Yesterday, the 70th-anniversary of Hiroshima, and another notable milestone, too, — one with a major, major ‘what if?‘ narrative.

Review of the 2006 book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” via the Washington Post (h/t Digby).:

The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.”
Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

After the briefing 14 years ago, George W manly-strode out for a round of golf — the CIA memo tossed aside as ‘not new,’ and nothing scary.

(Illustration: George and Tony prancing at Camp David, February 2001, found here).

Richard Clark, the former chief counter-terrorism adviser in the Bush White House, sees that summer a bit differently.
Via NBC News in March 2004:

Clarke said that “on June 21, I believe it was, George Tenet called me and said, ‘I don’t think we’re getting the message through.
These people aren’t acting the way the Clinton people did under similar circumstances.’
And I suggested to Tenet that he come down and personally brief Condi Rice, that he bring his terrorism team with him.
“And we sat in the national security adviser’s office.
And I’ve used the phrase in the book to describe George Tenet’s warnings as ‘He had his hair on fire.’
He was about as excited as I’d ever seen him.
“And he said, ‘Something is going to happen.’”

Fairly prophetic as it so happened…
An excellent detailed background on the run-up to that Aug. 6, 2001, memo and the whole total asshole fuck-up in that summer can be found at HistoryCommons.

George W, The Dick, all those shitheads should at least be standing trial, if not for war crimes, then at least for horrible, deliberate incompetence accumulating in the catastrophic Iraqi invasion, the linchpin for the chaos in the region today.
President Obama’s choice to ‘look forward,’ and not backward in fault/prosecution in the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq was a major roadblock to actual justice. Sad, pity for everyone.

Meanwhile, the Brits have at least formulated an inquiry into how the UK got mixed up in all that vile shit — the so-called Chilcot Inquiry after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot, and started investigated work in 2009 on how Tony Blair sucked Great Britain into George W’s scheme to manhandle Iraq.
However, the operation has encountered enormous slow-down problems — after all the top-echelon assholes testified, even Blair himself, the operational toilet backed up due to politics. Publication of the reported findings has been delayed time and again, getting to be a bit of a pisser.
From the Guardian this past February:

One of the most contentious points of the inquiry has been a tug-of-war between the inquiry and the Cabinet Office over documents and records of conversations between former prime minister Blair and US president George Bush in the runup to the invasion.
Chilcot demanded to publish some 25 of Blair’s notes to Bush and more than 130 records of conversations between the two leaders.
After years of sometimes intense argument with successive cabinet secretaries, the two sides only agreed in May 2014 that a “small number of extracts” or the “gist” of the documents’ contents will be released.
In deference to US sensitivities, none of the published material will reflect Bush’s views.

The New York Times in May:

Months of dispute between Mr. Chilcot and high government officials have turned on Mr. Blair’s deliberations when he took Britain to war alongside the United States on the basis of falsehoods about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
Not only have government officials sought to limit publication of these exchanges, but Mr. Blair and other senior figures have been given time to reply to their critics — a process that could last into next year.
“There is a danger that the pattern of delay looks like an establishment stitch-up,” said Tim Farron, a Liberal Democrat politician.

And this week, the whole matter got a bit in the cups — via the UK’s Telegraph: