David Frum: Don't Blame Bush on 9/11

Expect much more of this from the right today.  David Frum, one of the more sane conservatives, shows his former-Bush-aide stripes just now in a piece at Daily Beast defending his old boss from charges in the Kurt Eichenwald NYT op-ed about Bush team negligence over 9/11.   The headline: "Whose Neglect Ushered in 9/11? Not Bush's." Is this the understatement of the year--that the White House did not "distinguish itself" in that period?

Nobody will argue that the US government in general - or the Bush administration in particular - distinguished itself in the summer of 2001. While reviewing the old memos, however, let's keep in mind the salient fact that the worst failures of government occurred far away from the White House, and even before the Bush administration took office: