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Guest Commentary June 4, 2002
Democrats Playing Politics with National Security
The Honorable James Inhofe
I find it offensive that so many liberal Democrats in Washington, including a bunch of floundering, would-be presidential candidates, are trying to score cheap partisan points by exploiting leaks about intelligence briefings. It is especially outrageous for them to insinuate that President Bush could have prevented the September 11 attacks.
Spreading such an obvious lie is despicable. It shows complete disregard for the families of the victims of September 11, who are only being emotionally traumatized by erroneous suggestions that, if only they had known what was going to happen, their loved ones wouldn't have boarded those planes.
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As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I receive frequent classified briefings on various threats to American interests, many of which suggest awful things that could or might happen someday, somewhere in the world. There are literally thousands of scraps of information about such threats out there at any given time. Most of them turn out to be false alarms. But our intelligence community does a reasonably good job in prioritizing these threats and separating those that are credible from those that are not.
It is my understanding that the information the President received last year about possible hijackings was so lacking in detail, specificity or credibility that it never made the cover page any intelligence briefing. It is totally wrong to suggest that such briefings should have prompted some presidential action that would have stopped the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those who are saying this do not understand the nature of these intelligence briefings.
In fact, it is telling that so many of those now blaming the President are themselves running for president. They are playing politics with national security in a way that is truly unconscionable.
James Inhofe, a Republican, is a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. The above commentary has been adapted from a statement Sen. Inhofe issued, May 17, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
