Bush and the 9/11 Commission: What We Need to Know

You know.. I usually try and show respect for.. the fact that a lot of Americans like George W Bush, and believe that one should at least show respect for the office of the presidency, and that there are plenty of crappy and dishonest Democratic politicians, and that ad hominem attacks on the man are so commonplace on the left as to be tedious, and that the right is happy to claim any complaint whatsoever about the president is a manifestation of irrational Bush-hatred.

That said, HE IS A FUCKING MORON. He's stupid, incompetent, arrogant, self-righteous, incapable of acknowledging the slightest mistake, has zero regard for anyone who tries to hold him accountable for his actions, and lives in a bubble world full of yes-men because he's only able to deal with people who tell him what he wants to hear, and what's more, he revels in all of these things. It's disgusting. However I do take solace in the fact that he is in fact too self-centered and arrogant to ever stick around and be a force in the GOP for years to come, so that once he's thrown out in November he'll probably disappear off into some corporate consulting job set up by some of his rich friends, and never mess with national politics again.

I also question the motivations of former Clinton aides accusing the Bush administration of doing nothing to stop terror attacks based on the simple principle that they seemed to do nothing about while they were in office. If they knew there were threats, how come they didn't start to tighten security at airports beforehand? Would that have seemed too unbelieveably paranoid for the Clinton administration, given that according to the average U.S. citizen pre-9/11, most people would be going "uh? what the hell is Clinton smoking?" and lose faith in him? Perhaps. I dunno. Just speculating here. It's easy now to accuse the Bush administration pre-9/11 of being too slow prepare, when the Clinton administration had plenty of more time than that to do the same.

</devil's advocate>

Now...

Then again, if you believe in the conspiracy theory that 9/11 could only have happened during the Bush administration due to Bush/Osama history, and not during anyone else' presidency, then I guess Clinton aides warning of danger because of that historical connection would make sense. I don't entire believe it in myself, but I can understand people who do.

If you are so fucking smart, so aware of so much bad shit, then why the fuck did you sit on your hands for so long?

Oh I know--pesky little things like your employment were always more important than, say, convincing anyone else of the threats of Al Qaeda. But you failed in your job rather than risk your lucrative government pension. You're aghast at Bushco's failings and campaigning, but if guys like you had screamed at the top of your lungs how real the threat was, then maybe 9/11 wouldn't have happened. If things were so bad for so long, then why did it take you years to write a book about it? Couldn't you have gone to the press sooner, like, say, in 2001? No, you needed to write a book to make sure that your story got told in a way that would line your pocket. And I love how you chose 60 Minutes as your vehicle of promotion--after all, that corporation is paying for your royalties, and what better way to make sure you make money than by having their top news show pimp your wares?

The last thing we need are more government whistleblowers who only come out of the closet for a book deal. Maybe if people would stand up and point out this kind of bullshit when it happens the country wouldn't be so busy going down the shitter.

Richard Clarke was appointed by Ronald Reagan and served under both him and the first President Bush. What makes you think he is politically aligned with the Clinton administration?

If they knew there were threats, how come they didn't start to tighten security at airports beforehand?

Perhaps Clinton did fail us on Defense, though I note that 9/11 did not occur during his administration. But to address this briefly - clearly the threat grew enormously late in the Clinton admin and then during Bush's term, and especially in the weeks and days before 9/11. It wasn't until early 2000 that the FAA began to warn of a threat to American airliners. It wasn't until March of 2001 that the CIA warned that bin Laden was preparing to implement Operation Bojinka (Al Qaeda's name for Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's airline plot, originally intended to blow up 11 airliners over oceans in 1996, and later intended to crash the airliners into 11 American buildings, that apparently was foiled in early stages by the CIA and others). It wasn't until 10 weeks before 9/11 that the intelligence community became convinced that a threat to America was imminent. Four weeks before 9/11, the CIA received specific information of an attack on US soil. Throughout this time, we were monitoring Al Qaeda electronic communications. Shortly before 9/11, we intercepted multiple telephone calls from Abu Zubaydah to the US. In the week before 9/11, John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial jets and some other prominent figures were warned about air travel.

Anyway, this isn't really relevant to the plan that Clarke repeatedly presented to Bush before 9/11, which dealt with Offense - going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban when they were all in one place. After the Cole, Clinton decided that it was necessary to take out bin Laden. He thought it better to leave such an action to the incoming President rather than act beyond our borders as a lame duck. Clarke, Beers and Berger presented a plan for doing so. Bush didn't follow up.

