Dana Perino obviously a political hack

Dana Perino has responded on Twitter to criticism of her having stated that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Her response is thus: "I obviously meant no terror attack on U.S. post 9/11 during Bush 2nd term."

Right, because obviously a political hack trying to characterize President Obama as a failure on keeping America safe from terrorist attack and President Bush as a success would naturally omit President Bush having failed to prevent the largest terrorist attack in American history (not to mention the subsequent unsolved anthrax attacks) and just skip ahead to his second term when no such attack occurred.

The level of intellectual a-integrity displayed here is staggering. First, as Jim Lippard noted in his response, the attack - Major Hasan's on Ft. Hood - that Perino is characterizing as a terrorist attack that President Obama failed to prevent doesn't really fit the description of a terrorist attack so much as that of a disgruntled employee who snapped.

Secondly, while there were warning signs about Hasan's fitness for duty that could have been noticed by those around him, this is hardly something that would have been on the President's radar. No one was briefing President Obama that Major Hasan was determined to strike a military base; however, President Bush was briefed that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Lastly, it really irritates me how the lack of terrorist attacks on US soil post 9/11 are counted in President Bush's favor while the precipitous increase in global terrorist activity resulting from his administration's post 9/11 actions is ignored, as if all the lives lost to that terrorism don't count since it didn't happen in America.

Update: I left it out since I'm not sure that it should count as terrorism, but in the Lippard post I linked to he mentions that Perino has conveniently also forgotten the Beltway snipers, which should count as "terrorism" by Perino's standard. Futher evidence of her hackery.

Also, I don't want to undersell the absurdity of Perino's comparison. As I noted, no one was predicting that some random disgruntled soldier would go on a shooting rampage on a military base, but back in 2001, prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, FEMA predicted a terrorist attack in New York.