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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.
The fundamental problem is that the current White house administration is not remotely curious or interested in looking beyond their narrowly defined agendas. So, any deviation from what they expect is by definition, unexpected or inconvenient. This is a recurring theme again and again with hurricane Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bin Laden, the economy, energy prices, the whole torture thing and recently with senator Foley, where higher ups *knew* what was going on but they either failed to act or simply did not care as long as they can maintain power. Power for powers sake seems to be the theme here as this administration is always behind the ball. They are constantly reacting to events rather than through analysis and action being proactive and it is costing the country financially and in lives lost as well as our international reputation.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Uh, WTF does this have to do with "News for Nerds"?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Green Party-voting liberal, but I don't see how this is even remotely in line with the supposed purpose of this site. I mean, do we really need another ten thousand Bush-bashing posts?
--saint
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!"
That's an urban legend.
In other words, instead of putting a massive number of troops on the ground to flush out and kill or (even better, capture) Osama Bin Laden, let's divert all those troops to overthrowing the regime of a bad guy who also happens to be Arab, whose government had maybe one or two meetings with Bin Laden but was widely considered (as a secular Ba'athist regime) to be effectively "infidel" by Bin Laden and his associates, and whose presence, while certainly very bad for his own people and a very minor threat to the US (slightly more serious than the threat of Syria, let's say, but far less serious a threat than al Qaeda, Iran, Korea, and China, just to name the four threats the current administration has allowed to grow over the past 6 years), was more importantly a serious threat to Iran and Syria, and thereby give Bin Laden's associates a rallying cry, something they can use as evidence of a "crusade" against Islam by the US and Israel ('cause let's face it, Bin Laden and his bunch probably blamed Israel for the earthquake in Pakistan), and then use all that as an excuse to revert to practices for which we long criticized, hey, that very same bad guy whose regime we overthrew!
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.
"The title of the briefing is "Bin Ladin Deteremined to Strike in US."
I don't really know now. Maybe the spell check choked on it? What is more likely is that Bush saw the word "strike", mumbled something about the funny name of the new AFL-CIO chief, and passed the report onto the Secretary of Labor.
Where were you when the voynix came?
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
This just in: Bin Laden is going to attack Americans. Big Deal. He already _had_ attacked Americans.
For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.
Interesting, Bill Clinton said last Sunday night or whenever it was that He "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy." I guess that turned out to be a lie if Rice was being pressured to set one herself.
There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming.
Sound to me something like, "we don't _really_ have any proof, but I have a hunch."
This is non-news. Why are the only political stories on Slashdot left-wing propaganda?
It seems like all the members of the left want to blame buch for 9/11 and all the members of the right insist that Clinton could have stopped it. It seems to me that there is no way that some high ranking government official (republican or democrat) could have prevented 9/11 by reading some broad document titled "Bin Laden determined to attack Americans". I'm sure they see a million documents about terrorist organizations that dont like the US. I mean what were they supposed to do? Use their spider sense when they saw the document to say "aha! that must mean they are going to fly planes into the twin towers on september 11th!"
Trying to pin this on Bush or Clinton is just silly. The only people who deserve to be blamed for 9/11 are the members of Al-Qaida.
If she were a male American of Japanese ancestry, she would have been fired on the spot.
Look carefully at the background of Rice. She is smart and has earned a Ph.D. in international relations, but she has no experience. How many people become the national security advisor without experience?
Of course, Rice is not the only problem. On the day after the infamous Clinton interview on Fox News, Charlie Rose (of PBS) interviewed Richard Clarke. He noted, "When David Kay told the current administration that, based on his survey on the ground, there were and are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no one in the administration even batted an eye. According to Kay, Bush asked, 'What do you need from me?' Kay answered, 'I need patience to allow me to finish my work.' Bush answered, 'I have all the patience in the world.' Then, the conversation fell silent. Kay thought that someone would ask questions about his work, but no one asked any questions. Kay felt that he had never met any people who were more uninterested in the events in Iraq. According to Kay, no one in the administration lost more than 10 minutes of sleep over the war in Iraq."
Does anyone feel as though your life is being controlled by government officials who do not give a damn about you?
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.
Then you're either paranoid or a child.
"Plots" from whom?