Dear Richard Clarke the Mr. Career Fucking Security Wonk, Lifetime Taxpayer Leech, Professional Goal Post Mover, and Man With Opportunistic Hindsight:

If you are so fucking smart, so aware of so much bad shit, then why the fuck did you sit on your hands for so long?

First of all, on July 5th, 2001, Clarke warned the FBI, FAA, Coast Guard, INS and Customs to increase security in anticipation of an attack. The FAA ignored him.

Second, did you read the articles linked here? Clarke clearly and repeatedly asked Bush to go on the offense. Clarke came back at Bush again and again. Bush was the one sitting on his hands. And it's not like Bush just waited too long. He actually told Clarke to stop bothering him with this terrorist stuff. Did you think Clarke had the power to order troops to Afghanistan himself?

The last thing we need are more government whistleblowers who only come out of the closet for a book deal. Maybe if people would stand up and point out this kind of bullshit when it happens the country wouldn't be so busy going down the shitter.

Maybe what you're missing Don, is that these "whistleblowers" don't go to the media because they actually think that they can directly influence the President, which, you know, is sort of their job. Maybe what you're missing is that we have a President who is not there to listen to certain of his advisors. Maybe what you're missing is that these advisors can't even conceive that a President would be so driven by his ideological and political teams (or so blinded by his own ideology or ignorance) that he wouldn't actually do what's right for the country, even if thousands of American lives are at stake. Maybe what you're missing is that they wait for so long to go to the Press because it takes them so long to figure this out. Maybe what you're missing is that once they do get it, they wait and get a book deal and a media strategy because they've realized how dangerous the President is and decide that they need to get their message out in the most effecive way possible, because it's so important to our future. I mean, what are you arguing for here? The impeachment of Bush before his term runs out? Fine with me.

Don, how did I know it was you before reading the end of the post? Fine, go ballistic on Clarke - blame the guy who fucking tried everything he could to force the Bushies to get off their asses and do something about the terrorism threat. You know, I realize you hate the government and think they're all crooks and whatever, but why is your outrage so selective? I'm a hell of a lot more pissed off at the fact that Bush et al were warned repeatedly in no uncertain terms that a spectactular Al Qaeda attack was about to occur and did fuck-all to stop it, preferring instead to draw up plans for bombing Iraq and then packing up for a month-long vacation in Crawford. The "opportunism" of a guy writing a book revealing the insane levels of corruption and incompetence in the current administration is just not all that high up there on my list of outrages, I'm sorry.

And "Taxpayer Leech"? Jesus fucking Christ, how high is your tax bill, anyway? Sometimes I think there must be some secret Scandinavian-level bracket in the tax code that's only selectively applied to a carefully-chosen 1% of the population just so the anti-tax crusaders have enough folks yelling loudly enough about the horrible burden of taxation they suffer, thereby allowing Grover Norquist to maintain his fantasy of shrinking the entire federal government down to the size at which he could drown it in the bathtub.

Is this an actual excuse? Bill was too busy packing up his stuff to deal with the growing, near imminent threat he knew Al Qaida was?

Maybe what you're missing is that once they do get it, they wait and get a book deal and a media strategy because they've realized how dangerous the President is and decide that they need to get their message out in the most effecive way possible, because it's so important to our future.

I could believe everything Clarke says and the angle he puts it from, but I'd never ever buy into this being some act of nobility.

"Bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country.' This is part of his propaganda," Clarke said. "So what did we do after 9/11? We invade ... and occupy an oil-rich Arab country, which was doing nothing to threaten us."

That quote makes me want to vomit. Perhaps we should run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama?

Yeah, he sure did. But he kept working for this terrible boss until 2003. Despite all the ignoring, he kept working for Bush. Sorry, but if matters were this bad--or if they were so obvious--I'm not really sure why the press was not an option. Oh, it's an option now, but it wasn't an option then. Because now, of course, Clarke has a book to sell.

Maybe what you're missing Don, is that these "whistleblowers" don't go to the media because they actually think that they can directly influence the President, which, you know, is sort of their job

Or maybe my take on this is that three years of getting ignored on issues so vital as these is reason to think a) maybe there are two legitimate sides of the story, b) maybe Clarke didn't make the case he thinks he made, c) maybe he didn't make his case very well, d) if his case was so vital, what was his hesitation for going to the press sooner.

