure. But in the end, we already know how it will turn out. They'll point the finger at everyone, yet no one in particular. They'll make far-reaching recommendations on how we can prevent this in the future, but we can't prevent this in the future. They'll focus on 9/11, yet ignore the millenium attacks that were thwarted. They'll focus on the FBI and CIA, who, admittedly, deserve some blame, but also, the way in which they have been set up to work for years has become standard protocol.

In the end, all I see here is the waste of $15 million. Changes have already been made to best prevent the United States from an attack like we saw on 9/11. There could probably be some other changes put in place, but we don't need the 9/11 commission to point them out.

I think Richard Clarke needs to be made aware of the saying, "Hindsight is 20/20." This guy thinks he's perfect and without fault and seeks to blame the Bush administration only and not the multiple massive failures of the Clinton administration in dealing with the threat of Al Qaeda. Now, here he is, with a 60 Minutes interview behind him and a book that he's trying to promote, testifying before the 9/11 committee. And once again, he lays all the blame on the Bush administration and seems to think the Clinton administration is without blame, even though they failed to act following the embassy bombings and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. But since during the short 243 days Bush was in office before 9/11, he thinks that more could have and should have been done in those 243 days, than Clinton could have been done in the full eight years he was in office. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps he should take a cue from William Cohen, the Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton and finally acknowledge that with all the fact we have now, things could have been differently, but the blame does not lie on Bush, nor does it lie with Clinton. It was an institutional failure - not a failure of any administration or any specific person. Clarke needs to abandon his hunt to bring down Bush in this re-election year and finally acknowledge that there is nothing that Bush could have done to prevent 9/11. There was nothing most people could have done. As he continually bashes Bush and not Clinton, he just makes himself look even more idiotic and loses whatever shred of credibility he might have had remaining.

It's pretty interesting to watch all the news channels to see how they handle the same event in different ways. Today while watching Hannity & Colmes which has a very even view of both sides of the story, they had Michael Meehan on, a "Kerry Campaign Senior Advisor," who acted like a complete ass. He skirted every issue and when asked about a report that Kerry cursed at a secret service, he ignored the question and even when asked if it is right for a presidential candidate to curse at his secret service detail, he flatly ignored the question. All in all, he acted like a complete ass when things didn't go his way rather than responding with positives of his own.

...while on the slope and being monitored by Secret Service agents, one of them got in his way and he fell down. When asked by a reporter about the fall, Kerry said, "I don't fall down," the "son of a bitch knocked me over."

In exactly 50 hours, here are my stats from my spam filter:

4673 messages processed.
161 (3%) good.
4483 (96%) spam.
29 (1%) unsure (although I have my "unsure" level set high as all 29 were spam).

So, lets say that every 2 days, I receive 4500 e-mails and 97% of them are spam. What a wonderful world we live in.

URL: SpamBayes: Windows Platform