Since you "don't know 'what we're worried about'", you don't know if it the "enemy" is a group of fundamentalist Muslims
Grow UP and realize that the people who founded this country PUBLICLY signed the Declaration of Independence knowing that it would be used to execute them if they lost.
You cannot live Free if you sell your Freedoms for "protection" from the "bad men" hurting you.
I was going to use my mod points to mod you up but I decided to add a comment instead.
Although I have my own feelings about Bush's administration, I have to say that your description about their "policies" is nothing new. Recently I read "Overthrow - America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" which lists 14 countries where the USA was instrumental in ousting the legitimately elected government over the last 120 years. What I got from reading this book was not so much that the "OMG the USA is EVIL!!!!" but that sucessive goverments over that span of time all made pretty well the same arguments for doing something, but had no regards for the consequences. The book ended with Iraq, and you could just feel the approaching train wreck eerily predicted by every other previous forced regime change.
Bush & Co's screw ups may be bad, but the USA's continual making of the same mistakes is in my opinion far worse. And I think this goes all the way back to the 19th Century and the Monroe doctrine and the idea of manifest destiny.
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Exactly.
Besides (possibly) killing (and definitely) martyring UBL, how would that have stopped the 9/11 attack? It probably would have made the hijackers even more determined to perform the attacks. And then administration critics would have blamed Bush for 9/11.
Note this paragraph from TFA:
Given the attitude of most people pre-9/11, I don't think that there was the popular will to do what would have been needed to stop the attacks.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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.
Simply posting this information on Slashdot offers comfort to terrorists.
Whenever I turn on the news, I always hear questions. I hear pointless speculation from anchors with no more credibility than anyone who is "able" to speak with enunciation and wear makeup, and worse, they are speaking about things that no one on earth can possibly know. Whether it's a school shooting, or a political scandal, or a celebrity arrest, the talking heads guess and guess about what the truth could be.
What happens? People make a decision based on their own biases, and then when the truth is actually known, it is written off or embraced on assumptions based on speculation based on nothing much at all.
Now, did the Bush Administration lie? Of course they did - just like all the administrations before it. Now, what did they lie about, and how important were the lies to the security and well-being of the American people? That is something we need to come to terms with as a country, but let's not speculate about it. We simply don't know. Conservatives should lay down their bias towards innocence, and liberals should lay down their bias towards guilt.
The only thing that concerns me is that the Bush Administration seems unwilling to submit to a full and thorough investigation, and no one, especially elected officials, are above criticism or criminal investigation. If the White House is unwilling to open all of their records, including all classiffied documents, to a special commission, many will simply assume guilt because they will not submit themselves to the same rules everyone else must follow.
Similarly, if America continues to display it's arrogance by flatly ignoring international law, I'm afraid we may reap what we sow when we are no longer the dominant superpower. We had moral credibility after WWII. We lost some in Vietnam, and in Grenada, then in the Iran Contra Affair, and more when we supported Hussein while he was gassing Kurds. So when the chips are down, and we are truly afraid, do we torture? Do we kill 20 civilians to kill one suspected terrorist? Do we withhold legal rights that were once so central to our belief that every man - suspected terrorist or not - is created equal, and has the right to be innocent until proven guilty?
I don't know. I can only speculate.
This is a dumb post.
e dge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
/
First of all, Bin ladin (Al qaeda) had already attacked the USA several times by then. That he was going to continue attacks was obvious. That many attacks had already occurred during the Clinton administration is obvious.
I advise you to consult Wikipedia on this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Quaeda#Activities
Attacks listed by year: (might be missing some)
1992
1993*, 1993
1995, 1995
1996 (Khobar)
1998,1998
1999
2000
*dubious, may or may not be al-qaeda
These facts aren't really so relevant as is the fact that Clinton had many chances to get Bin Ladin and he failed to capitalize on them. http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowl
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/
Both Presidents are at fault. Both presidents failed when they had good chances of snagging him, clinton on numerous occasions, and bush with Tora Bora. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek
On Friday (September 29), Charlie Rose interviewed three people: Bob Wright (Chairman & CEO, NBC Universal), Michael Isikoff, and David Corn (dual authors of _Hubris:_The_Inside_Story_of_Spin_,_Scandal,_and_t he_Selling_of_the_Iraq_War_). Isikoff and Corn made some insightful comments about the Iraq War.
