So on August 6th, of 2001 there is an intelligence briefing by George Tenet and NSA Condi Rice entitled: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." And in that briefing there was the word, "hijacking". Now what "actionable" plan as you say WAS FREAKING NECESSARY from the departing administration in order to figure out how to avert a strike by Bin Laden in the U.S.? Can you guys ever get over the partisan bullcrap and just concentrate on what it takes to make our country more safe? No, I guess that would be far too emabarrassing for you because you would actually have to take a serious look at how Tenet, Mueller, Rice, and George Bush had dropped the ball, bigtime. Instead, we can just blame it on the "departing" Administration for not giving the Bush Administration an actionable plan. Give me a break. How absurd.
How naive of you to think that a brief that comes out merely a month before the attacks occurred could have been acted upon in time to actually prevent the attacks. And what would waggie have done as president at the time? A potential hijacking? Well, let's do background checks on evey single potential passenger. Better yet, let's ground all the flights, by golly. That'll show'em! If you bother to read the 9/11 Commission findings, there's agreement that very little could have been done to prevent the 9/11 attacks, even if the two or so suspects that were being followed were nabbed beforehand. You're sudden "non-partisanship" is laughable, wag, since most of your posts don't hesitate to Bush-bash at every opportunity. Why can't you praise the government now for responding to 9/11 by taking all necessary steps to prevent another attack on American soil, even to the extent of making people paranoid about civil liberties abuses. In fact, the 9/11 commission was doing a great job at taking an objective view at what allowed the attacks until Clark came in and ludicrously decided to lay all the blame on the Bush Administration.
Yeah, sending out a "watch-list" to all of the Airlines would have been highly impossible one month before 911. Putting armed air marshalls from the FBI onboard would have been impossible as well. Get real. There were things that could have been done, even in that short of a span of time, but they weren't. Tenet, Mueller, and Rice showed gross incompetence. The fact that Rice refuses to testify under oath and in public is a total shame. Yet, you continue to stick up for this Administration.
Let's take a look at your "obvious" steps that could've prevented 9/11 No, it wouldn't have been difficult, but it would've resulted in the detention of only two and at most three suspects out of the nineteen, none of whom were the pilots. The Commission believes that this would not have prevented 9/11 from happening. The real opportunity that was missed was in tracking these individuals locally in Jan of 2001 when they met people who could've led the FBI/CIA to the Hamburg Cell connection and to casting a broader net. So, with nothing more than the suspicion of a hijacking (which, by the way, was detemined more likely to take place on an international carrier coming to the US), and no specific date or location, and with over 20,000 domestic flights a day, the goverment could've immediately mobilized over 40,000 FBI marshalls, all within three weeks, to jump on those 20k flights every day until the threat dissolved. Do you honestly think that was realistic pre-9/11? I'll give you that one, wag. Although I agree that a bad precedent would be set if a sitting NSA publicly testifies, the fact that she went out on every single talk show sort of invalidates her claim of executive privilege. The 9/11 event was a specific result of systemic issues (cross-agency communication, surveillance laws, etc.) that weren't addressed until after the tragedy occurred. To heap blame on Bush for failing to prevent it is both unfair and unconstructive.
Simply allowing pilots and passengers to exercise their 2nd amendment rights would have done the job. Monitoring options trading on tenants of the WTC - which after all was a prime target and had been attacked once before - would have given clear warning of the attacks. Introducing a policy of destroying hijacked vehicles or planes that enter no-entry/no-fly zones surrounding high value targets would have prevented the disaster. It was not only the WTC that was hopelessly undefended, but pretty much every high value site in the US. The fact that the Pentagon was hit by a passenger jet - not some supersonic missile or projectile weapon, but a freaking hijacked 747 - should have resulted in dismissals by the bucketload. The intelligence services were not only incompetent, they were negligent. The US was made a laughing stock, caught asleep at the wheel despite clear warnings. If a two-bit terrorist can catch the world's superpower with its pants down like that, imagine the damage that a seriously powerful enemy like China could inflict. Even now, the country is incredibly vulnerable and unprepared to deal with a serious threat. It is not Bush's fault that 9/11 happened, but it is his fault for not firing and excoriating the top brass at the CIA and the Pentagon, and doing more to protect US security at home. The intelligence forces and military left the US incredibly vulnerable, and should pay for it with their careers, at the very least.
Are you aware of the situation surrounding John OâNeill? He was a Deputy Director of the FBI, and was the chief bin Laden hunter. He investigated the first Twin Towers bombing, he investigated the Khobar Towers bombing, he investigated the bombing of our embassies in Africa, and he investigated the bombing of the USS Cole. He was the guy in government who knew everything about bin Laden, and he quit the FBI in protest three weeks before 9/11. He quit because he said he was not being allowed to investigate terror connections to Saudi Arabia, because such investigations threatened the petroleum business we do with that nation. OâNeill quit, took a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center, and died doing his job on September 11. The fact that he was thwarted in his terrorism investigations clearly left a hole in our intelligence capabilities regarding these threats â the guy who knew the most about it was not allowed to pursue those connections to the greatest possible degree. So, not only do we have a CIA that dropped the ball and did not relay/share information and intelligence to the FBI, but we also had a senior FBI director that was blocked from conducting his investigation into bin Laden and the ties to Saudi Arabia.
Isn't Bush a worthless little twerp? A chickenhawk? A tin horn tough guy? The worst President this country has ever had to suffer under? And the jerk wasn't even elected...it was a fucking coup. m
Waggie, don't you realize these right-wing suckups get their information from the crazed idealogues on the AM radio dial. Come on, you're expecting way too much. m
So, rather than respond to compelling points that I bring up, you decide to ignore them and throw in another argument (e.g., John O'Neill), hoping that at some point something will stick. Well, since you have no answer to my previous post, I guess I'll just have to address yours. O'Neill was an honorable public servant, and both his resignation from the FBI and his death shortly thereafter were, in retrospect, huge losses for the country. However, no where can I find a credible source that corroborates your claim. The most comprehensive biographical information I can find on him is on www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/, which has interviews with a number of people who were close to O'Neill. The conclusion is that despite a record of successful investigations in the bureau, O'Neill's brash style turned off management, and he was gradually marginalized over the course of several years. Two particular "compromised security" incidents, involving the use of a company car in 1999 and a lost briefcase in 2000 led to reprimands and was believed by O'Neill to have doomed his chances of being promoted (his application for promotion was denied three times from 1999-2000). His close colleagues also speak of how his penchant for the nightlife led him to build up significant debts, which an FBI salary couldn't easily cover. With little hope for upward mobility, O'Neill reluctantly considered an opening as head of security at the World Trade Center. He took the higher paying private sector job and, after 20-30 years in the FBI, submitted his letter of resignation. So, wag, why don't you answer my previous posts? And please don't post another random unsubstantiated claim. I'm getting tired wasting my posts just to disprove your outrageous "facts".