Maybe what you're missing is that once they do get it, they wait and get a book deal and a media strategy because they've realized how dangerous the President is and decide that they need to get their message out in the most effecive way possible, because it's so important to our future

Yeah right--the future is so important that it can always wait a few months or years for the book to get written and a media strategy formulized before we start to worry about anything. This story would have been explosive in 2001, it could have been told on 20/20 without a book or a media strategy, etc. It was vital to our future at least two years ago, but apparently it was only vital to Clarke after he retired.

Don, how did I know it was you before reading the end of the post?

Maybe because I'm probably the only poster who holds the entire government up to to higher standards and doesn't join in the endless chorus of tirades that merely singles out the Bush Adminstration for being incompetent.

I realize it's convenient to take Clarke's allegations to reinforce your hatred of Bush, and in the end, Bush has failed us. But it's awfully convenient for Clarke to try to wash his hands of this with a book and press parade. The question demands to be asked: why didn't we know about this shit until now? Do you wish Clarke would have gone to the press out of frustration in 2002 after he'd been beating his head into the wall for over a year? What exactly was his motivation to keep working for such a moron? I'm not going to apologize for being cynical about someone who works for an idiot while our national security is being toyed with.

The "opportunism" of a guy writing a book revealing the insane levels of corruption and incompetence in the current administration is just not all that high up there on my list of outrages, I'm sorry.

Of course it isn't, because you disagree with the current office holder. Would you feel the same way if Bill Clinton were President? Did you feel the same way when endless books and tirades were credibly thrown in his direction?

Jesus fucking Christ, how high is your tax bill, anyway?

This matters because? Oh yes, if my tax bill is higher than Daria's, then I can't be cynical about lifetime government employees who write tell all books once they safely have attained their 30 year pension. If guys like Clarke would have gone to the press in, say, 2001, then maybe I'd be inclined to believe that my tax dollars were being put to good use. At least I know I can vote against Bush and get him removed from office for taking my money and throwing it out the window--it's much less likely with people like Clarke for my input to have nearly that impact.

That quote makes me want to vomit. Perhaps we should run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama?

I think that quote is explicitly saying that we already do "run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama."

First of all, the CIA did not consider the threat to be imminent until Spring of 01. I doubt anyone thought a threat was coming immediately after the Cole in early October 2000, given that there had been at least a year between Al Qaeda attacks in the past.

Second, you're misstating my argument. I said that Clinton considered it *inappropriate* to act at that time. Let's go over the timeline again. The Cole attack was early October. The election was coming in November. The election was contested for over one month, during a time of high partisanship and emotion, until the Supreme Court decision on December 9 and Gore's concession December 13. Bush's coronation was one month later. I am quite certain that the conservative, America-hating response to Clinton and Gore trying to take out bin Laden at any time during this period would have been the same as in 98.

I could believe everything Clarke says and the angle he puts it from, but I'd never ever buy into this being some act of nobility.

Again, that's not what I said. Rather than a noble act, it's one of calculated pragmatism. One I consider appropriate in a time when the President of the United States lies to the American people, and they by and large believe him. Such lies, even in the absence of a national security threat, would be dangerous to the democracy that protects the rights of Americans and especially the minorities among them.

That quote makes me want to vomit. Perhaps we should run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama?

I'm not sure what foreign policy decisions you think we're making that bin Laden disapproves of?

I think you're missing Clarke's point. He is saying that bin Laden can't defeat America unless he recruits more Islamists to his cause. Osama knows that provoking an American attack on an Arab country is the best way to do that, because it's good propaganda for the pan-Islamic movement. Bush played right into his hands by going to Iraq, because he helped create new terrorists while simultaneously diverting resources from the effort to kill existing ones. We get to inherit his wind.

I realize it's convenient to take Clarke's allegations to reinforce your hatred of Bush

oh yes. The fact that I live in Manhattan (in a high-rise apartment building above a parking garage) and take the subway every day, and have worked since 9/10/01 four blocks from the World Trade Center and New York Stock Exchange, five blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge, and one block from the New York branch of the Federal Reserve has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Even if you don't want to go that far, the pattern of taking a hands-off approach to suspicious Saudis is not hard to understand given the ties between the Saudi elite and some of the U.S. elite (including the Bush family).