According to the current administration, Iraq is related to 9/11. Both these interviews would justify anyone's cynicism about the politicians running our nation: the United States of America.
If anyone knows where to find the transcripts for both interviews, please share your information with the SlashDot audience.
What happened is this - those federal agencies have always been fighting with each other for influence, budgets, etc, including trying to get a favored ear in whatever current Presidental cabinet there was.
So, when they found good evidence of an upcoming attack, they said to themselves "let's sell this sucker so we can gain a little more prestige than the other agency".
The agencies have the reputation for doing this and a history of it, so whenever a cabinet memebr would read the reports, they also are applying their own filters to it saying "well, looks like FBI wants another budget allotment this year" instead of saying "well, looks like Bin Laden wants to blow stuff up this year."
This problem was not created by Clinton, Bush etc, but by the hidebound bureaucracies in place for so long. Clinton or Bush made the wrong decisions, but because of the culture in place they were unable to take off the blinders and act seriously. Maybe the middle managers and actual caseworkers realized that something very bad was going to happen very soon, but a many-tiered structure of a CIA or FBI prevents such stuff from being a priority.
That is something the 9-11 commission was very clear on that needed improvement and had little to do with Bush and Co. DOn't get me wrong, Bush was the worst possible guy for the job and the situation, and has consistently made the wrong decision that has driven up terrorist recruitment and turned nations against us, but at the same time, the Intel had far less weight b/c it came from the same knuckleheads who've been fighting each other for decades for more influence and cash.
And the fact that he created an EXTRA agency to collate the others is the single exact wrong thing to do. Why not reform the existing, broken agencies? Why the hell would you make ANOTHER one to screw things up - and remember why Katrina was so bad and FEMA failed? The dept of Homeland Security wasn't ready for primetime...
Who needs a conspiracy when good old fashioned incompetence is the Occam's Razor answer?
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.
Well, the 9/11 commission was busy hearing that the CIA director told the President of the United States that " Bin Ladin [was] Determined To Strike in US" in the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001.
So, in a way, this is not a piece of breaking news; it's just corroboration of existing knowledge: that there was high level intelliegence about Bin Laden as a domestic threat in the months and years before 9/11, with little specific action in response, save for what was then described as "wag the dog" attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan targets by President Clinton.
It's over now. That, or it's go time. One of the two. acts of gord
I'm sorry but to me, a blowjob will never, ever compare to the value of thousands of American lives, or 100s of thousands of foreign lives. If "slick" implies good at pulling the wool over people's eyes, I think Bush has succeeded Clinton in every way imaginable.
This is a website about technology, not politics (except when directly relevant to technology, of course).
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap. Yes, Bush missed signs. Yes, Clinton missed signs. So did damned near everyone else. Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however. Their is even a technical term for this psychological error many people make - hindsight bias. It is human nature to think "I woulda seen it coming if I were in your shoes" - when in fact, when tested, you would fail as often as anyone else.
As reluctant as I am to defend this loathesome administration, you need to get your facts straight.
Condi Rice served as National Security Council staff director for Soviet and East European affairs in Bush 41's administration. By all accounts she did a very good job--as judged by her superiors Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor, and the first President Bush. I think it's safe to say that a number of significant events in Soviet and East European affairs took place at this point in history, which I'll leave as an exercise for you to research. Do you think that maybe Rice had a hand in crafting the US response to those events, given her position?
Yes, Rice is black and female. So. What. Neither fact speaks to her qualifications to be National Security Advisor. Or is that a position that can only be held by a white male?
I think your racism and sexism is showing. (And no, your "male American of Japanese ancestry" comment does not insulate you.)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. It tries to show how the US (and others) reign in sovereign countries via economic power rather than brute force through use of things like the world bank. Chilling subject, but I think that Overthrow is better written and makes for a better read.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
First, watch the testimony where Candi-ass Rice says "I believe the title was Bin Laden determined to attack within the US." Watch her demeanor. It's the demeanor of a petulant child. It's as if she's saying, "duh, of course we knew this was coming, how dare you ask me such a thing." It's like a student late to class in junior high and when asked for a reason just answers "Cause I was sucking dick for money. Schmuck."
