LIHOP suffers a blow?

[Trigood]

Yes but it's not about an imcompetent administration, is it? It's about an incompetent GOVERNMENT. That means the FAA were incompetent, the FBI were incompetent, the CIA were incompetent, NORAD were incompetent... get the idea?

Because the terrorists didn't "beat the administration". They Beat NORAD. They beat the FAA. They beat the FBI and CIA... and so forth.

What the terrorists "cashed in on" was your free liberal society with free uninhibited movement of people.

Remember, incompetence is not the same thing as "failure". Incompetence doesn't only imply that the government did not stop the attacks. It implies they are not qualified or capable of performing their intended tasks.

In the example of NORAD, you cannot claim NORAD acted incompetently, because it was never NORAD's intended task to intercept domestic aircraft flying over CONUS airspace.

In addition, a claim of "9/11 occured due to government incompetence" you are not only saying that the government is not qualified or capable of performing their intended tasks, you are ALSO saying this is the PRIMARY reason 9/11 occured.

This is of course false. The primary reason 9/11 occured is because a group of fanatical terrorists chose to carry it out. This is the ONLY thing which is actually REQUIRED in order for 9/11 to occur. It does not require an incompetent administration, nor an incompetent government.

Lastly, this new incompetent administration only came into power less than 8 months prior to 9/11, by which stage the hijackers were already in the USA training for their mission.

I'd be curious to see what it was that the administration immediately implemented that stopped intelligence agencies preventing the attacks in the following 8 months.

Or do people honestly think there's some sort of magical "incompetence" wave that ripples through every single government department the moment a new president is sworn into office?

-Gumboot

I think you're thinking about this backwards. The Bush administration didn't have to "immediately implement [policies] that stopped intelligence agencies [from] preventing the attacks." They just had to ignore the warnings, because the intelligence agencies were already set up to not communicate properly with one another. Remember the 'wall' between domestic (FBI) and international (CIA, DOD) intelligence that the 9/11 Commission talked about?

I agree that it wasn't Bush's (Bush, meaning the Bush/Cheney administration's) fault that that wall existed.

However, every president comes in with some problems extant. The test of his/her leadership is how he/she deals with that.

Bush clearly dropped the ball.

Imagine you're a CEO who's just taken over a company. About 6 months later, you go on what you consider a well-deserved vacation. While doing so, you receive a memo from one of your top deputies saying: "[Main Competitor] determined to launch hostile takeover of [your company]."

What would a competent CEO do with that information? Maybe he might finish out the week on his vacation, not to upset his wife/kids/grandkids, but basically, a competent leader would take the memo seriously, and within a week, call a major meeting of the stockholders and the Board of Trustees to discuss the situation.

What a competent CEO would not do is what Bush did.

Bush waited over 5 weeks. The first meeting to deal with this issue was held on Sept. 10th, I believe it was. Obviously, that was too late.

Now we also know about the Tenet meeting with Condi.

Major, major incompetence.

And I'm not saying Bush could've prevented it. I am saying, he didn't even try, and he might have prevented some of it. Or, possibly, all of it (if Atta had been arrested, they might have postponed it and then it might have further unraveled/been discovered). Wouldn't that have been nice.

 

[T.A.M.]

To a degree, I agree. But lets look at the situation prior to January 2001. Clinton did say Terrorism, specifically OBl was of major concern, and he passed this on to BUSH. That said, do we have evidence of "grand warnings"? Has Clinton come out and said..."look I told George W that an attack was coming, and what type of attack, but he ignored me?" I ask this because clearly, this attack, was planned from 1999 onward, so 1-2 years Clinton's people were the ones in charge of following this plan, or discovering it or what ever, yet there is no evidence that anyone in Clinton's admin told BUSH of a "plane" attack to come to the US in the near future, from what I can see.

Did Tenet tell Condi there was a planned attack using planes, on US soil, in the coming weeks or months?

I am far from a republican, and I actually like Clinton, but if you are gonna lay foreknowledge blame anywhere, it has got to be with his govt.

TAM

 

[gumboot]

To a degree, I agree. But lets look at the situation prior to January 2001. Clinton did say Terrorism, specifically OBl was of major concern, and he passed this on to BUSH. That said, do we have evidence of "grand warnings"? Has Clinton come out and said..."look I told George W that an attack was coming, and what type of attack, but he ignored me?" I ask this because clearly, this attack, was planned from 1999 onward, so 1-2 years Clinton's people were the ones in charge of following this plan, or discovering it or what ever, yet there is no evidence that anyone in Clinton's admin told BUSH of a "plane" attack to come to the US in the near future, from what I can see.

