Mark Theissen, Former Bush Speechwriter, and author of the recent book, “Courting Disaster: How CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack”, actually has the mental capacity to go on Morning Joe and say that “if torture programs were in place before the attacks on 9/11 we would have known about Al Qaeda and would have stopped them.” Seriously…

Needless to say, Lawrence O’Donnel was co-hosting and of course tore him a new asshole. And who wouldn’t!?

THIESSEN: You‘ve got to think back to the period after 9/11. We didn‘t even know who hit us. This program is why we did not have another 9/11 after the attack and it‘s just vital.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: Lawrence O‘Donnell—

O‘DONNELL: Well, you‘re lying about the west coast thing. That‘s been covered very clearly. But you actually—you as a former speechwriter in the White House, you took an oath of office when you took that job, that you might or might not remember. You actually publish a book that says that the president of the United States, on its title, the president is inviting the next attack. Isn‘t it true that the president you worked for invited the first attack—

THIESSEN: Lawrence, that‘s ridiculous.

O‘DONNELL: — by having no idea what was going on with al-Qaeda? You just admitted —

THIESSEN: All right. Please.

O‘DONNELL: — that when you were hit on 9/11, you just said, we didn‘t know who hit us.

THIESSEN: Here‘s the record, Lawrence.

O‘DONNELL: You said we didn‘t know who hit us. You were told who was going to hit you before we were hit on 9/11. And your administration invited the first attack for which you should live in shame.

As remarkable as it is that Mr. Thiessen considers it a defense that Mr. Bush did not know who hit us in the period after 9/11, he is lying. Thanks to traditional intelligence gathering, which Mr. Bush ignored—Mr. Bush knew who hit us very early after 9/11, in fact, he knew on 9/11.

At 3:00 in the afternoon, CIA Director George Tenet told Mr. Bush it was virtually certain that Osama bin Laden were responsible. Bin Laden‘s location at that time believed to have been near Kandahar, and could also have been determined by Mr. Bush on 9/11 if he had read the “Boston Globe” that day.

Any lingering doubts about how partisanship skews Mr. Thiessen‘s view of national security, here‘s an article he wrote this week for “Foreign Policy,” “Barack Obama is killing too many terrorists by his use of drone missions.” Imagine the reaction of a Democratic White House veteran had asked whether Mr. Bush was quote, “killing too many bad guys”?

This level of idiocy takes your breath away, that his theory is, if we could somehow capture them and torture them and talk to them, we‘d be much better off than just actually killing them. We haven‘t invented the drone yet that captures them, we invented the drone that kills them very effectively. And the ones that we are not killing, we are putting on the run with those drones, they are—that puts them out of the zone where they can be doing planning. They have to spend a great deal of their day thinking about how they‘re going to survive. And this moron thinks, no, we should take the pressure off them and somehow have them walking to our arms so we can interrogate them.

But then to even suggest that we did not know who hit us on 9/11, except we would have if we had a torture program in place, is probably one of the most ludicrous things anybody has ever said. First of all, thanks for admitting the Bush administration didn’t care about Al-Qaida in the first place to even have a program. But even if there was, who was in custody to torture. Who does Theissen think we should have been interrogating? Even if it was legal? And even still, if Bush had Osama Bin Laden in custody before the attacks on 9/11 all they would have asked him about was Iraq. Who was going to ask “When are you guys flying planes into the World Trade Center?”

However, the most important thing to remember here is, we knew exactly who hit us. The National Security Council was in the Situation Room on 9/11 before the 2nd plane hit and they knew exactly who it was. Not only that, there was a certain memo released a month earlier that very clearly stated that “Osama Bin Laden Determined to Strike inside the US“.

How is it not hypocrisy to write a book and claim “Barak Obama is inviting the next attack,” when Bush not only invited the previous attacks, he took everyone off watch.

Furthermore, how is Obama “inviting the next attack?” If anything, when it comes the war on Al-Qaeda, Obama’s record is nonpareil and has far surpassed Bush’s. Al-Qaeda is being pursued with a vigor like it has never been seen before. Obama has eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. Obama has taken out 100 of their associates. Obama has sent them all underground. They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. Despite whatever fantasy world Dick Cheney and Mark Theissen live in, Al-Qaeda is on the run.

It’s one thing to criticize; it’s another thing to distort, fabricate and completely rewrite history.

9/11 | al-qaeda | hypocrisy | terrorism | Theissen | war on terror