The 9/11 Commission possibilites are pretty much these
1)They were covering up
2)They were denied information
3)They lost heart when they realized they would be ignored.
As the consumers of the data it's difficult to know what happened during that investigation and the only reason it matters is that there might be MORE evidence to bring against Bush in an impeachment or war crimes trial.
Fact is, when Bush stole into office he took over from Clinton who, in the last days of his administration, did LOTS of work trying to establish peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. He ran out of time and Bush, instead of picking up the thread, instituted a "hands off the middle east" policy (insert ironic laughter here).
And the final fact of the matter is that once we were embroiled in war in Iraq the people of this country STILL relected Bush by a narrow margin. That election SHOULD have been so clearly against Bush that no amount of vote stealing should have put him in office, and the corrupt results should have triggered a revolution against the corrupt decision. Instead we end up with elections so close that they are easy to steal with small amounts of fraud.
Why was the election so close? This is what we must ask. WTF is wrong with half the electorate that they think it's ok to kill for oil? Or get distracted by gay marriage? Why are the priorities of the American public so fucked up?
There will be more 9/11s, no doubt. Mainly because the U.S. has made no effort to understand our enemy very much disappointing the ghost of Sun Tzu.
For years we did everything we could to understand communism so we could undermine it and defeat it. It wasn't just the US that destroyed communism, but it was also an unworkable system (apologies to adherents of Saint Reagan).
We were not attacked because of "who we are". That is bat-shit stupid. We were attacked because of things like unquestionable support for Israel in EVERYTHING they do including the bad stuff, cozying up with dictators when it's convenient for our interests, and so on.
When you say things like "they hate us because of who we are" then obviously the only solution is to start bombing people, and it's even MORE non sensical when the place we are bombing has nothing to do with terrorism, such as pre war Iraq. This has already been proven by a bipartisan commission. If you plan on following up on this post I trust you'll keep that proven and non controversial fact in mind. Of course it's also non controversial that we just spent over 300 billion so far to now CREATE a terrorist petri dish out of Iraq.
Nope,...we understand nothing about the enemy and we understand even less about radical and fundamental Islam. This is why there will be more 9/11s to come. If you want to understand how little we really know, just look at the futility of bringing "democracy" to Iraq. You just can't invade and impose democracy. Assuming that we managed to kill three thousand Iraqis (an absurdly low figure by any estimate), and assuming that each of these three thousand have 3 other family members then you now have 9,000 who are thinking "Hmmm maybe bin Laden is right". 9,000 more recruits for jihad.
Fundamental Islam = Fundamental Christianity in terms of disgusting behavior. If you want to play the immature game of name calling then I suggest that you start referring to this administration as ChristianFascist.
While you're at it, start using "Stay and Die" when you say "Cut and Run".
I expect the neocon mod down in 3..2..1...
running in very high priority on the Washington Post, right up there on page 17 of the print edition
I think their decision is defensible. While the article is newsworthy, it is very unsurprising in the light of all of the related news stories that have already been given front-page treatment.
We already know that Rice and Bush reviewed a Presidential Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside US" in early August, but were reluctant to mention this at the 9/11 Commission hearings. We already know that Richard Clarke says that the administration was unengaged despite repeated warnings on the threat. We already know that when a CIA operative tried to impress upon senior administration officials the severity of the threat, Bush responded with, "There, you've covered your ass," and dismissed him. At this point, reporting that Tenet was trying to warn the Bush Administration about the threat in July is interesting, but is hardly a revelation.
What I find much more curious is that the article was printed without a byline, and that there was an apologetic Editor's Note explaining why they felt they were justified in printing the story.
I for one will not support Bin Laden Intel even if the administration chooses to ignore them and their processors for evil. The incidious plot must be stopped. Buy AMD and help fight terrorism.
Okay, so maybe the parent is a troll, posting AC and all, but in case you're not, my AC friend, I'd just like to make a request:
In the future, please make an argument against the issue or the facts presented, not simply against the supposed motivations of the presenter of the information. Because even if you're right, and this article is coming straight from DNC headquarters, that has no bearing on whether it's true or not, or whether the criticisms leveled in the article are valid.
kthx!
