Bush is awful busy wrapping himself in the “leadership” he showed following 9/11, and doing his level best to make it look like his administration was caught flat-footed by the ineptness of the Clinton folks.

Trouble is, it’s just not true:

Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the National Security Council [under Clinton]. He has since left. Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Richard Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Clarke is at the center of what has since become a burning controversy: What happened on August 6, 2001? It was on this day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. According to reports, the briefing stated bluntly that Osama bin Laden intended to attack America soon, and contained the word “hijacking.” Bush responded to the warning by heading to Texas for a month-long vacation. It is this briefing that the Bush administration has refused to divulge to the committee investigating the attacks. There was not a single Republican member of Congress who ever raised a single question or put a query to the Clinton National Security Council about its efforts against terrorism before the attacks. When the Clinton team left office, their National Security group conducted three extensive briefings of the incoming Bush people. The attitude of the Bush people was, essentially, dismissive, that it was a “Clinton thing.” Condoleezza Rice has admitted that the massive file on al Qaeda and bin Laden left for her by outgoing National Security Advisor Sandy Berger went completely unread until the attacks had taken place. This happened despite the fact that Berger told her during one such briefing, “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”

Now, I’d like to see the source for the August 6 anecdote, but the balance — that the outgoing terrorism czar warned Bush’s people in January, and that warning went unheeded — isn’t even contested by Bush’s own administration. THAT is what Kerry should be saying to Rove’s ads about Bush’s 9/11 “leadership.”

(Via Tbogg.)