That's It?

The White House has released the presidential briefing that got so much attention during Condolezza Rice's testimony at the 9/11 commission.

And what does the briefing tell us... nothing new in fact. If this is the best that the Democratic members of the commission can come up with then they are in pretty desparate shape. I'm convinced that Den Biste only brought the memo up so that he could hear Condi say 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US' which was the title of the memo. But once again, everyone knew that Bin Laden wanted to strike the US so this isn't really news. The memo begins with:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The report doesn't get much more specific after that. So basically after all the grand-standing at the commission we are back to square one. Bush didn't know any more than the rest of us. Is it actually news that Bin Laden wanted to attack the US? Nope. Does it surprise you that he would want to hijack an airliner? Nope, that's one of terrorism's favourite acts. Does it surpirse you that Al Qaeda had operatives in the US? If it did you are naive.

Anyways, I won't hold my breath for the 'Bush knew' crowd to shut up. No amount of reasoning or proof would make a difference to them anyways.

Update @ 9:28am

A Globe and Mail headline reads Bush told of specific al-Qaeda threat. The specific threat that lead to this headline is:

U.S. President George W. Bush was told more than a month before the Sept. 11 attacks that al-Qaeda had reached America's shores, had a support system in place for its operatives and that the FBI had detected suspicious activity that might involve a hijacking plot.

That's specific?