It is becoming increasingly obvious that Democrats are playing up the 9/11 investigation as a purely political game–which is to say not to find a better way of developing useful intelligence, but almost completely as a club with which to bash Bush.
This is illustrated by the fact that they allude to the amorphous idea that ‘steps should have been taken’ without giving much clue about what steps should have been taken. (This is also often paired with the ‘more investigation should have been undertaken’. More than the 70 underway already?) See for example Kevin Drum (the normally quite understated Democrat) or Mark A.R. Kleiman .
Kevin’s, “Granted, it still doesn’t say airplanes, box cutters, World Trade Center, and 9/11, but it does seem like the kind of thing that ought to have grabbed President Bush’s attention, doesn’t it?” is cute but unhelpful. Mark seems to have wanted a pre-attack Presidential address about vague threats and generalized terrorists.
I can easily picture the words of the liberal commentariat in August 2001: “Bush’s speech incoherent on ‘terror’.” “Bush trys to whip up a scare-fest.” “How stupid does Bush think we are?” “Bush tries to distract attention from failed domestic agenda by scaring little old ladies with the spectre of terrorism at home.”
Democrats! You are the people who were (are) freaking out about the Homeland Security Act AFTER 9/11 which so far as I can tell has significantly impacted precisely one US citizen, namely Mr. Padilla. And whatever you want to say about the justice of his current position, he was involved in plotting a dirty nuclear attack against a US city.
What steps should Bush have taken before 9/11? Agressively investigated mosques? Many of you resist that now. Rounded up illegal aliens with a special focus on Muslims? You still don’t like that idea. Should he have invaded Afghanistan before 9-11 and toppled the Taliban? Perhaps, but I suspect that Easterbrook has correctly defined the reaction to a pre-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan. In fact I suspect his impeachment scenario is underplaying things a bit.
What you really want is a fantasy world where there was some magic investigation that would have easily revealed the plot and thwarted it. Hell, I wish that were true too. But it isn’t. And pretending that it is won’t help anything.
In fact it is distracting from any actual steps we could make to improve intelligence so that it could be more effective at interfering with such attacks while we go about the business of taking the war to our enemies.
Your post is cute but unhelpful.
For example, “This is illustrated by the fact …” is neither illustrated nor a fact. Liberals have been saying that Bush should have responded to the increased chatter with increased vigilance, shaking the tree, paying attention to Clarke, getting the Pricipals involved, actually doing followups.
By the way, this whole “Liberals would have kicked and screamed if liberties had been abridged” argument is, besides being beside the point, just lame. It was lame when used to justify or even explain Clintonian inaction in Rwanda. The president isn’t in office to get reelected. The president is in office to do what’s best for the country and to try to get the people to agree with his vision. Back then I thought Bush would probably turn out to be a historically bad president, but the admin had won some respect from me for handling the China crisis well. They would have had some latitude. Of course having chosen a very partisan Atty Gen didn’t help, nor did failing to bring a prominent Dem into the cabinet, as expected by many after the controversial election. But arresting the hijackers would have been worth any amount of political sniping just from a _political_ standpoint. Just trying harder to follow up on the memo (and Tenet’s warnings, and …) would have been smart from many standpoints.
By the way, I’ve seen it alleged that “70” was a self-serving estimate.
And whatever you want to say about the justice of his current position, he was involved in plotting a dirty nuclear attack against a US city.
Was he? Cite your evidence for thinking so, Sebastian. Jose Padilla has certainly been accused of plotting a dirty nuclear attack against a US city: but if accusation were identical to guilt, look at everything George W. Bush has been accused of: do you really want to argue that if someone accuses A of B, that means A must be guilty of B?
What steps should Bush have taken before 9/11?
I’ve outlined in other threads what I feel would have been an appropriate response to the threats of hijacking and terrorist attack: an increased level of readiness, plans for fast evacuation from possible targets, and so on.
rilkefan: The president isn’t in office to get reelected. The president is in office to do what’s best for the country and to try to get the people to agree with his vision.
Agreed.