Sorry, still doesn't get Clinton off the hook. Contested election, not enough time, all that should be trumped by him knowing how much of a threat Al Quida was. You can't have it both ways, either the Clinton team knew and didn't act strongly enough or they underestimated the threat. They knew and they told the next administration to act doesn't cut it, in my book at least.

One I consider appropriate in a time when the President of the United States lies to the American people, and they by and large believe him. Such lies, even in the absence of a national security threat, would be dangerous to the democracy that protects the rights of Americans and especially the minorities among them.

I agree 100000%. I do think Clarke's quote about Iraq reveals where his falling out with the admin probably occurred. It seems to his advantage therefore to point out the pre 9/11 issues.

I'm not sure what foreign policy decisions you think we're making that bin Laden disapproves of?

Um, trying to kill him and his cronies? Driving the Taliban out of power? I get the whole blowback/hornet's nest argument. I just think allowing fear of terrorism to dictate what you do throughout the world is very dangerous. For example, if granting women in Iraq the right to vote and protest may stir up more Islamic extremists to take up arms, should we back down? The problem is that bin Laden's reasons to hate America are so broad that it is virtually impossible for us to exist wihtout pissing him off. Worrying about how we come across to the average person in the Mideast is one thing, worrying about what Al Quida and extremists think of us is another.

I've already said once that I'm not arguing about time

You can't have it both ways, either the Clinton team knew and didn't act strongly enough or they underestimated the threat. They knew and they told the next administration to act doesn't cut it, in my book at least.

I'm not having it both ways. I'm saying that there was a threat. And I'm also saying that they (correctly, as it turns out) anticipated that it was not so imminent that they needed to act before Bush took power.

Your argument can be said to be trying to have it both ways. Either Bush fucked up or he didn't. If you're saying that there was a threat for Clinton to ignore, you're admitting that there was a threat for Bush to ignore (and you're not denying that Bush ignored it). If you're not, then Clinton did nothing wrong.

In any event, Bush is President, and Clinton is not.

Um, trying to kill him and his cronies? Driving the Taliban out of power?

We're not trying very hard. If the administration were serious, it would not have pulled troops out of Afghanistan. It would not allow the Taliban to control 1/3 of Afghanistan. It would actually be paying attention toAfghanis' willingness to assist us find Al Qaeda.

I just think allowing fear of terrorism to dictate what you do throughout the world is very dangerous.

Who has said we should do that? Clarke hasn't. I haven't.

The problem is that bin Laden's reasons to hate America are so broad that it is virtually impossible for us to exist wihtout pissing him off.

Exactly. Which is why we should ignore those who tell us that a certain policy choice is what the terrorists want us to do.

What in the world? So.. let's see what's going on here. A former Bush administration official who was responsible for counterterror efforts comes out and claims, with evidence, that the administration failed to take terrorism seriously despite repeated and urgent warnings about imminent attacks. Well, this does reinforce the point that the administration failed us. But none of this is, of course, to be taken at all seriously because you've decided that I hate Bush! When exactly is Bush to be held accountable?

The question demands to be asked: why didn't we know about this shit until now?
Because people don't read about it or refuse to believe it? It's been reported on dating back to 2002:
Before Sept 11; Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
by Barton Gellman
Washington Post
Friday, May 17, 2002
[...] On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room.

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. [...]

A close look at the sequence of events, based on lengthy interviews early this year with participants and fresh accounts yesterday, appears to support the White House view that Bush lacked sufficient warning to stop the attack. But it also portrays a new administration that gave scant attention to an adversary whose lethal ambitions and savvy had been well understood for years.

Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet had been "nearly frantic" with concern since June 22, according to one frequent interlocutor, and a written intelligence summary for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on June 28: "It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks." By late summer, one senior political appointee said, Tenet had "repeated this so often that people got tired of hearing it."
------------------
The "opportunism" of a guy writing a book revealing the insane levels of corruption and incompetence in the current administration is just not all that high up there on my list of outrages, I'm sorry.

Of course it isn't, because you disagree with the current office holder. Would you feel the same way if Bill Clinton were President? Did you feel the same way when endless books and tirades were credibly thrown in his direction?

What is your point here? Tirades about what exactly? Bush is not to be held accountable for anything whatsoever because you don't like Clinton? This is a ridiculous, illogical red herring bullshit argument, and there is nothing I can say to refute it, because you're just going to keep making shit up in your head: Oh, you must hate Bush, you didn't complain about Clinton, did you? It doesn't matter if I bitched about Clinton or if I didn't, and I'm not going to even tell you how often I did. It's irrelevant to the subject at hand, and you know it.

