You might’ve heard the most recent lie from the Republicans and the Romney campaign about the president “skipping” half of all “Presidential Daily Briefs” (PDB). Dana Milbank easily debunked this one:
In reality, Obama didn’t “attend” these meetings, because there were no meetings to attend: The oral briefings had been mostly replaced by daily exchanges in which Obama reads the materials and poses written questions and comments to intelligence officials. This is how it was done in the Clinton administration, before Bush decided he would prefer to read less. Bush’s results — Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and the failure to find Osama bin Laden — suggest this was not an obvious improvement.
Circulate to your Republican friends.
As I wrote in my column today, Bush needed them read aloud to him because reading the PDBs was evidently too hard and wordy. Just because President Obama reads his briefs and engages in a written back-and-forth doesn’t mean he’s skipped anything.
Meanwhile, if only Bush had taken seriously the PDB titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” on August 6, 2001…
Now watch this drive. [Woosh! Thwack!]