And whatever you want to say about the justice of his current position, he was involved in plotting a dirty nuclear attack against a US city.
Was he? Cite your evidence for thinking so, Sebastian. Jose Padilla has certainly been accused of plotting a dirty nuclear attack against a US city: but if accusation were identical to guilt, look at everything George W. Bush has been accused of: do you really want to argue that if someone accuses A of B, that means A must be guilty of B?
What steps should Bush have taken before 9/11?
I’ve outlined in other threads what I feel would have been an appropriate response to the threats of hijacking and terrorist attack: an increased level of readiness, plans for fast evacuation from possible targets, and so on.
rilkefan: The president isn’t in office to get reelected. The president is in office to do what’s best for the country and to try to get the people to agree with his vision.
Agreed.
“What steps should Bush have taken before 9/11? Agressively investigated mosques? Many of you resist that now. Rounded up illegal aliens with a special focus on Muslims? You still don’t like that idea. Should he have invaded Afghanistan before 9-11 and toppled the Taliban?”
Indeed doing all those things would have pissed off alot of ppl, since they would have been of dubious use in preventing the attacks that actually did occur.
Far better would be to tighten airport security, and what passengers could take onto the plane. These steps are not hugely inconveniant for the traveller, they are not hugely expense, and do not put a focus on a minority group.
The above applies assuming that they had a good idea that the attack would involve airplanes. For any other type of attack, fixing the interdepartmental problems with the intelligence services, and focusing them more on the problem of international terrorism.
Factory you mean something like this:
….a “significant” increase in the number of bomb-sniffing dog teams, a mandatory full baggage match between passengers and their luggage and better screening of passengers through computerized profiles.
Airport security personnel would be trained to determine how great a security risk a passenger might be, and investigate accordingly.
You are aware that
The American Civil Liberties Union said it would fight any efforts to subject passengers to a higher level of screening based on their race or religion.
“Passengers not legitimately under suspicion should not have to fear that their private effects and private lives will be held up to public scrutiny,” said ACLU Legislative Counsel Gregory Nojeim. “Safety and privacy will not be assured if people are targeted for searches based on incorrect criteria instead of evidence.”
and notwithstanding
“These actions are tough, they are do-able, and we’re going to get them in place quickly and effectively,”
And why weren’t these provisions implemented when the government first learned of the threat, the evidence is that the airline industry indefinitely delayed their implementation by making soft money donations to the DNC.
What we want is someone who will at least own up to his part in all this. Someone who can, as Clarke did, admit he failed the nation. Someone who rather than point at the FBI or point at the CIA or point at Clinton would, just for a moment, point at himself.
If I had received the PDB on August 6th, I’d be beating myself up for having not done more to prevent 9/11. It might not be fair to myself, but I’d be doing it, and there’s be no way I could hide the fact that I was doing it. I’d own the entire failure and do everything in my power to set it right…but that’s me.
Eddie, Clarke has been found to a self serving opportunist of the first degree, having been found out, we slithers back into the protected environs of ABC News.
More importantly Eddie, what exactly would you have done. Would you have:
Broken the law by bringing the CIA and FBI together to fully discuss the situation?
Further broken the law by tearing down the Chinese Wall between the two organizations?
Would you have hired John O’Neil as a counterpart to Rice?
Would you have implemented the profile programing (not based on race or religion)that the ACLU opposed.
So exactly what would you have done?
Edward, more importantly, what would you do today.
Would you allow data mining?
Would you allow a terrorist risk market (insurance derivatives)?
You are aware that:
Going beyond link analysis from known suspects, TIA inventors hoped to spot suspicious patterns in data even before they could identify any particular suspect. For example, on 9/11, the airline-passenger profiling system flagged as suspicious nine of the 19 hijackers as they attempted to board, including all five terrorists holding seats on American Airlines 77, which flew into the Pentagon; three of the hijackers on American Flight 11; and one hijacker on United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Security procedures at the time prohibited airport personnel from interviewing flagged passengers or hand-searching their carry-on luggage—a mad capitulation to the civil liberties and Arab lobbies.