If guys like Clarke would have gone to the press in, say, 2001, then maybe I'd be inclined to believe that my tax dollars were being put to good use.
Somehow I doubt it, given that you seem to have zero respect for the massive amount of work the man must have done during decades of public service under seven administrations, and that you jumped in to call him a choice list of grossly insulting and really juvenile names simply because you don't like the fact that he decided to write a book.

Oh, what's that? By "cut the FBI budget," you mean they suggested trimming a spending request for $1.5 billion in additional funds down to $538.5 million, which was then increased by Congress to $745 million? So even if the White House had gotten it's way, you're calling a $538,500,000 increase in spending a budget cut? Are you mental?

Also, from the WaPo:

Other documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's "Strategic Plan" from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. After the attacks, fighting terrorism became the department's primary goal. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism "the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area."

What's the difference between saying fighting terrorism is "a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs", and saying it's the most challenging threat "in the criminal justice area"?

The article details an emergency funds request directly after 9/11, the time at which it would be most needed, and Ashcroft still did not approve most of this funding. Furthermore the article goes on to detail continual refusals to fully meet FBI funding requests.. Perhaps it is par for the course for federal agencies to request more funding than they really expect to get, but then again, if priority one was really using all the tools at hand to fight terrorism and get to the bottom of what happened on 9/11 it seems this wasn't the time to deny the FBI funding. I was particularly surprised that one of the bills in question was threatened with a veto if it exceeded a $20 billion spending cap, given that the White House has had no objection to the massive costs of other legislation even as it runs up the deficit - such as hiding the fact that the Medicare bill was estimated to cost over $100 billion more than they claimed at the time. And the FBI funding issue is also remarkable in context, as the Bush camp just tried to claim John Kerry "gutted" intelligence in 1995 by pointing to a $1.5 billion cut Kerry proposed for an intelligence agency that had improperly hoarded $1.7 billion, and ignoring the fact that the Republican-led Congress eventually did pass a different bill cutting this amount. There were indeed budget squeezes and cuts in spending requests for the FBI, even after 9/11, and the pithy phrase I used to link to the piece did conflate the two.

What's the difference between saying fighting terrorism is "a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs", and saying it's the most challenging threat "in the criminal justice area"?
The difference is that John Ashcroft said terrorism is a "sub-goal" below other criminal justice issues, while the Clintonites said terrorism is the "most challenging threat" among them. Clearly, therefore, we are to believe there is no difference, because that might mean Ashcroft was mistaken in his priorities..

Daria, it was your tirade of "HE IS A FUCKING MORON. He's stupid, incompetent, arrogant, self-righteous, incapable of acknowledging the slightest mistake, has zero regard for anyone who tries to hold him accountable for his actions, and lives in a bubble world full of yes-men because he's only able to deal with people who tell him what he wants to hear, and what's more, he revels in all of these things. It's disgusting" that really inspired me to bring out my insulting and juvenile name calling.

Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass if Clarke served seven presidents, made wine with Jesus, or blew an intern while getting five Silver Stars and a gold watch during his tenure. I'm glad he did what he did, but the guy has a responsibility in this mess too--something he admits. Are you glad he was ineffective in his role during the last three years? Do you wish he would have gone to 60 Minutes in June of 2001 or are you glad he just kept his job and hoped for the best for the next three years?

Of course, it's you Daria who is making up the red herring argument (Bush is not to be held accountable for anything whatsoever because you don't like Clinton? This is a ridiculous, illogical red herring bullshit argument, and there is nothing I can say to refute it, because you're just going to keep making shit up in your head: Oh, you must hate Bush, you didn't complain about Clinton, did you) Just because I don't preface each political post of mine with a litany of Bush offenses, my impetus is based on my dislike of Clinton? Utter bullshit. And the reason I'm asking you whether or not the same kind of book would bother you were the political winds in the opposite direction is because it's totally releveant. I never accused you of not complaining about Clinton, I merely asked you if all those books about him bothered you.

