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Administration Ignored Bin Laden Intel
gettin-bored noted a nice article running in very high priority on the Washington Post, right up there on page 17 of the print edition, where it's revealed that the CIA Director warned Rice about Bin Laden two months before 9/11. And strangely, the meeting was never mentioned during all the 9/11 commission reports making you really question what exactly they were actually hearing that was more important than the CIA director telling the National Security Advisor that Bin Laden was going to attack Americans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A586 15-2004Jul17.html
6 15-2004Jul17.html
Kinda makes Hillary a hypocrite based on what she said here, now doesn't it? - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58
Those looking to pin this ONLY on this current administration are showing they are simply interested in partisan politics. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Do spam filters work for printed documents? I think this is a good place to post a link to the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing on the state of security for the United States. This particular PDB had some pretty stunning statements that President Bush seemed to have firmly ignored.
The title of the briefing is "Bin Ladin Deteremined to Strike in US." What did Bush do after being read this briefing? He continued his month long vacation.
Most of the principals were in the country by the time Bush came to office, killing Bin Laden wouldn't have done much. Even now, Al Qaeda is not some monolith organization, and it is academically lazy to think of it as one. Bin Laden's capture would certainly have a demoralizing effect, but it would not cripple the organization, nor would killing him in early 2001 have done so. Hell, we really need to get Al-Zawahri, but have been failing at that.
9/11 CANNOT be blamed on one individual. True, Clinton did not do as much as he should have during his term, but Bush obviously didn't see the flaws being all that major as he didn't do anything about them in the first 9 months. Also recall that anything Clinton did in the Middle East(most hypocritically was bomb Iraq) was labeled as "Wag the Dog" by Republicans. Meanwhile, when they do similar things they are being "tough on terrorism".
The intelligence failures showed systemic flaws in the US intelligence gathering organization, flaws that go back decades(hell, Bush Sr. was head of the CIA for a few months). As George Tenet said, 9/11 was a "failure of imagination" on the part of the intelligence community. And so far in my opinion Bush has done almost nothing to fix those flaws. Well, he has allowed Army translators who are in short supply to be fired because they are gay, I guess there is always that. Also see the court cases of dismissed FBI agents who claimed they were ignored when they warned about attacks. The system is broken, and Clinton blaming Bush and Bush blaming Clinton surprisingly won't fix it. Killing Bin Laden won't fix it. Iraq certainly won't fix it. Nor will using homeland security money to pay off political backers and punish adversaries(Because we all know Indiana has the most potential terrorist targets). What needs to be done cannot be boiled down to a soundbite, but I do know that past administrations, this administration and in all likelihood future administrations don't have the will or desire to really fix it, but instead like to apply popular band-aids and use ad-hominem attacks on their critics.
Monstar L
Condi Rice's best friend was in charge of the 9/11 commission. From what I have read he forbade certain lines of inquiry. This is why so many family members of 9/11 victims are so critical of the commission's report.
> This just in: Bin Laden is going to attack Americans. Big Deal. He already _had_ attacked Americans. [...] This is non-news.
The news is that everyone "forgot" to mention it to the Commission.
> Why are the only political stories on Slashdot left-wing propaganda?
What is left-wing or propagandistic about this? Is it "left-wing propaganda" to point out the flaws and dishonesty in the way this country is run? If another party was calling the shots, would it be right-wing propaganda to point out the flaws in their behavior?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Keith Olbermann has an incredibly poignant video response on this issue. This is probably what motivated some conservative nutjob to send him a letter full of soap powder. Sometimes I wonder about people.
Yes, Rice is black and female. So. What. Neither fact speaks to her qualifications to be National Security Advisor.
They don't, but tokenism makes people suspicious of multi-minority high-profile characters: If they got rid of her, their politically-correct minimum requirement of women and racial minorites could drop below acceptable levels.
For instance, Condi's name came up a lot during the whole "George Bush doesn't care about black people" hilarity.
That makes people think this is a big part of her job: Being conspicuously black, and female.
Politics is a show, after all.
You can't take the sky from me...
Edited? What edits? Any edits were made were not substantive, and the producers specifically stated that all edits were minor. It was aired intact as a big fat Clinton-bash, a $30 million RNC contribution just over a month before the election.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Slashdot cares because IF everything gets too hairy and the dollar collapses, a nuclear bomb will be detonated near important US communications infrastructure - and while US casualites will be minimized, like in 9/11 controlled detonation, no one will have the foggiest idea what to do except our president and the neocons, who will assume a 'real' carte blanche for any troop/fbi deployment becuase no one will give a shit about privacy, iran, iraq or anywhere else. I also suppose I'll meet many more of you in person when we all get arrested. We're only two generations away from the millions of deaths of WW2 - you think governments are better than this Kool-Aid?
Just for a moment, let's play a game of ``What if?''