The terrorists were already in place by then attacking us for Bill Clinton's policies during his term.
8 FB-4A1C-B21F-2
0 010920-8.html
Bin Laden claims he got his first revelation in 1982, because of US support for Israeli involvement in Lebanon:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-9
Please remind me, but I think it was the conservative hero Reagan running the show at that time. Bin Laden is also a bit upset about the first Iraqi war (which is kind of ironic considering he volunteered to help defend Saudi Arabia from Iraq in the same way he considers himself to have expelled the Soviets from Afghanistan), and none too happy about Israel.
You can say Clinton was ineffective at eliminating the terrorist threat, either by the Bush-style double strategy of war abroad and removing civil liberty at home, or by other means. But to say that the 9/11 terrorists attacked because of Clinton's policies is very, very close to being completely wrong.
At least you don't agree with Bush, who claims the attacks were because they hate our freedom:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/2
Do spam filters work for printed documents?
Sure they do! It's called a secretary with an extra large paper shredder. Remember, kids, the Buck Stops Here applies only if the document reaches the final destination. That's why so many government officials can truly say they don't recall seeing the "smoking gun" document since it never came across their desk.
That's why so many government officials can truly say they don't recall seeing the "smoking gun" document since it never came across their desk.
It's just a lie. Don't rationalize the lies.
That's why they can just blame it a few levels lower. I didn't know they were torturing...
Well, yes I did try to get the torture bill passed, but I didn't think we'd actually USE it.
http://use.perl.org
Post anything remotely conservative, and be modded into troll oblivion.
Poor conservatives. If only you had the House.. Or the Senate.. Or the Judiciary... Or the Presidency...
Poor little conservatives, always beaten down by the brutal media.
*sniffle*
http://use.perl.org
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...
Which would seem crazy if they hadn't come up with the idea themselves and publicized it.
The document concludes:
Taken from:
"Rebuilding Americas Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, 2000
Paul Wolfowitz
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense 2001-2005
Life is too short to proofread.
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
Then, the conversation fell silent. Kay thought that someone would ask questions about his work, but no one asked any questions.
Questions? Kind of like what you just stated that Clark said that Kay said had just happened... shown below? (Is that hear say?)
According to Kay, Bush asked, 'What do you need from me?' Kay answered, 'I need patience to allow me to finish my work.' Bush answered, 'I have all the patience in the world.'
Subordinate asks for time to do work..... and gets it. Wow.
Clark saying that Kay reported there were no WMDs in Iraq also leaves out a few facts, as you can see in Dr. Kay's testimoney before Congress in 2003. It is well worth reading. Just a sample:
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I was glad for the good information you provided on Condi Rice's background refuting the grandparent post, but the above comment is disgusting mudslinging. If you really think that accusing the administration of appointing an underqualified black female National Security Advisor in a cynical bid to improve their image in those demographics is in itself racist or sexist, then you've failed to understand what racism or sexism really are. More likely you've picked up the habit from those that routinely use those words as epithets to discourage honest discourse.
Support NRA, America's oldest civil rights group.
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...
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It wouldn't have mattered if they saw it or not. It didn't say anything about what happened on 9/11.
At best, it says bin laden from 2 or more years ago wanted to strike the US inside it's borders, Some of his operatives are US citizens and have traveled in or though the US, there are 70 investigation going on by the FBI suggesting more information would become availible and they were monitoring it, It gives a few misleading potential targets, referes to a foiled attempted attack on LAX by the candian government, and suggest if a plane was hijacked, it would be to hold hostages for the release of two operatives and not to use as a missle and destroy several buildings.
Smoking gun? Only if you read into it what you know today. But if you objectivly look at it from what was known then, how would you read it? How would you have know that event on 9/11 was going to happen and how could you have stoped it. Remeber, don't answer with anything known after 9/11 to be honest. But if you ask the Question "did you get a report claiming 9/11 was going to happen 2 months before 9/11?" you could probably reply with hoestly and say "no". I'm not saying that more wasn't known but if what we know that was known is true, it didn't offer much of anything on the predictability of 9/11.