I'm alarmed at the allegations Clarke is throwing around, just as I'd be alarmed if he was throwing them around towards any other president. I think Bush has been a massive failure. I don't think much of the guy. But in June 2001, Clarke was in the position to ward off September 11 and he, along with Bush, failed us all. He more or less admitted this, and if I felt like Clarke had no other options than to shut up and do his job, then I'd cut him some slack. That didn't happen. Clarke waited nearly three more years to tell his story--yes, there have been dribblings to the press about his position on terror but it's hardly been explosive finger pointing. Again I have to wonder: why did he wait so long? Awfully convenient of him. I'm glad he's doing what he's doing, but it only reinforces my cynicism of beaurocracy.

If both ways = both presidents fucked up re: Al Quida threat, then count me down with that opinion.

Which is why we should ignore those who tell us that a certain policy choice is what the terrorists want us to do.

!?!?!?! I could have sworn this is what I said 5 posts ago!

On the other hand, "terrorism" is mentioned seven times in the introduction alone and 58 times in the main section on "Implementing the Strategy." What's more, in the major section titled "Protecting the Homeland" there are seven primary issues discussed. Two of them are "Combating Terrorism" and "Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction." from Kevin Drum column

"It's a shame we are not focused more on moving forward, instead of about who was concerned more,"

Um hmm. "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." *cue howls from Washington Times crue*

Two of the Democratic commissioners left the session about an hour early. Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton was scheduled to introduce the Canadian prime minister at a luncheon, and former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey left to meet with Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) on funding issues related to New School University, where Kerrey serves as president.

Remember the demands that Bushco meet before the entire committee instead of just the chairmen? Hmm, I wonder if the "9/11 Widows" find this sort of behavior by commission members outrageous.

I'm not sure if I've said it before, but what a fucking waste of time and money this 9/11 commission has become.

In any event, despite the absence of any attention to the substance of the meeting whatsoever, you're parroting Rove's message of the day, pushed on the Drudge Report, which is supposed to suggest that they're somehow disrespecting the President or on opposite sides or something. The only thing wrong with Hamilton and Kerrey is that their concern with appearing impartial leadds them not to have the balls to call Rove out on playing politics with this. For the political machine, there doesn't have to be any substance to an attack, it just has to sound sort of bad. I think, Don, that you should ask your question of the "9/11 Widows" directly - if not in person, then at least by mail or phone. I mean, I'm sure they only care about scoring political points, and not their dead husbands and future dead husbands.

Uh, maybe because I think he's exactly the kind of guy who should have been in there grilling Bushco the whole time. I'd much rather have Kerrey in there than the some of those other shills for the White House. What, since the cameras and press weren't there, Kerrey didn't need to be there?

It's really amazing, Don, that your great concern about the cost-effectiveness and time-management of the 9/11 commission has nothing to say about the fact that Cheney and Bush refused to meet separately and stonewalled this meeting for ages but translates only to a concern with whether two of the 8 commission members left a meeting after the allotted two hours were up for previously-scheduled engagements.

Are you telling me that if the shoe were on the other foot--let's say, for example, that the Republicans were crowing about the vitality of some sort of investigative commission during the Clinton years, and then they blew off a third of their allotted time that they'd demanded with Clinton--that you wouldn't be posting your disgust? And are you implying that if Bush and/or Cheney would have agreed to one-on-one meetings with the commission that those two members--Democrats--would have remained in attendance? Do you honestly think they would have skipped out of the last hour if those hearings would have been televised? I do not.

It's not entirely clear that they missed anything.

According to whom?

And for what it's worth, I'm not pimping the Rove message any more than the Washington Post is.

Cheney: "There's been at least three instances here where we've had reports of aircraft approaching Washington -- a couple were confirmed hijack. And, pursuant to the president's instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?"

Rumsfeld: "Yes, I understand. Who did you give that direction to?"

Cheney: "It was passed from here through the operations center at the White House, from the (shelter)."

Rumsfeld: "OK. Let me ask the question here. Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?"

Cheney: "Yes, it has."

Rumsfeld: "So we've got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at the present time?"

Cheney: "That is correct. And it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of the aircraft (hijacked airliners) out."

Rumsfeld: "We can't confirm that. We're told that one aircraft is down, but we do not have a pilot report that they did it."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I've always been skeptical of the passengers of flight 93 taking control of the plane and crashing it intentionally, especially when witnesses had visual confirmation of 2 F-16s chasing the plane, the plane crash site indicative of a missle strike, the whole "Hero" story was wayyyy too forced and bought into hook, line, and sinker.

so here we cheney confirming that at least one aircraft had been shot down. why on earth would he have bad information?