What if the conspiracy nutjobs are right, and 9/11 was, in some way, a deliberate action by the Bush administration in exactly the same way that Hitler was behind the burning of the Reichstag? (Godwin, I know--so sue me.) After all, the conspiracy theorists have some compelling points--the collapse of WTC #7, that none of the released footage of the Pentagon attack shows what actually hit the building, the striking dissimilarity of the appearance between the two impacts on the WTC and the impact on the Pentagon, the complete and utter lack of response by NORAD or the Pentagon's own on-site defense systems....
What scares the shit out me is that this article is perfectly consistent with the theory that the Bush administration knew just what bin Laden was up to, and chose to ignore it: the CIA (whom Bush, Jr., has always publicly kept at arm's length or further) told the administration, repeatedly and emphatically...and the administration most pointedly ignored everything the CIA had to say.
Of course, this could also be after-the-fact CYA by the CIA...but, then again, WTC 7 could have been the first skyscraper in history to collapse for no good reason whatsoever, and there could have been a massive and completely hushed-up malfunction in the anti-aircraft defensive systems in the most heavily protected building on the planet, and there could have been....
Honestly, I'm about as anti-conspiracy as one can get. There's just so damn much about 9/11 that's so glaring, so obvious, so uncomplicated, that I'm left with two conclusions: massive unprecedented incompetence by a team headed by some of the most competent political operatives in America (Cheney, Rove, etc.)...or a conspiracy. A conspiracy that would perfectly fit with the actions of an administration with decided totalitarian fascist tendencies, such as one that would strip civil liberties in the name of protecting the homeland, which would endorse and actually use torture and commit other atrocities, which supports big business at every opportunity over all else domestically, which would invade sovereign nations on trumped-up pretenses, which is accompanied by unprecedented corporate corruption, which wears its Christianity on its sleeve....
Whether for good reason or not, frankly, I'm scared shitless.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Well, Clinton acted on bad intelligence that the plant was supplying WMDs to Bin Laden. He sent some cruise missiles to destroy the plant. That seems reasonable, certainly in comparison to invading a foreign country based on intelligence of the same sort...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Non sequitor. It's entirely possible (indeed seems likely) that Clinton's people left a strategy (which may or may not have been comprehensive or effective), which Bush's people never adopted. If I leave you a cookbook and you never open it, it can be true both that I left you my fablous peanut butter/chocolate pie recipe, and that someone is pressuring you to come up with a dessert recipe.
What, are you saying that reality has a liberal bias?
Over the past few decades, the right wing has consistently aligned itself with ignorance: creationism, junk science, bad international intelligence. Take the religious right, stir in neocon ambitions for an American empire, sprinkle in corporate greed, and watch as any respect for truth rapidly evaporates from the mix.
The /. readership is more educated than the average American, and so places a higher value on acurate information and critical thinking. In contempory America, this puts them at odds with the leaders of the Republican party.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
> So what should have been mentioned to the commission, that some guy had no concrete evidence but had a gut feeling? The fact that this is non-news but is still getting reported makes it propaganda.
It was the Commission's job to find out what happened and what intelligence failures let it happen. Neglecting to inform them about this is no different than Clinton neglecting to mention that he got a blowjob when asked about his relationship with Lewinsky.
And stems from exactly the same motivation.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If Blair, Chirac, Putin, etc. were staying on a cruise ship but suddenly Bush had to stay at a military installation instead of joining them to avoid the possibility of Bin Laden crashing airplanes into the conference (hence the anti-aircraft missiles at the airport)... shouldn't that make an impression on Dear Leader? Someone in the administration took the threat seriously at Genoa in July: That is a fact. Had I been shifted to military accommodations, I would have known there was a threat - anyone would.
Then seeing a briefing titled "Bin Ladin Deteremined to Strike in US" a few weeks later elicited no response from Bush, even knowing that Bin Laden had struck the US at least twice on the past (USS Cole and the basement of the WTC).
To me, he looks like a coward who went on a very long vacation away from Washington, DC in order to avoid getting whacked.
I've read that book and I wish it were true, but I wasn't convinced. Perkins makes extraordinary claims but doesn't support those claims with extraordinary evidence, or even ordinary evidence. The book is light on references and Perkins has this attitude of "trust me, I can't give you evidence but you know what I say is true". That attitude makes me distrustful.
Then to cast further doubt on the reliability of Perkins, another of his published books discusses his experiences of "shape shifting" into various animals. He is also an advocate of South American shaman medicine to reach transcedence - read into that what you will - and there is some hint (perhaps unsubstantiated) that Perkins believes the US government was involved in the assassination of JFK, Martin Luther King and John Lennon.
On the balance, I'm not willing to believe Perkins version of history based solely on his book.
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
TrollMods call citing the 9/11 Commission report to debunk Sudanese liars in defense of a 2-term US president "Flamebait"?
They're not just Republicans, these TrollMods. They're the goddamn Qaeda. As if there were a difference.