Edward there is still a war going on regarding the use of technology in fighting the war on terror.
The privocrats only grudgingly acknowledge that terrorism exists, and they never concede that a gain in the public good may justify a concession in “privacy.” Their operating principle can only be formulated as: no use of computer data or technology anywhere at any time for national defense, if there’s the slightest possibility that a rogue use of that technology will offend someone’s sense of privacy. Consequently, they are pushing intelligence agencies back to a pre-9/11 mentality, when the mere potential for a privacy or civil liberties controversy trumped security concerns.
Here is an article What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us which gives a nice summary of the issue.
Now where do you stand?
gotta run into a meeting Timmy…will address this later.
I think this analysis is essentially correct, Sebastian. And I probably would have been arguing the wrong side of it.
Look, let’s be honest (no! stop!): Everyone made mistakes pre-9/11. That includes Clinton, Bush, the CIA, the FBI, and, to a certain extent you and I. I still believe that the 9/11 Commission is generally bipartisan* — I believe this because I believe in Governor Kean and Lee Hamilton. But it’s clear that some on the left are trying to twist the Commission into an attack dog fixated on teh Bush Administration. It’s up to us who identify with the left (as I do, to an extent) to stop them.
von
*Note, not “nonpartisan”. This is, in fact, important.
Von, with regards to my 9:47 post, where do you stand.
Yawn.
These are hardly hard-and-fast rules — there are millions of people on either side, so you can always find lots of counter-examples — but I remember who, as a group, was worrying about the Taliban and “suitcase bombs, not ICBMs” before 9/11, and it wasn’t your team.
I figure you have no idea where my team stood on the overall issue.
Pretty easy to determine where one stands now, as to where one stood at 9-10.
So Carpe where do you stand now, on the questions I raised?
This should be interesting, given Carpe’s normal rant.
I feel like I’m posting the same comment on every site I visit today. Conservatives are all up in arms over the fact that Bush’ hand-picked Commission is finding something less-than-perfect about the President pre-911.
Some Demoracts are using 9/11 for partisan purposes, just as some Republicans are. BFD. Maybe some Dems honestly think Bush screwed up before 9/11 and some Repubs honestly think Bush did everything he should have done.
We still need the Commission to analyze what went wrong.
“We still need the Commission to analyze what went wrong.”
And that would be a great Commission to have.
The fact is that terrorism was not going to become the highest priority on any major politicians list without a US attack. Furthermore it is dubious to assume that having terrorism as the real highest priority would have stopped the attacks.
Really the only thing that would have stopped these particular attacks (other than a STILL wholly resisted crackdown on Arab illegal immigrants) was a change in mindset about hijackings. So long as we were in appeasement mode about them (the mindset that you have passengers endure a hijacking in the hopes that only one or two people get hurt) 9/11 was going to happen. I’m pretty much convinced that planes won’t be used as weapons again (unless you have a traitorous pilot/co-pilot team) because even with guns you can’t cow a whole plane of people who think they are already dead. Note that isn’t anything the government does….
Timmy,
The article you link to focusses on intelligence efforts that cross over into “too invasive” in many people’s minds. I stand on the side of those weary of such efforts.
I think you’re asking about two topics here though, what would I have done before 9/11 and where do I stand on the suggested invasive measures to prevent it again.
It makes no sense to me to discuss what I would have done or would do going forward. Not only am I not the president, but I have an advantage the President didn’t have before 9/11 and a complete disadvantage with regard to the measures available now (i.e., I don’t have access to the information the president has, so I have no idea what the real picture is). What you’re really asking is how can I criticize what the President did or wants to do. Why don’t I give him the benefit of the doubt in these matters. And what you’re really asking there is why don’t I trust the President. It makes sense to discuss that.