Now as this is related to the July 10th 2001 meeting between Tenet and Rice concerning a June 30th 2001 report that was a consolidation of "bits and pieces" of inteligence sent to the NSA for verification and analisis, that the article, though Tenet's own admisions, claims he and the document didn't say much of anything specific other then it is likley Al Qeada and Bin Ladin are up to something and he had a gut feeling it was going to be big and soon. Then Augast 6th 2001 the refernced document "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," was submited to the presidential daily briefing.
What this shows to me is, that people were doing something about our security, they were analizing the facts and informing the people needing to make the decisions, but we didn't know how to act as Tenet would have liked on the information because it didn't tell us what was going to happen.
And the article did state a plan take out bin laden and Al Qeada leaders was in the works but stalled on technicle details and would take some time to work out. Curriously, I'm wondering why they couldn't use one of Clintons left over plans that should have already had the details worked out. I doubt just taking bin ladin and Al Qeada leaders out would have stoped or disrupted 9/11 though. The plan was too long in the making and too close to execution. I think this might be a political astro-turffing article designed to gain favor for republicans and motivate them to the polls this election cycle. It shows how dificult it was to determin what Al Qeada were upto and it shows that the government was actualy doing something, just not enough because the information wasn't there. I'm sure democrates will try to use the slant on this to make republicans look bad but repulican voters tend to look at all the information and see the entire picture so it is sure to infuriate them enough to show up.
Even though I agree with your sentiment, your comment is neither here nor there.
- Your "reply" wasn't really a reply at all, but got modded 100% Insightful
I have the sneaking feeling that all this somehow reinforces the AC's point.[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This isn't directed directly at the parent poster but feel free to respond because,
It wasn't bad inteligence. Clinton lied and janitors died!
Seriously, why is it bad inteligence when clinton acts on bad inteligence, it is reasonable. But Bush gets bad inteligence he's a lier and "he lied and people died" all hell is breaking loose?
There are planty of people that give clinton a pass just because he is thier guy.
Yup, that eeevil librul media. If you compare the media's treatment of Clinton over the Whitewater witch hunt or his getting a blowjob and lying to Congress about it, versus Bush and Enron, Katrina, the Iraq war fiasco, foreign relations in the crapper, the 2000 and 2004 election scandals, no WMDs in Iraq, Valerie Plame, no Iraq-9/11 connection, lowering taxes in the middle of *TWO* ground wars, just to name a few, you can't but help to notice Bush's scandals receive a lot less intense coverage and is much less critical. But then a a neocon isn't satisfied with the treatment of current events unless the media Gannons it.
These are the Sudanese officials that Bush protects from intervention in their government's ongoing genocide. The Sudanese officials making oil development plans with Cheney while he was running Halliburton in the 1990s. The Sudanese officials who built that "pharma factory" - pharmaceuticals are made from petro materials. The same Sudanese officials who Clinton fired missiles into. The Sudanese officials who were harboring Bin Laden that whole time.
Sudan's claims against Clinton are about as credible as Ahmed Chalabi, the Iranian spy who Bush trusted to design our Iraq invasion.
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make install -not war
We can argue all day about who's to fault for 911 but honestly there is so much blame to go around, CIA, FBI, Clinton, Bush, etc. There is no one person or event that directly caused 911. The best thing is move forward and put in place security measures that will prevent another 911 (which is not being done btw).
Second Iraq has the potential to be so much worse than 911. The causalities already outnumber 911, but the damage done to America's world image has been catastrophic. After 911 we had the majority of the world with us, as well as the American public. We really had an opportunity to put in place a new foreign policy coupled with domestic initiatives that could have transformed American politics for the better. Yet all this energy was misplaced towards Iraq. Who's responsible for that?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
To do what? Would the attack be against
Would the type of attack be
Would it be in
The intelligence was fuzzy and vague beyond usability.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Poor conservatives. If only you had the House.. Or the Senate.. Or the Judiciary... Or the Presidency...
If you didn't censor conservatives all the time you might pick up on what voters are actually interested in.
But then you might have the House, the Senate, &c...
So keep on censoring us. You're only driving your own ideology to irrelevancy.
