Isn't it Ironic?

The right wing noise machine recently completed a far fetched and highly counterfactual attempt to blame 9/11 on Bill Clinton. Thus, there is a certain irony in the fact that Bob Woodward has revealed yet one more way that the Bush administration ignored a clear and urgent warning of a potential attack by bin Laden before 9/11. One of the most explosive claims in Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial is that then National Security Advisor Condeleeza Rice was briefed by the head of the CIA and another key counterterrorism official on July 10, 2001, that bin Laden appeared to be planning a major attack, quite possibly on the United States itself. Condi issued a categorical denial, but was proved a liar by both witnesses and the paper trail almost immediately.
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
McClatchy Newspapers:

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post alleges that Rice failed to take the July 2001 warning seriously when it was delivered at a White House meeting by Tenet, Cofer Black, then the agency's chief of top counterterrorism, and a third CIA official whose identity remains protected.

Zelikow, recall, is a longtime Rice buddy and currently her Counselor of State at the State Department.

For mysterious reasons, Ben-Veniste, a purported Democrat but Washington insider's insider, has never mentioned this and it did not appear in the 9/11 report.

The vast pit of Bushian incompetence, recklessness, and mendacity is seemingly unplumbable.