GET IT CHEAP

Mary A. Black: “Anytime I need something like the hard drive you were looking for, I go to pricewatch.com first.  I typed in ThinkPad hard drive and it gave me 5 pages of options with prices and vendors.  They are listed from cheapest to highest.  It is amazing what you can find there.  It is especially helpful for old software.”

LOOK AT THAT!  YOU CAN TYPE INTO ADOBE ACROBAT!

Eric Batson: “Here’s a better link for Form 4868.  Many of the more common tax forms are available this way, as a PDF form.  You can fill it out in Acrobat Reader and then print it very neatly filled in.”

F Adobe Acrobat Reader is free.  There’s a version you can buy that let’s you save (not just print) the forms you fill out this way . . . and that lets you copy stuff from the document you are reading . . . but it ain’t cheap.

0

David D'Antonio:  “You wrote:  ‘My point is that you don’t have to favor abandoning Iraq to favor “1” as the number of terms you would like to employ this man as your President.’  Lest we forget, the majority of the country actually thought 0 was the number of times we wanted to employ that man as President.”

DON’T BLAME BUSH

Dan: “Come on!  Bush is 13 days away from becoming President and he is supposed to stop Bin Laden?” 

F Gosh.  Let’s take it another step.  Let’s say that the CIA Director had not just told Bush and Cheney on January 7, 2001, that bin Laden posed a “tremendous,” “immediate” threat to the United States,  but that he posed a “tremendous, tremendous” threat. And that to further emphasize the urgency of the point he had cut off his foot.

If under those circumstances, Bush and Cheney had essentially ignored the situation and turned their attention to tax cuts, star wars and invading Iraq, would you not then have felt ill-served by their inaction?

If so, then what you seem to be saying is that a merely “tremendous” “immediate” threat conveyed by the Director of Central Intelligence is not worth much notice, and that Tenet should have been expected to do something more dramatic, like cut off his foot (or at least get naked, to demonstrate how exposed he felt we were).

I disagree. Call me skittish, but if it had been me told we faced a tremendous, immediate threat, I would not have been able to sleep until I felt we were doing everything possible to avert it.

Dan continues: “Why didn't the previous President do more to prevent al Qaeda from setting up a terrorist network in this country?  You and your party cannot point fingers at the current administration without pointing four fingers at your short-comings and failures regarding these very dangerous terrorists.  For the record I am not a Republican, I’m a registered Independent.”

F The reason the CIA was briefing Bush in these terms is that the Clinton Administration DID feel urgency, HAD gone to battle stations to thwart threats during the Millennium period, HAD lobbed a cruise missile (too late to hit bin Laden, but aimed his way), DID have ongoing plans and operations to try to do more. 

It seems to me unlikely, therefore, that the Clinton team would have failed to take active measures as the months wore on, and especially as the level of “chatter” rose over the summer of 2001.

This may not have foiled the plot, fully or partially – but it may have.

(And, to move to the present – and to take just one example – shouldn’t we be inspecting more of the containers coming into this country?  An awful lot of experts seem to think so.  Why has President Bush decided not to?)

So give Clinton a C if you like, Dan, but wouldn't Bush get an F?  And even if in your book both deserve an F, President Clinton is not running for office – President Bush is.  What gives you confidence in the judgment of a man who ignores tremendous, immediate threats to his country?