<BR>The deepest scandal is that after September, Ashcroft consistently misled both Congress and the public about the reforms needed to prevent another attack. The attacks happened, we were repeatedly told, because the FBI and CIA were hamstrung by liberal reformers back in the '70s. What was needed, said Ashcroft, were sweeping new powers to spy, to jail, to interrogate. What was needed, Ashcroft told Congress as late as December 12, was "enhanced information sharing between intelligence and law-enforcement communities," not to mention what Ashcroft described as his "deliberate campaign of arrest and detention," the incarceration without charges of over 1,100 immigrants. And he excoriated critics like Senator Patrick Leahy. <BR><BR>BY THEN, ASHCROFT HAD KNOWN FOR MONTHS what the rest of us are only just now finding out: that the FBI and Justice Department needed not new powers but new brains. It was not excessive restriction on wiretapping that caused Justice to drop the ball on Moussaoui: FBI headquarters, according to the Rowley memo, simply refused to provide a warrant to seize the suspect's hard drive, a warrant perfectly legal under existing laws. It was not liberal reformers who refused to listen to Phoenix Agent Ken Williams' low-tech survey of flight schools. It was not excessive restriction of intelligence agencies that led Ashcroft's Justice Department to disregard specific warnings about al Qaeda suicide flights in general, and Moussaoui in particular, from intelligence agencies in Europe, Argentina, Israel, and Egypt. <BR><BR>He was too busy draping the statue of Justice to pay attention.

Good stuff here. Unfortunately, it's now about nine months since 9-11, and this is a travel board so most people here are more concerned with restaurants in Europe than they are with the Bush administration's negligence. Not surprisingly, Bush used the tragedy of 9-11 as a punch line at a fundraiser in Atlanta and, needless to say, his conservative audience laughed. 3,000 American deaths are funny, aren't they? <BR><BR>Ashcroft, like the Taliban, is a scary fundamentalist religious zealot. The Taliban destroyed Buddhist statues and Ashcroft couldn't stand a bare breast (OH MY GOD, THE HORROR!!!!) on a statue in the Justice Department. Oh well, at least he shows that American puritanism is alive and well. <BR><BR>Now, on to more important things, like those restaurants in Europe...

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