Summer of George

From Condi's op ed piece yesterday:

During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals. In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted. No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration.

...

Let us be clear. Even their most ardent advocates did not contend that these ideas, even taken together, would have destroyed al Qaeda. We judged that the collection of ideas presented to us were insufficient for the strategy President Bush sought. The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or "roll back" the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to "eliminate" the al Qaeda network. The president wanted more than occasional, retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He told me he was "tired of swatting flies." [emphasis added]

Evidently, the president had the most forethought and the most nimble thinking of all of the various anti-terrorist experts surrounding him.

And the best time management. Despite all of that deep thinking, for which the current resident of the White House is well known, he was able to set aside time for himself in August 2001 to recharge physically and mentally to prepare for what he must have known was an imminent attack that his predecessor did nothing to avert.