Did Tenet tell Condi there was a planned attack using planes, on US soil, in the coming weeks or months?

This is a good point. I've seen absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anyone in intelligence or the FBI had actual actionable and specific knowledge prior to 9/11.

"Osama Bin Laden determined to strike in USA" does not cut it. Warnings like this exist in the thousands. Nothing can be done about them.

The ONLY claim I have heard of specific intelligence was that Able Danger had identified Atta, and this claim was from ONE person. He claims a whole bunch of other people saw the picture too, yet for some odd reason NOT ONE of them can recall the image. Sadly this chart the guy had apparantly disintegrated when he tried to take it off the wall.

Colour me skeptical.

In this sort of instance, the minimum intelligence I can see being actionable would be: "Person X, Y, and Z are members of Al Qaeda. They are currently in the USA training for an attack"

Anything short of that isn't going to help.

As far as I am aware the CIA lost Atta when he entered the USA in early 2000.

In the UK MI6 would have transferred the information to MI5. The problem is, Americans love their freedom a lot, so their government doesn't have a domestic intelligence agency. So the CIA had no one to transfer their information to.

The FBI are a law enforcement agency, not an intelligence agency.

-Gumboot

 

[Trigood]

I disagree.

The 9/11 Commission clearly lays out recommendations that would repair the flaws in the system pre-9/11.

People in the FBI saw the training with airplanes, not caring about landing, etc. Clearly, this should've been communicated to the CIA. Clearly, it wasn't.

Clearly, the CIA should've been watching people like Atta etc. If they weren't, clearly they were incompetent.

If the various agencies had communicated properly and just connected a few dots, I believe 9/11 could probably have been prevented.

May I go so far as to say that, if Clinton had still been President, it might have been prevented.

TAM, I don't understand what more Clinton could have done. Remained President, even though his term was up? Sandy Berger fairly screamed at Condi that OBL and terrorism should be a MAJOR concern... but was ignored.

I'd say that "Bin Laden determined to strike in the US" would've set off a major round of hair-burning sessions in the Clinton admin, which actually cared about terrorism and listened to its Terrorism Tsar, Richard Clarke, who was actually unable to even get a meeting with the principals pre-9/11.

No, Bush didn't cause 9/11 or even "let it happen" (whateve that means -- especially meaningless is the phrase "let it happen on purpose" - huh?). But, he probably could've prevented it, if he'd cared about terrorism and not just about invading Iraq.

Ron Suskind's book about Sec. O'Neill was an eye-opener. At the first meeting in January 2001, the main topic was invading Iraq (huh???). This was not a man (Bush) concerned about terrorism, and especially he was unaware/unconcerned about attacks on our soil.

I consider him the luckiest man alive -- he hadn't a clue that what he needed was a homeland attack, and that one was imminent -- and then one fell into his lap. The Trifecta indeed.

 

[Trigood]

But maybe this discussion should be moved to the Politics forum?

I'm in a pissy mood anyway, having been hit with a killer charlie-horse today. If I'm sounding cranky, that's probably why.

Boy, I never thought I could love Republicans until this whole 9/11 'truth' thing happened. As bad as I think Bush is, policy-wise, he's a wise man compared to these 'troofers.'

 

[Alt+F4]

TAM, I don't understand what more Clinton could have done.

Well he could have done SOMETHING about the bombing of the USS Cole. Looking back on time leading up to 9/11 I can just imagine the terrorists laughing at us....obsessing about Clinton's Oval Office sexcapades, shark attacks, Elian Gonzalez.

 

[Trigood]

(ooops, I nominated you by mistake ALT+4; removed. I thought it was a cogent Clinton-hating post, but not worthy of nomination, sorry. )

Well he could have done SOMETHING about the bombing of the USS Cole. Looking back on time leading up to 9/11 I can just imagine the terrorists laughing at us....obsessing about Clinton's Oval Office sexcapades, shark attacks, Elian Gonzalez.

I agree. The President (whoever he might happen to be) should've done something about it, as soon as it was verified as an Al Qaeda action. Which didn't happen until after Bush took office, according to ... well, the Terrorism Csar, Richard Clarke (whose position was downgraded by Bush, by the way).

Gee you 'Clinton haters' put us 'Bush haters' to shame. As if noone ever before had an extramarital affair, even in the Oval Office! Of course not!

By the way, I used to be a Bush hater. Lately, I just feel for the guy. It's gotta be hard, seeing your Presidency go down the tubes at the end like this. And, I really see his value now, as well. He's done some good things. Do you Clinton haters ever acknowledge anything good about your pet hate?