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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.
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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!"
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
> Does anyone feel as though your life is being controlled by government officials who do not give a damn about you?
Don't worry; you'll matter when you become a billionaire.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
If she were a male American of Japanese ancestry, she would have been fired on the spot.
That would make her a transvestite. I'm sure they want to secure the transvestite vote too.
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.
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.)
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.
President Bush asserted that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken as part of "a global war against terror" that the United States is waging. In reality, as anticipated, the invasion increased the threat of terror, perhaps significantly.
... that required patently untrue public statements and egregious manipulation of intelligence." The Downing Street memo, published on May 1 in The Sunday Times of London, along with other newly available confidential documents, have deepened the record of deceit.
Half-truths, misinformation and hidden agendas have characterised official pronouncements about US war motives in Iraq from the very beginning. The recent revelations about the rush to war in Iraq stand out all the more starkly amid the chaos that ravages the country and threatens the region and indeed the world.
In 2002 the US and United Kingdom proclaimed the right to invade Iraq because it was developing weapons of mass destruction. That was the "single question," as stressed constantly by Bush, Prime Minister Blair and associates. It was also the sole basis on which Bush received congressional authorisation to resort to force.
The answer to the "single question" was given shortly after the invasion, and reluctantly conceded: The WMD didn't exist. Scarcely missing a beat, the government and media doctrinal system concocted new pretexts and justifications for going to war.
"Americans do not like to think of themselves as aggressors, but raw aggression is what took place in Iraq," national security and intelligence analyst John Prados concluded after his careful, extensive review of the documentary record in his 2004 book "Hoodwinked."
Prados describes the Bush "scheme to convince America and the world that war with Iraq was necessary and urgent" as "a case study in government dishonesty
The memo came from a meeting of Blair's war cabinet on July 23, 2002, in which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, made the now-notorious assertion that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of going to war in Iraq.
The memo also quotes British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime."
British journalist Michael Smith, who broke the story of the memo, has elaborated on its context and contents in subsequent articles. The "spikes of activity" apparently included a coalition air campaign meant to provoke Iraq into some act that could be portrayed as what the memo calls a "casus belli."
Warplanes began bombing in southern Iraq in May 2002 -- 10 tons that month, according to British government figures. A special "spike" started in late August (for a September total of 54.6 tons).
"In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq," Smith wrote.
The bombing was presented as defensive action to protect coalition planes in the no-fly zone. Iraq protested to the United Nations but didn't fall into the trap of retaliating. For US-UK planners, invading Iraq was a far higher priority than the "war on terror." That much is revealed by the reports of their own intelligence agencies. On the eve of the allied invasion, a classified report by the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's center for strategic thinking, "predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict," Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger reported in The New York Times last September. In December 2004, Jehl reported a few weeks later, the NIC warned that "Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalised' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself." T
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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*
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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
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.
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.
Every administration, before they lose control of the executive branch, meets with the incoming administration. They also give the newcomers detailed information on their current policies and plans. The incoming administration usually tosses these in the trash and create their own policies. They can't create them all overnight, so they create them in priority. The Bush administration was not interested at all in "foreign entanglements" and, thus, everything to do with foreign policy took a back seat to domestic policies.
So, you see, both of those statements can, and are likely to be, correct.
This is real news, but not surprising news. The Bush administration had not interest in anything besides tax cuts and other domestic policies when they took office. They ignored foreign affairs, to the entire world's detriment.
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
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.
Yes, but why are Right Wingers given fair time on NPR(talk of the nation features many prominent conservatives, plus Wait wait features PJ O'Rouke, then again, that's not so damning), CNN(Bob "loose lips" Novak still regularly shows up), MSNBC(Ex home of Michael Savage, current home of Tucker Carlson) and CBS(John Stossel hasn't been given the conservative boot)? The only remotely left wing thing in that list is MSNBC, and that's just because they have Keith Olbermann, who's not a leftwinger either, but he's been really tough on Bush.
Listen to Air America Radio. Read "The Nation." Maybe THEN you'll have an idea what left wing bias looks like.
Then again... In the famous words of Stephen Colbert... "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
"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