--
make install -not war
Why do Clinton fans always try to reduce it to 'a blow job?' What Clinton did was lie while under oath in a case where he was identified as the serial sexual harassment predator he is. I thought after 'Clarence Thomas' that Sexual Harassment was a serious issue for the Democrats. The fact that Clinton was soliciting blow jobs from a young White House intern (a few years older than his daughter) is symtomatic, but not a central issue in the case I think you can safely say that sexual harrassment is a bipartisan issue, while the war on Iraq is not. I'm willing to bet that Monica came on to him, wrong or not. That's how well liked he was, unlike this President. I'm also willing to bet that the Republican Congressman who solicited a teenage boy for cyber sex was the aggressor. Additionally, Clinton lied under oath while in a trial for a completely unrelated event, the Flowers sexual harrassment claim (that never got very far did it?). Anyway, prosecutors tried to squeeze the (willing) Monica Lewinsky dirt out of the President, which had no relevance as it happened after the events he was under oath about, in order to embarrass him politically. Not seeing the relevance, he denied it. Wrong from a moral standpoint, but I'm not sure of the illegality of it as it was not related to his case in any way other than to stir up trouble for him. Republicans certainly have no moral high ground so nothing to worry about here. He was an excellent president, the fact that you didn't like him or considered him immoral is irrelevant, his approval ratings dwarfed that of Bush, and will continue to do so. However, why are we talking about clinton in 2006. Can you guys come up with one defense of President Turd Bush without bringing up Clinton? Didn't your mother ever tell you "Two wrongs don't make a right?", you were raised with morals.. I presume. Regardless, its hard to convince people that Bush can do whatever he wants with thousands of lives, because of a sexual misdeed by Clinton. Not going to work with this critical thinker, sorry.
..was to make sure that, no matter what the circumstances, there would be fighter jets available and put in the air to avoid any such incident.
I know that average Joe Doe may never have thought about planes flying into buildings, but apart from some 'crazy conspiracy nuts' who e.g. watched the first episode of the Lone Gunmen or those architects actually responsible for designing the WTC even the government officials must have been aware of scenarios in which hijacked planes would be flown into civilian buildings or nuclear plants.
In fact during the cold war certain government officials were even far more creative in finding ways to start a war based on false or fabricated evidence. A plan had been put forth to the government detailing how to create support for a war by laying false evidence (e.g. hijackings of civilian airplanes and attacking civilians by military aircraft). Those plans, due to Kennedy's refusal, have never been put into action, but they show what certain members of government (in this case up to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) were willing to do; imagine what might have happened if the president had instead been GW Bush back then..
The government is (or should be) concerned about and has the means to evaluate any potential thread against its citizens and act accordingly so that the citizens don't have to. Instead this administration has let four airplanes slip through that killed thousands of civilians and afterwards starts a campaign aided by the media to scare its citizens shitless as to what could happen next? (tm)
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
What foreign policy or anti-terrorism policy could have changed anything other then having more and acurate inteligence? We had all the policies the Clinton administration set up going until a change in policy was made. But that would mean they did have the policy then. Despite everyones best efforts to claim otherwise, No-one knew 9/11 was goign to happen, It wasn't because someone in either administration failed to do something, yet we keep seeing these slogans trying to claim otherwise.
Quit reciting one liners from talk shows and answer the question with something sustantial. It apears "if the moon was made of cheese and france gave us wine, we could feed the astronauts in space" type of replies that have an unrealistic claim by somethign sounding like it could have happened If certain unknown or false facts turned out to be true. The fact is, There wasn't any inteligence saying 9/11 was going to happen. There wasn't anyone making that claim at all, if anything, they were suggesting the targets to be something else with a different means. Nothing policy wise could have changed that without pieces of critical information that we didn't have.
These people planned this back when Clinton was in office. Is it just as prudent to make the same claim about his people and his administration? If only he had spent a better effort on foreign policy, including anti-terrorism policy they wouldn't be finding terrorist wanting to kill americans. Of If he took national security seriously, he would have known about it because it was planned and organized on his watch? Or maybe he took it so serious, he knew about it but refuses to tell anyone else? My god, We are trying to hold someone acountable because the sun came up one morning and hour later then it did 6 months ago. We are acting like because you ran a redlight or was speeding, your parrents didn't do a good job raising you (they need to take the blame)and the police chief didnt' do a good enough job policing you, they both should be held acountable.
So, i ask what could have been done differently. And this time, please don't answer with a "if you flip that switch over there on the wall, a light in this room or the next room may turn on or off or nothgin might happen" type comment cause the only thing we know for sure is that you might flip the switch. Not to say that it might be expected for a light to turn on or off but we are doing it backwards. We are suggesting that if we do something a specific even might happen while knowing what the event we want to happen is but not the detail of what something being done is. It's like Kerry and his plan of 2004 wich was just an outline of what the US already has done and wasn't working without any details. Then it was sugested that we needed to elect him to get the details of this brillient plan that would work so much better then current policy but it never has been shown to the public becuase it is a trade secrete or something. That or else he doesn't think the current administration or the military, risking thier lives, deserves knowing what could be done so radicly different that it would turn everything around because the people didn't elect him as president. Nahh, a politician would take somethign this serious and act like a school kid who is trying to entice another kid to do something by suggesting a reward for actions but then denying it when those actions don't come thru.