With regard to pre 9/11:
I’ll confess right here, I believe Bush’s focus on missile defense had more to do with a lucrative program for its developers than national security. Perhaps that’s naive. Perhaps the threat is building and the program is merely trying to stay ahead of it, but absent any intel to the contrary, the whole thing suggests a Cold War mentality in a post-Cold War period. Why would I suspect the President was stuck in the past? Look at his choices for his cabinet. Here we were at the dawning of a new century and who does the newly elected President place around him? His father’s people. It was as if 8 years had never come between the two administrations. As if they were trying to forget the whole Clinton presidency had ever happened. Rumsfeld? Was he joking? Cheney? Come on…they were antiquated when Bush Sr. left office. If this fresh young president had surrounded himself with forward thinking people (i.e., people without the grudges and baggage of the last century), maybe I would have had a bit more faith that he was the right man for the job, and not simply a mouth piece for an administration that had been frozen in time, seething, waiting to get back to what they had been doing, ignoring how the world had changed while they were out of power.
On Aug 6th, I believe Bush was wrongly focussed on other threats…incoming missiles, Saddam Hussein, whatever…he was stuck in the past, hellbent on erasing the Clinton legacy and determined to drag the country back to some time when his father’s friends were shaping the world in a way that suited them.
But if you really want to know why I didn’t trust them before 9/11 it was because they were so damned secretive. Bullying the press, fighting any effort at access tooth and nail. People who are not doing anything wrong should have nothing to hide, right?
Be careful how you answer that one…it relates direclty to TIA and other measures suggested since 9/11:
I don’t believe a totally aware government, regardless of how safe it might make us, is compatible with democracy. I believe that privacy is the cornerstone of democracy…down to why your ballot is secret.
And privacy is the reward of democracy. There’s a sense that if you have nothing hide you have nothing to lose with TIA, but that’s not true. As your article pointed out, “Anyone with enough cash can find out what someone’s mortgage payments are, what restaurants he frequents, what debts he owes and where he banks, whether he subscribes to American Rifleman or Martha Stewart Living, and whether he’s more likely to visit Graceland or Greenland, among a thousand other features of his life.”
If you don’t trust the people in power because they seem stuck in the past, how are you supposed to trust them with easier access to information on every aspect of your life. More than that, though, IMHO not trusting the government is a good healthy disposition for a democracy. Having more, rather than less, privacy is the reward of a democracy. Take that away and you’re making democracy less attractive.
(other than a STILL wholly resisted crackdown on Arab illegal immigrants)
How would you do that Sebastian?
Bush’ hand-picked Commission
Bush hand picked the Commissioners, more revisionist history from Oberon, not that that is new.
And as I noted above an attempt to change the civilian mindset enough to have everyone on the plane actively resist a hijacking would have been spun as fearmongering.
Wow best spin ever. Tho’ standing at the barn door thumping one’s chest while said barn is already empty is usually a waste of time.
Spare us the diatribe. Stop the whining.
1. The Repubs set the standard on the political uses of 911. Bush is now reeping what he sowed go read Kevin Drum on this, since you reference him on this point. By the way, you also misrepresent his conclusion on the point, which is that “it does seem like the kind of thing that ought to have grabbed President Bush’s attention, doesn’t it?”
2. The Dems are using the 911 Commission both to improve our intelligence apparatus and to throw a few brickbats at the Repubs. So what. Imagine that — life in America.
3. On Padilla — glad to see you are now a convert to lettres de cachet for Americans.
4. On Homeland Security — seems your post has confused it with the Patriot Act, which is being misused outside the terrorism area. But lets also get this straight, and compare your theoretical claim that the Dems would have been upset with its provisions pre-911 with the known fact that Bush resisted Dems efforts to get it enacted post 911. Which is worse? (And also, only one is true anyway)
5. You are squeemish about some Dems suggesting Bush should have prevented 911 with more aggressive reaction — seems to me I have been listening to Repub Clinton bashing on the same subject for almost three years. Is it fair to conclude that your squeemishness is 100% partisan motivated, rather than based on some sort of unfairness?
6. Easterbrook on Afghanistan? We do know the Repub reaction to Clinton firing some rockets at it, so I guess the Repubs would have also been upset with George had he advocated an invasion pre 911. Maybe the Dems too, but we’ll never know since George had minimal interest in Al Queda pre 911.
Edward, thanks for the response and the segue into a new issue.
