Lawrence O'Donnell slams Marc Thiessen for his hypocrisy, but Scarborough shuts him down
Marc Thiessen was out flogging his most recent bit of ugly fearmongering -- his book that claims that the Obama administration doesn't want to capture terrorists -- on Morning Joe today, and ran smack into Lawrence O'Donnell, who gave him an earful:
Thiessen: You know, we've got to think back to the period after 9/11. We didn't even know who hit us. We didn't know that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was the mastermind of 9/11, or the operational commander of Al Qaeda. And then we started rounding up these terrorists. We caught Abu Zubaydah, we caught Ramzi Binalshibh, and KSM. And these guys provided us information under questioning by the CIA that stopped a number of terrorist attacks. They would have been planning to blow up the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, they were planning to blow up our Marine camp in Djibouti, they were well on their way to recruiting a cell of terrorists who would fly an airplane into Heathrow Airport and buildings in downtown London. And KSM had recruited a cell of Southeast Asian terrorists called the Garaba Cell, because he knew we'd be on the lookout for Arab men, to fly an airplane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the tallest building on the West Coast. This program is why we did not have another 9/11 after the attack.
Scarborough: Lawrence O'Donnell:
O'Donnell: Well, you're lying about the West Coast thing, that's been covered very clearly --
Thiessen: Oh that's not true!
O'Donnell: -- But you as a former speechwriter for the White House, you took an oath of office when you took that job, that you might or might not remember. You actually published a book that says that the president of the United States, on its title, the president is inviting the next attack. Isn't it true that the president you work for invited the first attack?
Scarborough: All right.
Thiessen: Oh Lawrence, that's ridiculous.
O'Donnell: By having no idea what was going on with Al Qaeda. You just admitted that when you were hit on 9/11, you just said, 'We didn't know who hit us.' You said we didn't know who hit us. You were told who was going to hit us before we were hit on 9/11, and your administration invited the first attack, you should live in shame.
All this terribly upset everyone on the set, who began saying, "Lawrence, Lawrence!" Thiessen began responding by reverting to discussing Democrats' terrorism policies, and O'Donnell demanded he talk about the Bush administration's record. It was too much for Scarborough, who broke in:
We're going to break right now. We're going to break right now, and I'm going to be interviewing Marc myself.
When they returned, it was all civilized.
Have you ever noticed that anyone who wants to talk about the Bush administration's culpability for being asleep at the wheel on terrorism when the 9/11 attacks hit -- even though the record on this matter is quite clear -- gets quickly shut down?
In fact, even bringing it up gets you described as a "conspiracy theorist." For instance, the fact that 35% of Democrats believe Bush was warned in advance about the 9/11 attacks is frequently touted by people like Scarborough as some kind of evidence that the party is full of "9/11 conspiracy theorists."
Believing Bush was warned in advance about impending attacks from Al Qaeda is not a conspiracy theory: It's a fact. Or have none of these people ever heard of Bush's August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing -- the one titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US"?
You know, the briefing that specifically warned:
