The straw man in the mirror

George VII today at the National Security Agency in Maryland:

Now, I understand there's some in America who say, well, this can't be true there are still people willing to attack. All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously.

His then National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, in 2002 explaining the White House reaction to the memo "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US":

... it was not a warning. There was no specific time, place or method mentioned .. I would say that most of it was actually historical. It was not a catalogue of, they might use this, they might use this, they might use this, they might use that. That was not the character. But it was mostly historical, going back to things that happened in '97, things that happened in '98, kind of methods of operation in the embassy bombings, might they return to some of those methods. It was that kind of thing.