I’ll confess right here, I believe Bush’s focus on missile defense had more to do with a lucrative program for its developers than national security.
Those developers would have been chosen by the previous Admin (not that that has anything to do with the overall situation, look the Clinton Admin used Haliburton as a primary contractor on more than one occassion).
Stuck in the past is an interesting term, particularly as your initial response is stuck in the past as well. You equate youth with forward thinking; the correlation per se is absurd.
You mention the Clinton legacy, I’m not exactly sure what you are talking about. But maybe you can highlight some pre 9-11 events. Arafat immediately comes to mind but Arafat had walked out of Taba and was importing arms from Iran. So I’m not sure what else could be accomplished with Arafat, I mean no one was better blowing suneshine up someone’s a$$ than Clinton and he failed in that endeavor with Arafat. Or maybe Bush should have put Kyoto up for ratification (which would have been my choice purely for alternative motives mind you). I doubt the Treaty would have mustered 40 votes. But I’m sure you have other ideas. So please express them.
You mention forward thinking people without any additional clarification. I can think of no one more forward thinking than Rummy when it comes to national defense and the related metrics.
It appears that the OBL strategy was forward thinking as well (although it ultimately was a rehash of some ideas initially pursued by the Clinton Admin before two nations exploded nuclear devices). Strategically, its initial phase works to tie or generate economic ties amongst the Taliban, Pakistan, India and Central Asia. Overall it reflects Cheney’s thinking. Course there was a very large Enron project in W. India which would have benefitted, which Edward is what I suspect you will focus in when you hear about it.
Finally, liberty is the ultimate gift of democracy. And if you understood what is entailed in the application of technology detailed, you would understand that what was being proscribed only impacted the privacy of those committed to undermining your liberty, which is why I support it.
The Dems are using the 911 Commission both to improve our intelligence apparatus
I doubt it given your comment on the Patriot Act. But that is all right, you work to improve the response after the fact and I will work to stop the event from ever occurring.
One more thought about politics and the 911 Commission.
Who is the moron responsible for obfuscating, hindering and delaying its proceedings into the hot portion of an election year?
Timmy:
Do you approve of use of the extraordinary powers of the Patriot Act outside of terrorism/national security cases?
The Patriot Act was passed without any meaningful review in part because of its Sunset Provision and based on the representations by Justice (now false) that its use would be limited in that manner.
Its repeal is being advocated by many conservatives. I don’t have that much trouble with it if its use is confined to terrorism/national security (similar laws have existed for espionage for years), but unfortunatley Ashcroft and crew can’t resist abusing these new powers.
Harassing Arabs and anyone else the Bush administration decides to target is your answer to fighting terrorism?
Perhaps the GOP and Ashcroft should have put anti-terrorism as one of the priorities of the Justice Department. You don’t have to shred the Bill of Rights to do that, or to decide that increasing spending on anti-terrorism, rather than cutting it, is a good idea.
quote from the NY Times – http://tinyurl.com/ytbjd
Draft reports by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks portray Attorney General John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that Al Qaeda was planning a large, perhaps catastrophic, terrorist attack, panel officials and others with access to the reports have said.
They said the draft reports, which are expected to be completed and made public during two days of hearings by the commission this week, show that F.B.I. officials were alarmed throughout 2001 by what they perceived as Mr. Ashcroft’s lack of interest in terrorism issues and his decision in August 2001 to reject the bureau’s request for a large expansion of its counterterrorism programs.
The draft reports, they said, quote the F.B.I.’s former counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying he “fell off my chair” when he learned that Mr. Ashcroft had failed to list combating terrorism as one of the department’s priorities in a March 2001 department-wide memo.
—
Here is backup information on Ashcroft cutting anti-terrorism funds. His 2002 budget proposed a 23% cut from 2001 levels. Even after 9/11 Ashcroft and the White House proposed cuts to anti-terrorism efforts!
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=45457
Ashcroft and crew can’t resist abusing these new powers.
Such as?
I remember a Vegas stock brokerage case was mentioned (bob pointed it out) but I forget the specifics, other than there were other operatable laws (money laundering) pertaining to financial institutions which also covered the situation.
So DM you have to be more specific.
Barry, did the five fold increase in anti-terrorism funds that Clarke mention, also cover the FBI. Just curious.
Ah, yes, from the transcript that was a background briefing, then “released” by Fox and the White House.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4608698/
The quote there only talks about the CIA and covert action. He was also part of the administration and told to be providing positive spin at that point.
TtheWD writes:
Bush hand picked the Commissioners, more revisionist history from Oberon
My bad. Per the law establishing the Commission:
(a) Members.–The Commission shall be composed of 10 members, of
whom–
(1) 1 member shall be appointed by the President, who shall serve as chairman of the Commission;
(2) 1 member shall be appointed by the leader of the Senate (majority or minority leader, as the case may be) of the Democratic Party, in consultation with the leader of the House of Representatives (majority or minority leader, as the case may be) of the Democratic Party, who shall serve as vice chairman of the Commission;
(3) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of the Senate leadership of the Democratic Party;
(4) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of the leadership of the House of Representatives of the Republican Party;
(5) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of the Senate leadership of the Republican Party; and
(6) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of the leadership of the House of Representatives of the Democratic Party.
Apologies.
Apologies for what, the Democrats picked their side of the Commission (my initial point) but given their overall performance to date (as an example today, trying to put words into Janet Reno’s mouth) as well as the fact that one of the Dem’s commissioners should be on the other side of the table, the apologies should be coming from the Dems for putting party over country.
I see that the VRWC has decided to claim in advance that the Democrats intend to use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes. I assume this is because the VRWC has got the official memo, which fortunately some public-minded VRWC official leaked to me.
It says:
-Bush is guilty as hell
-it is impossible to conceal this from the 9/11 Commission
-it may be impossible to prevent the 9/11 Commission from making their conclusions public before November 2004
-start the rumors now that any conclusion that the Commission may draw that tends to blame the Bush administration is because the Democrats on the commission are “putting party above country”
I shall be interested to see which members of the VRWC have received the official memo directly, and who gets word via the VRWC blogs.
The air of defeatism coming from those who would seek to deflect Democratic rancor is extremely disturbing to me.
Is “9/11 was unavoidable” really the idea you want to be pushing? Is it worth it? Are you really willing to say that the terrorists were our complete masters in the months and years leading up to that day? That the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world simply wasn’t up to the task of preventing 4 hijackings?
I don’t believe any of that is true. Will you be prepared to say 9/11/04 ‘was’ unavoidable if it comes to that?
9/11 was avoidable. We’re still the masters of our own fate. Don’t let your eagerness to shut down the Democratic bloodhounds overwhelm that. Americans rise to challenges. . we don’t cry in a corner that it’s all alright and there’s nothing we could have done. And we definitely take responsibility. At least some of us do.
eh Jes what was the mandate of the Commission?
Did you watch Janet Reno testify?
If you did, now tell me if the Democratic Commissioners were not trying to put words into Reno’s mouth (not the first time, at that particular effort of using cheap tricks to push an agenda).
Finally, your thoughts on the Commission leaks?
Party over country is spot-on, you don’t like it complain to the democratic leaders who picked the members of the Commission.
Compare the Dem members of this Commission to the Republicans who were on previous commission (say Pearl or JFK).
TtheWD writes:
Apologies for what,
It was an apology for being wrong. Obviously. Don’t be such an asshole.
Oberon, I didn’t realize that you apologized, so I apologize for my snarky retort to your apology.
TtWD:
You are wrong again.
There are many cases other than the Vegas case, and no, there were not other operable laws that made up for the “misuse” of the Patriot Act in the Vegas case. Actually, its not a legal misuse since there are very few restritions on when the Patriot Act can be implemented — only the informal commitments made when it passed.
Six months after passage, the Justice Department was giving seminars to its attorneys on how to use it in non-terror cases.
It is being abused, and the oppositiuon is bi-partisan. That’s because a lot of old fashioned conservatives are not happy about needlessly giving the government so much power — its not just the ACLU.
