rest assured this time. as soon as i saw you guys doing that segment, i tried to get the stage crew to go find my big puffy winter coat so i could put it on. i bet you look great, howard. they kept coming with the wrong coat. there you are looking great. i got to say four of you standing there on that stage, it was really that s what we go for every day here. i don t know how i can follow that and then mitch mcconnell. i was afraid to ask who was woody allen in all of that. howard, i like to put things in perspective here. president bush raised unemployment benefits back in december 2002 and here s how he put it. let s take a listen at the time in his weekly radio address. these americans rely on their unemployment benefits to pay for the mortgage or rent, food, and other critical bills. they need our assistance in these difficult times and we cannot let them down.
troops. we actually have a full screen graphic of our troop levels from december 2002, 9,700, december of 2005, 17,80 o we went up 67,500. 97,000, now at 90,000. 68,000 troops a number we can hold at? does the american public stand by that? it s twice what was there when president obama was inaugurated. and there is this clearly articulated two-year plan to phase out in two years. so to the degree, apart from what the military people on the ground believe is the optimal number, as an optics thing for what the american people can stand, we re not cutting and running, it s an orderly phased out withdrawal and you know, yes, there are horrors that happen in every war that will continue to happen no doubt. but i think this okay, we did
doing. we knew some had visas to the u.s.. then the cia refused to share those with other agencies, such as the fbi, and the border patrol which allowed two to literally walk into the united states through the los angeles airport a week after the summer of terrorism concluded. we blew it. we blewett that advanced notice. we could have gotten a listening device in the condominium unit. the director of the cia had just said that al-qaeda, bin laden, was the number one priority to the agency and every effort should be given to corralling them before they attacked us. former senator graham co-chaired with then congressman porter goes. this was an 800 page report based on half a million documents, 300 interviews and 22 hearings which finished in december 2002.
december 2002. it dove into intelligence activities before and after the attack. intelligence matters, new novel keys to the kingdom. that was one of the recurring themes of nine 11. that is the right hand not talking to the left hand. this is probably one of the most painful things about me or things that i regret, i could not tell the bureau about what we were talking about. without getting approval from the bosses to tell the fbi. because it was cia-protected information only. after [ inaudible ] they arrived at l.a.x. via bangkok january 15th, 2000. unlike bin laden from a wealthy saudi family, that s a