"Let's Roll" indeed.

"The President was seated in a classroom of second graders when, at approximately 9:05, Andrew Card whispered to him: 'A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.' The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. The national press corps was standing behind the children in the classroom; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening.

"The President remained in the classroom for another five to seven minutes, while the children continued reading. He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15, where he was briefed by staff and saw television coverage. He then spoke to Vice President Cheney, Dr. Rice, Governor Pataki, and FBI Director Mueller. He decided to make a brief statement from the school before leaving for the airport. The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.

"Between 9:15 and 9:30, the staff was busy arranging a return to Washington, while the President consulted his senior advisers about his remarks. No one in the traveling party had any information during this time that other aircraft were hijacked or missing. As far as we know, no one was in contact with the Pentagon. The focus was on the President's statement to the nation. No decisions were made during this time, other than the decision to return to Washington.

"The President's motorcade departed at 9:35, and arrived at the airport between 9:42 and 9:45. During the ride the President learned about the attack on the Pentagon. He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the Vice President. According to notes of the call, at about 9:45 the President told the Vice President: 'Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon. We're at war. . . . somebody's going to pay.'"

May this day be the last day I wear the hat of bush apologist.

Fuck wearing a hat.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush told reporters after a cabinet meeting today.

Try refutting that logic, PLEBES!

The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.

"Probably," Mr. Cheney replied.

Maybe possibly perhaps.

June 21, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Zelikow Report
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON — "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")

But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was "no credible evidence" of cooperation on 9/11.

That paragraph — extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts — put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.

Cheney's ire was misdirected. Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.

Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports."

Not involved? Another commission member tells me he did not see the Zelikow bombshell until the night before its release. Moreover, the White House, vetting the report for secrets, failed to raise an objection to a Democratic bonanza in the tricky paragraph leading to the misleading "no Qaeda-Iraq tie."

What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?

1. Require every member to sign off on every word that the commission releases, or write and sign a minority report. No more "staff conclusions" without presenting supporting evidence, pro and con.

2. Set the record straight, in evidentiary detail, on every contact known between Iraq and terrorist groups, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's operations in Iraq. Include the basis for the Clinton-era "cooperating in weapons development" statement.

3. Despite the prejudgment announced yesterday by Kean and Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste dismissing Mohammed Atta's reported meeting in Prague with an Iraqi spymaster, fairly spell out all the evidence that led to George Tenet's "not proven or disproven" testimony. (Start with www.edwardjayepstein.com.)

4. Show how the failure to retaliate after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole affected 9/11, how removing the director of central intelligence from running the C.I.A. would work, and how Congress's intelligence oversight failed abysmally.

5. Stop wasting time posturing on television and get involved writing a defensible commission report.

and this zarqawi situation has gotten out of hand. isnt the main reason zarqawi was able to run fast and loose in kurdistan is because of the no fly zone enforced by the us? didnt the us have multiply chances to wipe out zarqawi but failed to do so because it would hurt our claims v. saddam and terror? hes also a convenient excuse for every single bad thing that happens in iraq..

Anyway, now all we need is a commision to investigate the commision and we should finally figure this shit out.

I am all for Ashcroft getting his head lopped off for this, but I don't think this gets Pickard off the hook. If the Qaida threat was so high he should have been screaming about it. Fuck what Ashcroft doesn't want to hear, tell him anyway. Is the Attorney General that far above the Director of the FBI? They sound like pouting children.

ANd since I am too lazy to find a thread that pertains to this, I just want to say how annoying it is to hear the press repeatedly ask Clinton about Lewinsky during his press tour. Not that I think it should be off-limits, but for fuck's sake, grill him about 9/11 and Iraq and you know, things that actually matter.

The Washington Post's Richard Leiby lifts a quote from the latest Rolling Stone magazine, in which Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) described some unsolicited advice he gave Bush.

"I turned to Vice President Cheney, who was there, and I said, 'Mr. Vice President, I wouldn't keep you if it weren't constitutionally required.' I turned back to the president and said, 'Mr. President, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are bright guys, really patriotic, but they've been dead wrong on every major piece of advice they've given you. That's why I'd get rid of them, Mr. President . . . ' They said nothing. Just sat like big old bullfrogs on a log and looked at me."

The Attorney General is the FBI Director's boss.