If Right Wingers are censored, A) why do they have an all out media outlet(Fox News)? B) Why are they always in the media? Turn on any Sunday morning talk show, and there will be a sizeable rightwing presence.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Unfortunately, the United States Secretary of Defense does not have the luxury of saying 'no' when the Director of the CIA is telling you some kind of attack is imminent, despite your 'beliefs' to the contrary. To ignore that is total incompetence, pure and simple.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Maybe if those poor conservatives had actually, y'know, posted a cogent argument instead of whining how liberal /. is, the comment would be a +5? Not to mention the point that if you have all 3 of the branches of government, who the fuck cares about how conservative /. may or may not be? Really, if it's too touchy-feely for you here, go to the Stormfront forums.
And one more thing: One of the main reasons conservatives get so much shit, especially here, is because they're using the same damn whiny arguments they've been using for decades. Unfortunately, times do change, and the cognitive dissonance is just ridiculous.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Bush's mistake is still going and has taken thousands of American lives with no end in sight, countless numbers of Iraqi lives, and billions of dollars. What's the current cost, 1-2 billion a day? Is it really worth it? Didn't less people die in the unfortunate 9/11 incidents than have did in Iraq so far? Is this an appropriate response? Are we actually "winning" any war on terrorism by military destabilization, rather than education and assisting these people? I'd like to think that 300-400 billion dollars in aid every year could produce one hell of a better civilization for a 3rd world nation, rather than killing people and blowing things up, but that's just me.
When you're going to bomb a building, you should make sure you have the right intel. I'm not %100 sure but I think the building was bombed when there weren't many people inside (or a minimal amount) so the casualties weren't large. It's an appropriate response to a bad intel, which until the thing was actually bombed enough people thought it was a legitimate threat. (and honestly, there's no proof it wasn't making chemicals that could produce nerve agents, and there was still a very good chance it was supply the bin Laden group with money, which makes it a decent target anyway if you're actually fighting a "war on terror")
When you invade a country, depose their leader, destabilize the entire region, torture citizens and attempt to convert an entire nation to your form of government and social expectations in a small amount of time, I think you need to be absolutely sure of what you're doing and absolutely have your facts straight. It's a much larger idea. If Bush had decided to bomb all of the sites in Iraq that may or may not have had "WMD's", and just left things alone, I believe that the entire world would have supported his decision, even if a few of them were inaccurate. (they can probably dig up enough circumstantial evidence to attempt to prove that there was something sinister going on at a few sites, but perhaps not all). Instead, Bush went the extra mile of righteousness, and invaded the entire country under a very weak pretext. I don't care how Republican or Democrat you are, this should be a Very Bad Thing. Especially now that we know there was very little to no threat from Iraq in the near future.
This should not be about any ignorant partisan politics. People are currently dying, there's no end in sight, and people want to turn things into a "blowjobs vs. bombs" debate.
What a wonderful country. I've never felt more ashamed to be American.
Foxnews compared to NPR CNN MSNBC CBS
So if you were Condi, what would your have done differently? And on what information would you have acted that might of saved us from 9/11? I think the monday morning armchair quarter backing has places the bar between competent and incompetence a little too unrealisticy high. I may be missing something though. It apears the biggest gripe is that she didn't apear the the CIA directer, to acting like it was the most important thing of the minute and praise the messenger for delivering the news.
At that late date they probably couldn't have done anything. However, if the Bush administration had spent any effort developing foreign policy, including anti-terrorism policy, they wouldn't just be finding out about the possiblity so late in the year. This is just another point showing that it wasn't lack of intelligence, but lack of focus, that made it easier for terrorists to attack the US.
Does that mean everyone else supports letting terrorists go free after capture, open prisons with conjugal visits, and no interest whatsoever in a suspected terrorist cell making a call to a city in Pakistan?
:)
While I join you in denouncing some of the shady goings-on, there are non-brutal and effective means of interrogation (depends on your def. of "torture"), there is a legitimacy to not telling everyone in the world where we are holding some of the top-ranking al Qaida operatives, and if done properly there is due process in surveillance (FISA) and this information could lead to the apprehension of cells waiting inside the US or abroad for another operation.
So I guess what I'm saying is that you are begging the question there.