Timmy,
Oh. I ought to be more careful about basic sentence construction — subject, verb. Guess we’ll call it even.
Resume political sparring.
Sidereal – right on!
“Guess we’ll call it even.”
Dang, I did it again. I meant “I guess we’ll call it even.”
I pooh-poohed “70” above.
Newsday says
FBI spokesman Ed Coggswell said the bureau was trying to determine how the number 70 got into the report…. Coggswell Friday said that those 70 investigations involved a number of international terrorist organizations, not just al-Qaida. He said that many were criminal investigations, which terrorism experts say are not likely to focus on preventing terrorist acts. And he said he would “not characterize” the targets of the investigations as cells, or groups acting in concert, as was the case with the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Above from Crooked Timber. David Neiwert of course has more.
Agree that it wasn’t possible to prevent 9/11 in advance.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | April 12, 2004 03:04 AM
Is “9/11 was unavoidable” really the idea you want to be pushing? Is it worth it? Are you really willing to say that the terrorists were our complete masters in the months and years leading up to that day? That the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world simply wasn’t up to the task of preventing 4 hijackings?
I don’t believe any of that is true. Will you be prepared to say 9/11/04 ‘was’ unavoidable if it comes to that?
9/11 was avoidable.
Posted by: sidereal | April 13, 2004 02:22 PM
Sidereal – right on!
Posted by: Jesurgislac | April 13, 2004 04:16 PM
Huh. That’s . . . interesting.
I still have yet to hear from anyone what, specifically, should have been done to prevent 9/11. Not that I think it would have been impossible to do — I like to think it was possible, and I blame the Clinton and Bush administrations both, and the FBI & CIA, for dropping the ball — but it’s too easy from where we sit now to sift through all the material that was extant prior to 9/11 and connect the dots. Not so easy to do beforehand.
jesurgilac,
I see that the VRWC has decided to claim in advance that the Democrats intend to use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes. I assume this is because the VRWC has got the official memo, which fortunately some public-minded VRWC official leaked to me.
Why, yes, some people did get the official memo. So glad you brought it up.
Shad wrote: Why, yes, some people did get the official memo. So glad you brought it up.
You mean that memo was actually written by the VRWC and only purported to be from the Democrats? So the VRWC is actually on the side of those who want to discover why 9/11 happened, rather than on the side of getting Bush elected (or reappointed) at whatever cost? /sarcasm off
Shad, when this memo was first leaked, it was pointed out by many sensible people that what it amounted to was an acknowledgement that full openness about the conclusions the 9/11 Commission draw from the evidence, if they are allowed access to all the facts, is likely to redound to the benefit of the Democratic Party, because it’s likely to be to the detritment of the administration in power at the time.
The 9/11 Commission may find Clinton, to some extent, to blame. But 9/11 didn’t happen on Clinton’s watch: it happened on Bush’s watch. Clinton isn’t running for office this year: Bush is. Bush is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. Therefore, the more openness by the 9/11 Commission, and the higher level of information they are allowed access to, the better for the Democratic Party and the worse for the Republican Party. (This is tacitly acknowledged by Bush & Co in their efforts to prevent the report coming out before the November election.)
The key point is: the American people, and the rest of the world (it wasn’t just Americans who died in the WTC, or as a result of the 9/11 attack) deserve the highest level of openness from the 9/11 Commission and that the 9/11 Commission should have the fullest information possible.
That Bush & Co are attempting to prevent this for party political reasons is what should outrage you.
That the Democrats are attempting to frustrate Bush & Co’s efforts is one clear example of how having a party system ultimately works to the benefit of the people: one party may want to cover up the causes of a disaster, but their opposition will want to uncover it. And, to those of us not loyal beyond reason to either party, this is a good thing.
dm, thank you for the post but what CBS described is already covered under various money laundering laws but they provided no cites.
As for the wire taps, you do understand that the so called new expansion of the law is about 14 years and is just an expansion of applying previous procedures (used against the mob and drug dealers) to terrorists.
So, I’m still waiting.