The 9/11 Commission released its final report today, outlining an array of shortcomings in the government's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and calling overall progress "disappointing."

"We are safer, but we are not yet safe," said Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the commission charged with finding ways to prevent another terrorist attack and to investigate past intelligence failures. "That's simply not acceptable."

The commission, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, criticized the continued lack of intelligence sharing between government agencies; the lack of progress in curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to establish a uniform standard for treating detainees; and the distribution of Department of Homeland Security money based on politics rather than on potential risk.

In a statement, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the progress report issued by the commissioners today, showed that the Bush administration and Congress were "dangerously neglecting the defensive war on terror we should be fighting here at home."

"The report is a top-to-bottom indictment of the federal government's lack of resources, focus and expertise in fighting the domestic war on terror," Mr. Schumer said. "New York State is particularly hurt by the terribly unfair and inefficient homeland security funding formula and the lack of a federal program for communications interoperability among first responders. We can and must do better."

In July 2004, the 10-member commission issued a report with 41 recommendations, most of which have not been enacted.

President Bush did carry out one of the recommendations by appointing a director of national intelligence after receiving pressure from members of Congress.

Since the release of its report, the commission has embarked on what it has called a "public education campaign" seeking to get its recommendations approved by Congress.

At a Washington news conference today, members of the commission repeatedly blasted the government - though none criticized the Bush administration directly - for its lack of progress on pushing through the recommendations.

"None of it is rocket science," said John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member who was a Navy secretary in the Reagan administration. "None of it is in the too-hard category. We all believe it is possible to get all of these things achieved."

Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic commission member and a former House member from Indiana, asked, "When will our government wake up?" He added, "Al Qaeda is highly dynamic, and we are not."

Among the most pressing issues, according to the commission, was to revamp the federal method of distributing Homeland Security money. Some cities and states that have a much lower risk of terrorism are receiving money, while high-risk cities that have been attacked before - including New York and Washington - receive too little.

"Federal grants to first responders should be distributed on risk and vulnerability," said Mr. Kean, a former governor of New Jersey. Mr. Kean said the commission had found that one city, which he did not identify, had spent its anti-terrorism money on air conditioning for garbage trucks, while another had bought body armor for dogs.

Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat and the commission's vice chairman, said information sharing between agencies had not improved sufficiently, even though rules and laws that had barred some sharing of information had been eliminated.

"We've made minimal progress so far on information sharing," he said. "You can change the laws, you can change the technology, but you've got to change the culture."

He said one particular problem was the culture of the F.B.I., which he said continues to suffer from "inertia" and "complacency" when it comes to making intelligence a priority. "Current efforts fall far short of what we need to do," Mr. Hamilton said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

saudis did 9/11

http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/declasspart4.pdf

http://www.bloodygoodhorror.com/bgh/files/reviews/caps/vampires-kiss.jpg

i'll admit i don't understand that meme

lol fkn n00b

lol at the "ally" scare quotes on the first page

It’s easier to bury uncomfortable facts than to confront them. So this September 11, the ceremonies marking the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., will simply honor the dead. In Manhattan, tourists and mourners will gather where the World Trade Center Towers once stood, lowering their heads in memory of the 2,606 who perished there. The services won't reflect the view that the attacks might well have been prevented.

But for hundreds of families and a growing number of former FBI agents, the grief of another 9/11 ceremony will be laced with barely muted rage: There remains a conspiracy of silence among high former U.S. and Saudi officials about the attacks.

“It’s horrible. We still don’t know what happened,” said Ali Soufan, one of the lead FBI counterterrorism agents whom the CIA kept in the dark about the movements of the future Al-Qaeda hijackers. To Soufan and many other former national security officials, the unanswered questions about the events leading up to the September 11, 2001, attacks dwarf those about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, because “9/11 changed the whole world.” It not only led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the fracturing of the Middle East and the global growth of Islamic militantism but also pushed the U.S. closer to being a virtual homeland-security police state.

“I am sad and depressed about it,” said Mark Rossini, one of two FBI agents assigned to the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, who says agency managers mysteriously blocked them from informing their headquarters about future Al-Qaeda plotters present in the United States in 2000 and again in the summer of 2001. “It is patently evident the attacks did not need to happen and there has been no justice,” he said.

https://www.newsweek.com/cia-and-saudi-arabia-conspired-keep-911-details-secret-new-book-says-1091935