I don't mean this as a troll or a snark, but i am honestly puzzled at how one could approve of Democratic tactics or corruption less than the Republicans? I really don't think that anyone could disagree that the Rove/Abramoff/DeLay triangle is really the most systematically unfair, corrupt, and underhanded political machine to exist in the past 25 years. Rove has been responsible for push polling (even against Republicans), phone bank DDoSing, money laundering, and swift-boating; Abramoff for more wide-spread graft (golf-outings to scotland, parties at his now-defunct resturant, cash gifts, scamming Native American tribes) than i think anyone can possibly account for; and DeLay for abusing House proceedural control so badly that he was single-handedly holding back legislation that had a MAJORITY of all representatives in the House as SPONSORS, not to mention the K-Street Project.
Honestly, i'm not trying to bait, i'd love a sincere and measured response, what could the Democrats could have done that was or could be worse?
I'm not claiming the Democrats aren't corrupt. Politics in America are corrupt. The nature of American politics will not change until there is serious reform regarding how candidates recieve money. But the depth, breadth, and malevolence of neo-conservative corruption has been dumbfounding to me. They've abused the campaign finance system (see Jack Abramoff and Tom Noe of Ohio, who stole millions of dollars from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation, and contributed much of it to Bush's relection campaign), they've abused the wheels of government (see Tom DeLay), and the news media (Swift-boat, push-polls, news media leaks). I don't know of any similar systematic mechanism employed by anybody else.
p.s. i can dig up links to the stuff i've mentioned for the genuinely curious.
There are lives at stake here!
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.
Funny how at the time, republicans were accusing Clinton of exploiting the situation to detract attention away from Monicagate.
He didn't have the ability to strike Osama Bin Laden because it would damn him and his party in the eyes of the American people, and his party would have ensured that he be not only impeached, but removed from office.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
"So if you were Condi, what would your have done differently?"
Got them teeth sorted... seriously, if you can't even defend your country against your face, how can you defend against terrorist threats?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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.
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make install -not war
Do you think that maybe Rice had a hand in crafting the US response to those events, given her position?
You're talking about Bush the Smarter's administration, yes? The one that completely missed all warning signs of the impending fall of the Soviet Union? The one that labelled Mikhail Gorbechev as "the man with no new ideas"? The one that insisted that the Soviet Union was an overwhelming conventional threat that justified huge increases in military spending right up until the very day it imploded?
Must have been impressive advice she was giving.
Exactly. There you go.
Why, exactly, would Clinton lie? What possible gain would he have there? If people want to attribute something to malice instead of incompetance, they're going to have to explain, exactly, what the malice was. Clinton doesn't like aspirin or something?(1)
No, that was incompetance, and, incidentally, it's the exact same incompetance that happens in any war, like the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy, or the bombing last year of Aaytha, Iraq. Sometimes bad intelligence about targets happens, and innocent people die and innocent buildings get destroyed.
Meanwhile, we know the Bush Administration delibrately manipulated the American people into a war with repeated and persistent instances of lying by stating things they knew weren't true, or had already been disproven. In addition to, whenever there were two opposing opinions, choosing the one that would support their views instead of the one the intelligence community believed, which isn't strictly speaking 'lying', but it isn't a way to gather intelligence.
And we know why he did that, because we know he wanted a war with Iraq as soon as he got into office.
That's simply not comparable to mistakenly bombing a building, which, incidentally, the military has done a lot more under Bush, although that's simply because they've bombed a lot more things.
And, yeah, while the 'it was really an aspirin factory' meme has gotten out there, we're almost certain it was operated for al-Qaeda, funnelling money and medicine to them, and we don't actually know it wasn't producing precurser chemicals for WMDs. By Bush standards, that would be enough to raze it to the ground, imprison all workers without a trial, and torture the people operating it, so I have no idea what people are bitching about.
1) The gag here, at the time, people said it was 'wag the dog'...pretending to be in a war to distract from a scandal. But, hehe, can't actually use that one at the same time as 'Monica distracted Clinton from al Qaeda'. Saying he was fighting terrorism to 'distract' from a sex scandal doesn't actually work politically.(2)
2) And the last thing Republicans want to do now is mention the words 'sex scandal'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
Remember that the elder Bush's war with Iraq, 1991's "Operation Desert Storm," was also founded on a lie.
- Nurse Nayirah
Remember kids, 'plausible deniability' is so much easier if you never read anything.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain