merphie said:
Blinders? Where's your links? You have only given opinion as far as I can see.
And yet, I see nothing from you but a stubborn unwillingness to do your homework. Just like the president. The bottom line is that you offer no refuation at all. Just a bunch of hot air.
merphie said:
Maybe you should read the Rice testimony before the 9/11 commission. The PDB didn't contain any new information. We already knew that Bin Laden wanted to strike us. There was no information in the PDB that would lead to the conclusion that an attack was imminent (IE 9/11).
...
Do you have proof that Bush never held meetings?
Okay, let's have a look at the
9-11 Report, beginning on page 260:
The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature. President Bush said the article told him that al Qaeda was dangerous, which he said he had known since he had become President.The President said Bin Ladin had ong been talking about his desire to attack America. He recalled some operational data on the FBI, and remembered thinking it was heartening that 70 investigations were under way.As best he could recollect,Rice had mentioned that the Yemenis’ surveillance of a federal building in New York had been looked into in May and June, but there was no actionable intelligence. He did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so. He said that if his advisers had told him there was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it. That never happened.
...
No CSG or other NSC meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this report.
...
We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. (emphasis mine)
Inexcusible. Simply inexcusible. Defend that, if you can.
By contrast, what did President Clinton do when given a terror alert?
Here's what he did, according to Al Gore:
In his famous phrase, George Tenet wrote, the system was blinking red. It was in this context that the President [Bush] himself was presented with a CIA report with the headline, more alarming and more pointed than any I saw in eight years I saw of daily CIA briefings: “bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.â€
The only warnings of this nature that remotely resembled the one given to George Bush was about the so-called Millenium threats predicted for the end of the year 1999 and less-specific warnings about the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. In both cases these warnings in the President’s Daily Briefing were followed, immediately, the same day – by the beginning of urgent daily meetings in the [Clinton] White House of all of the agencies and offices involved in preparing our nation to prevent the threatened attack.
By contrast, when President Bush received his fateful and historic warning of 9/11, he did not convene the National Security Council, did not bring together the FBI and CIA and other agencies with responsibility to protect the nation, and apparently did not even ask followup questions about the warning. The bi-partisan 9/11 commission summarized what happened in its unanimous report: “We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 th between the President and his advisors about the possibility of a threat of al Qaeda attack in the United States.†The commissioners went on to report that in spite of all the warnings to different parts of the administration, the nation’s “domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law authorities were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts. The public was not warned.†(emphasis mine)
Clinton "shook the trees." He got people moving. He made sure those who needed to be alerted were alerted. He didn't just sit back and wait for the bad guys to do something, then throw up his hands and whine that he couldn't have prevented it.
merphie said:
You have no proof that Bush could have stopped the attacks.
That remark is disgraceful, but it summarizes the Bush attitude perfectly: "We couldn't have stopped the attacks, so we were justified in doing
NOTHING." Why bother trying? That seems to have been Ashcroft's attitude. Once again, from Gore's speech:
Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his failure to take any action in advance of 9/11 to prepare the nation for attack. After all, hindsight always casts a harsh light on mistakes that were not nearly as visible at the time they were made. And we all know that. But with the benefit of all the new studies that have been made public it is no longer clear that the administration deserves this act of political grace by the American people.
For example, we now know, from the 9/11 Commission that the chief law enforcement office appointed by President Bush to be in charge of counter-terrorism, John Ashcroft, was repeatedly asked to pay attention to the many warning signs being picked up by the FBI. Former FBI acting director Thomas J. Pickard, the man in charge of presenting Ashcroft with the warnings, testified under oath that Aschroft angrily told him “he did not want to hear this information anymore.†That is an affirmative action by the administration that is very different than simple negligence. That is an extremely serious error in judgment that constitutes a reckless disregard for the safety of the American people. It is worth remembering that among the reports the FBI was receiving, that Ashcroft ordered them not to show him, was an expression of alarm in one field office that the nation should immediately check on the possibility that Osama bin Laden was having people trained in commercial flight schools around the U.S. And another, from a separate field office, that a potential terrorist was learning to fly commercial airliners and made it clear he had no interest in learning how to land. It was in this period of recklessly willful ignorance on the part of the Attorney General that the CIA was also picking up unprecedented warnings that an attack on the United States by al Qaeda was imminent. (emphasis mine)
Remember, Bush and Cheney say that they will defend the country. The fact is, however, that the Bush administration disregarded repeated warnings and did nothing, and only paid attention after 3000 citizens were murdered.
merphie said:
So if the generals didn't plan well then it's not their fault? Where is your proof of anything else? Some of what they needed Kerry voted against in the 87 Billion dollar package.
Once again, you don't do your homework. You obviously just parrot what someone else said. Here's a suggestion: do a news search pertaining to recommendations by General Shinseki and see what you come up with. Show me one shred of proof that the utter failure by our commander-in-chief was really Kerry's fault. If you can. Put up or shut up.
I don't expect to change your mind, but you might want to have some self-respect and educate yourself before you blow a bunch of hot air that has no basis in fact or sound policy.
