911 Lies: Bush and Cheney actively ignored threat

LACK OF FOCUS ON TERRORIST THREAT: Over the weekend, the Bush-Cheney campaign issued a statement saying the Administration "changed its policies to address the terrorism problem, even before 9/11" claiming that the Bush team "went from a policy of swatting flies to putting al Qaeda at the top of the list." But a look at the record shows just how dishonest this statement is: In the face of warnings before 9/11, the Administration deemphasized counterterrorism; never once convened its own counterterrorism task force; threatened to veto efforts to divert national missile defense funds into counterterrorism; delayed arming the unmanned Predator drone flying over Afghanistan; terminated "a highly classified program to monitor al Qaeda suspects in the United States"; attacked previous Administrations for focusing too much on Osama bin Laden; rejected security recommendations from the government's bipartisan national security commission; and downgraded the counterterrorism office within the White House. In fact, al Qaeda was so low on this list of priorities, that neither Bush, Vice President Cheney or Rice ever once uttered the terms "al Qaeda" or "Osama bin Laden" between the time the Bush team took office and 9/11. Want to know more? American Progress has compiled an exhaustive, day-by-day overview of the Bush administration's public statements on national security, defense and international issues from January 20, 2001 to September 10, 2001.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=44360#1