This clip from Hardball, in which Matthews smacks Ari Fleischer around for his "Bush kept us safe" claim, is getting a lot of attention.
I like hearing Matthews point out to Fleischer that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, and that if "keeping us safe" from terrorism is a measure of Bush's success, then 9/11 is proof of his failure to do so.
But what I would also like to see is an emphasis on the fact that even by Fleischer's sorry standard, Bush failed to keep us safe. Even if you accept the Bush apologists' premise that the responsibility to prevent terrorist attacks did not begin until September 12, 2001, Bush failed. Beginning on September 18, 2001, and continuing for several months, America was terrorized by a biological attack that killed five people and frightened tens of millions.
Even President Bush described the anthrax letters as a terrorism event separate and apart from 9/11.
As all Americans know, recent weeks have brought a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country: deadly anthrax spores sent through the U.S. mail. There is no precedent for this type of the biological attack.By Bush's own contemporaneous assertion, the revisionist claim that he "kept us safe" after 9/11 is false.
Oh, and how on earth did invading Iraq keep Saddam from "striking again" when he never struck us in the first place? I can't believe that zombie lie is still lurching around out there.
