An article in Tuesday's New York Times says the Bush administration was guilty of "significantly more negligence than has been disclosed" in their response to pre-9/11 warnings that Al Qaeda intended to attack the United States. That is the "inescapable conclusion," writes journalist Kurt Eichenwald, based on his research into recently declassified documents and excerpts of still-classified reports.
Bush administration officials have consistently claimed no one could have predicted anything like the 9/11 attacks. In testimony to the 9/11 Commission, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon ... into the World Trade Center, using planes as missiles." Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made similar denials, as did former Vice President Dick Cheney.
According to Eichenwald's piece, officials at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center were exasperated at the White House's suggestion that they were inflating threats. Neoconservatives in the Bush administration reportedly told them that Bin Laden had successfully led them away from the real threat: Saddam Hussein.
On Tuesday's Hardball, NBC News terrorism analyst Robert Cressey said much of Eichenwald's reporting was old news. "A lot of what he said is part of the 9/11 Commission narrative," he told host Chris Matthews. "There were opportunities, there were certainly clues, and the intelligence community was very active in talking about a potential threat."
Writes Eichenwald: "Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know." But what we do know, he says, is "shocking."
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All after the fact conclusions. How would Barack Obama have responded differently?
Bush/Cheney were overly-focused on Iraq to avenge Bush 41. They did in fact ignore the intelligence about who the real enemy was. When they had the chance to get Bin Laden having him cornered at Tora Bora, they did not have the troops or resources to do it because they WERE ALL IN IRAQ.
That's how Bush blew it (or maybe it was Cheney that blew it--they were interchangeable).
This is not a partisan thing. It's not about Democrat or Republican. It's about incompetence. They had continual reports, one stating in the title "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". Richard Clarke is as non partisan as you can get. He was first appointed by Reagan. HW Bush continued to use him as well as Bill Clinton and then finally GW Bush as their in house terrorist expert (I forget his exact title). Bush got so annoyed at his constant warnings of threats from Al Qeada that he removed him from cabinet level meetings. There's no need to bring this down to politics. As I said, it's just incompetence!
Well, Obama had bin Laden killed!! Our President listens to people! He doesn't dismiss intelligence reports from all over the world! He never gave up the search for bin Laden!! Obama didn't start a war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11!!!
if they did know, I hope the results got the administrations' friends what they wanted, because the blood of all of those people would be on their hands.
The Republican top dogs are controled by people who think they know everything and refuse to listen to anyone else. They know best about all aspects of life in this country and the world. Didn't Romney say Russia was our most dangerous geopolitical foe? Of cource He or is it the Neocons he listens to know what they are talking about. Let this be a lesswon to the American people. Do not trust these maniacs with the security of this country!
This woman need to go in hiding. She has degraded her self in more ways than one. Republican? Right!!
One more reason why Bush will go down in history as the worst president ever. The more the facts come out the more it will reinforce this fact!
Not much new here,we knew hat they knew ahead of time,why do you think Bush just sat there in a classroom for 7 minutes and they ordered down the military,no flying...Norad did not go in the air that morning.
not much more to say,they were losers of the first degree
No one dislikes George Bush more than I do but I will never blame Bush for 9-11 even if warnings were given. Warnings about terrorist attacks happen frequently. These attacks are very hard to predict. Afterwards, we can always say someone should have connected the dots but this is almost always much harder in the fog of war/fog of reality of the present than in the wisdom of hindsight. Judging intent is always difficult if not impossible to do. Someone can have a whole bunker full of guns and ammunition but if that person never threatens anyone with those guns they remain harmless. If the person standing in front of you with a sharp pencil or a sharp tool decides to stab your eye out and does not care if they go to jail that person is an extremely dangerous, even lethal threat. How do you measure intent? This question is the hardest one in the world to answer. You usually do not know until after your eye has been poked out, then you understand the intent after you have been made blind by the attack.
Your policy can not be to attack every person that might be angry with you, or could be angry at you who has a pencil or a sharp tool otherwise you would endlessly be in fights against innocent people. The best policy is don't make large numbers of people want to hate you so much. The United States has made many groups of people around the world hate us. People like our gadgets and widgets but they often despise our corporations that make the gadgets. Our greedy bossy corporations and our bossy time obsessed Yankee culture, often are only liked by people who make money from our corporations while being loathed by the rest country or group that are often cheated or exploited by U.S. companies around the world.
This global exploitation by our multinationals is not something Americans like to talk much about but it is depressingly true around the world. The more you understand how our corporations and multinationals alienate people around the globe, the more you begin to get insight into why things like 9-11 happen and why they are likely to happen again. I like Americans and America a whole lot but other peoples and culture don't feel the same way we do about ourselves. How our corporations have exploited people overseas is simply a matter of the historical record. We Americans are no worse than the British or French but we are certainly no better either in how our large corporations exploit other human beings around the globe. Read about Salvador Allende's assassination in 1972 Chile where Allende nationalized American corporate property and American corporations paid to get Allende killed with CIA help. The coup de tat that put the Shah of Iran in power in the 1950's is another less than wonderful CIA safari. There are many countless Caribbean and Central American military occupations of the early 1900's to 1930's or United Fruit's military bailouts in Nicaragua. Often times the dictators that we install in other countries are put their because American corporations love to use those dictators to bully the people of the country to get their way, protect corporate property, expand markets, or exploit resources or cheap labor. Read about the Mexican Revolution in 1910-1920 where American capitalists virtually owned the entire Mexican system of railroads, oil, farms, and other important industries like mining. The Philippines war of 1898-1900 is another nasty example of imperialism.
