The Brilliant Plan
Howard Fineman, on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, on the White House claim that George W. Bush didn’t know about the port management deal until he heard about it from the media:
I think the president has a lot of credibility when he pleads ignorance.
Olbermann, filling in some historical background about relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Osama bin Laden:
Back in February 1999, the CIA had a chance to take out bin Laden at a hunting camp in Afghanistan, but one of the reasons it did not, said [former CIA director George] Tenet, was because bin Laden was visiting with the emiratic princes. To quote Tenet, “You might have wiped out half the royal family in the UAE in the process, which I’m sure entered into everybody’s calculations.”
Now I see why Bush wants these guys running our ports. Why, they’re in a perfect position to know bin Laden’s plans. And surely they’ll clue us in just as soon as they can.