Gosh, If Only We Been Warned!

In reverse homage to Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story", this is a prologue to the declaration "Nobody could have predicted this!" from certain members of the Bush administration as the banks began to collapse in the Fall of 2008. In October 1994, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) NDakota, wrote an article titled, "Very Risky Business - derivatives" in which he warned about the risky business of derivatives. He warned that deregulating the bank industry would create a disaster. If only we had a warning! A glimmer! A hint! All that pain and suffering, all those lost jobs and foreclosed homes could have been avoided.

Perhaps that article went into the same circular file as the Presidential Daily Briefing memo titled "Osama bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the U.S."originally given to Rice, Bush and Cheney on August 6, 2001. Gosh, if only someone with enough authority in the Bush administration had been warned, the FAA and various local policing organizations could have been put on high alert (like they were on December 31, 1999) for suspicious passengers or behavior. Or maybe, the CIA, FBI and NSA could have been put on high alert for 90 to 120 days in an emergency coordination effort between the agencies regarding any intel about Bin Laden or his followers. But no. The memo -- as with any PDR -- didn't give an exact date or exact plan or exact place so it was dismissed and ignored. Besides, there was all that brush to clear in Crawford, Texas.