When you have done reading some of this history,then you realize that not only do we have an imperialist and corporatist past of gun boat diplomacy but we are still doing much of this stuff all over the world via the CIA. Arabs don't just dislike America because of our Israel policies they dislike American corporations cheating, exploiting, and swindling them at nearly every opportunity. Terrorist attacks don't just happen out of nowhere they happen for a rational reason even if most of us are not wise enough to see above our own parochial culture. This is the real lesson of 9-11 that remains largely unlearned by most Americans especially the conservatives and some liberal ones too.
We need to get off of foreign imported oil because if we do not we will simply be dragged into a perpetual cycle of killing, death, terrorism, warfare, and human suffering that is entirely avoidable. Germany has this all correct because the Germans build solar, wind, bullet trains, and have excellent commuter rail and buses networked all around the urban centers in Germany. We Americans would do wise to copy German policies right here at home otherwise more bombings, terrorism, and killings of Americans are just the inevitable cost of doing business with the Frankenstein monster of imported OPEC oil. I am not sure many SUV drivers with "We support our troops" bumper stickers really have any of these critically important concepts figured out yet, even eleven years on after 9-11. I am not sure most of them ever will figure this American oil dilemma out either.
Is MSNBC coming out of the closet and admitting that they are 9/11 conspiracy theorists!
Are the people at MSNBC admitting to being 9/11 Truthers?
.
Someone sent me this video on Youtube. It's called South Park or something:
.
Is it wrong for me to ask questions?
Is it wrong to seek the truth?
I just can't blindly accept their version.
I can't base my logic on proof.
Almost all the evidence points one way,
But I'm like Charlie Sheen and Gloria Estefan:
I need to know what really happened
On 9/11-leven-leven-leven-leven.
What really happened
On 9/11...
:)
Enough said...
The thought of Romney or Ryan having to make a decision on matters of National Security scares me to death...They are as the Bush & Chaney White House, they believe that war is a money maker...And they are correct it is a money maker for those in the top 1 %, but it is destructive force that the American working class can not stop. And takes a terrible tole on the lives of the soldiers.....The Romney & Ryan ticket is a war machine in the making....The war machine that will improve our economy between now and 2024...The draft will have to be reinstated....it did not go anywhere. it is still a law that can be activated on a 24 notice....And now women will also fall under the draft guidelines...What a way to lower the # of people on welfare and all those unemployed who can't find a job.....Romney has a plan and he will fix all that...Thousands of young people will have to die as they always have done through the centuries for the benefit of the rich and powerful who want to control and have power while they gain great wealth... Romney only has one plan....And he can't tell you what it is "NOW CAN HE??
Those pesty reporters Romney just wants to swat them like a mosquito. Just squish the life blood right out of them and the "Those People" as his wife calls the American citizens..
The release of classified records will make it very clear that Asama Ben Laden was part of a rebel movement which had its beginnings in the Russo-Arab conflict over Afghanistan. Initially when The United States replaced The Russians, the targets were shifted to the United States and Israel. Iraq was our ally and western vanguard against The Iran, who had refused the exploitation of their oil by great Brittain, our closest ally. Iran won the war against Iraq and Iraq invaded Kuwait. The United States protects Kuwait with the first Desert Storm War under George Herbert Bush. Saddam Hussein taunts the United States by installing floor mosaics in the presidential palace of George H. Bush., who is then figuratively stepped on daily by dozens of people. Though The United States had withdrawn from Iraq, the Bushiite Ultra Conservatives were already planning to invade Iraq at the first provocation. Plans were made to invade Iraq before 9-11-2001.
9-11-2012 was a problem for the Bush administration as the country of origin, which permitted the proliferation of terrorists, was Saudi Arabia, again our ally. The Taliban have been good personal friends of the Bush family. The white house had a round hole of provocation and a square peg of justification for a war in Iraq. The terrorist plots were ignored, purposely, by the President and his neo-conservative Romney advisers. In the Mean time Osama Ben Laden continues to operate out of Afghanistan and Al Quaida continues to grow.
We launch a war in Iraq at trillions in cost without justification. We lose thousands of Americans to a no-win war, which can only benefit the oil companies. In the mean time Bush allows Terrorism to grow here and abroad. We lose some of our civil liberties. Bush reduces taxes for the rich, causes the greatest deficit of modern times. The world economy begins to collapse, Bush saves the super rich on the backs of the rest of us.
President Obama is capable. He has resisted the war mongers that are now advising Romney. He has resisted Israel in plunging us into another war. He has aggressively pursued the terrorists where they actually are. He has regulated the super rich to some extent to prevent the robbery by them of the middle class and prevent another depression. As the Middle class continues to move forward, prosperity will be ours again. But we need to avoid the robber barons like Romney, and the war mongers who advise him.
Thanks to sheilanwp and Beowulf-Loboso. Both of you have excellent comments and to Beowulf,I like to be educated on everything and you gave me a great lesson. I am a Fan.
I also have became a Fan of Rex in Minnesota
To sum up the Bush era... We fought two compasssionate conservative wars, both over 6000 miles away from our shores and never included in the budget...where thousands of our own youngest and finest men and women died... and millions of Iraqi and Afghan citizens died needlessly...while we at home were fed lies and excuses for the actions of the Bush regime...so we elected them to another 4 year term which America and the whole world could not withstand...and now the republican mucky mucks want the easily led voters to give them back their play toy world so they can continue to kill and mame more humans.... and continue to bring the world down to its knees so they can rebuild it in the compassionate consertive image... WILL WE NEVER LEARN ?????