Fornits
General Interest => Tacitus' Realm => Topic started by: Froderik on April 03, 2004, 10:53:00 PM
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"No one anticipated the kinds of strikes that took place in New York and at the Pentagon." - 'The 9/11 Debate,' Washington Post editorial, 03-24-04
That line from the Washington Post has been repeated ad nauseam by other newspapers, and across radio and television. It has achieved the status of bedrock conventional wisdom, of something axiomatic. These statements are a paraphrase of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who said on May 17th, 2002, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile - a hijacked airplane as a missile."
This kind of thinking elevates the attacks to something mythical, a magic trick, an act of God that no mere mortal could possibly have interfered with or anticipated. In fact, it was an operation planned for years by men who left clear tracks. As such, it could have been stopped. It should have been stopped. Saying so, however, interferes with the cultivation of a national attitude of vengeful victimhood, an attitude the Bush administration is actively promoting for its own benefit and political protection. Surely we were victims of terrorism on September 11, but was this unavoidable? Are the Washington Post, Condoleezza Rice and others correct in stating that no one anticipated these kinds of attacks?
The facts say no.
Ramzi Yousef was one of the planners and participants in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Yousef's right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, was captured and interrogated in 1995. During that interrogation, Murad described a detailed plot to hijack airplanes and use them as weapons of terrorism. The primary plan was to commandeer eleven commercial planes and blow them up over the Pacific Ocean. The secondary plan was to hijack several planes, which would be flown into CIA headquarters, the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower, the White House and a variety of other targets.
Ramzi Yousef eluded capture until his final apprehension in Pakistan. During his 1997 trial, the plot described by Murad resurfaced. FBI agents testified in the Yousef trial that, "The plan targeted not only the CIA, but other U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon."
In 1993, the same year as the first World Trade Center attack, a $150,000 study was undertaken by the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of airplanes being used as bombs. A draft document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The circulation of the report was timely.
In 1994, a disgruntled Federal Express employee invaded the cockpit of a DC10 with the intention of crashing it into a company building. Again in 1994, a pilot crashed a small airplane into a tree on the White House grounds, narrowly missing the building itself. Also in 1994, an Air France flight was hijacked by members of a terrorist organization called the Armed Islamic Group, who intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower.
The 1993 Pentagon report was followed up in September 1999 by a report titled 'The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism.' This report was prepared for the American intelligence community by the Federal Research Division, an adjunct of the Library of Congress. The report stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaida's martyrdom battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."
Abdul Hakim Murad described plans to use hijacked commercial airplanes as weapons in 1995. Ramzi Yousef's trial further exposed the existence of these plans in 1997. Two reports prepared by the American government, one from 1993 and another from 1999, further detailed again the existence and danger of these plots. The Federal Express employee's hijacking attempt in 1994, the attempted airplane attack on the White House in 1994, and the hijacking of the Air France flight in 1994 by terrorists intending to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower, provided a glaring underscore to the data.
No one anticipated the use of airplanes as weapons before September 11? Given the facts, the claim from Condoleezza Rice, carried forward to today by the mainstream media, seems impossible to believe.
We come, next, to priorities.
A mission statement from the internal FBI Strategic Plan, dated 5/8/98, describes the FBI's Tier One priority as 'counterterrorism.' The FBI, under the Clinton administration, was making counterterrorism its highest priority. The official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General Janet Reno to department heads, dated 4/6/00, detailed how counterterrorism was her top priority for the Department of Justice. In the second paragraph, she states, "In the near term as well as the future, cybercrime and counterterrrorism are going to be the most challenging threats in the criminal justice area. Nowhere is the need for an up-to-date human and technical infrastructure more critical."
Contrast this with the official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General Ashcroft, dated 5/10/01, which directly compares to the 4/6/00 Reno memo. Out of seven strategic goals described, not one mentions counterterrorism. An internal draft of the Department of Justice's plans to revamp the official Department of Justice Strategic Plan, dated 8/9/01, describes Ashcroft's new priorities for the Department of Justice. The areas Ashcroft wished to focus on were highlighted in yellow. Specifically highlighted by Ashcroft were domestic violent crime and drug trafficking prevention. Item 1.3, entitled "Combat terrorist activities by developing maximum intelligence and investigative capability," was not highlighted.
There is the internal FBI budget request for 2003 to the Department of Justice, dated late August 2001. This was not the FBI's total budget request, but was instead restricted only to the areas where the FBI specifically requested increases over the previous year's budget. In this request, the FBI specifically asked for, among other things, 54 translators to translate backlog of intelligence gathered, 248 counterterrorism agents and support staff , and 200 professional intelligence researchers. The FBI had repeatedly stated that it had a serious backlog of intelligence data it has gathered, but could not process the data because they did not have the staff to analyze or translate it into usable information. Again, this was August 2001.
The official Department of Justice budget request from Attorney General Ashcroft to OMB Director Mitch Daniels is dated September 10, 2001. This document specifically highlights only the programs slated for above-baseline increases or below-baseline cuts. Ashcroft outlined the programs he was trying to cut. Comparing this document to the FBI's request to the Department of Justice request described above, it is clear that Ashcroft ignored the FBI's anti-terrorism requests. Specifically, Ashcroft was planning to ignore the FBI's specific requests for more translators, counterintelligence agents and researchers. It additionally shows Ashcroft was trying to cut funding for counterterrorism efforts, grants and other homeland defense programs before the 9/11 attacks.
The difference in priorities is clear. The Clinton administration was focusing on terrorism and al Qaeda as its highest priority. This focus was dramatically reversed by senior officials within the Bush administration. The idea that no one could have anticipated the kinds of attacks which came on September 11 comes into sharper focus. It isn't that "no one" could have anticipated the threat. It is the Bush administration itself that could never have anticipated the threat, because they were paying little attention to the existence of these threats.
Then, of course, there were the warnings.
FBI agents in Phoenix issued warnings in the summer of 2001 about suspicious Arab men receiving aviation training in American flight schools. The warning was never followed up. An agent in the Arizona field office commented in his case notes that Zacarias Moussaoui, arrested in August after suspicious activity at one of these flight schools, seemed like a man capable of flying airplanes into the World Trade Center.
Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London reported in the months before September 11th a blizzard of warnings delivered to the Bush administration from all points on the compass. The German intelligence service, BND, warned American and Israeli agencies that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack important American targets. Egypt warned of a similar plot to use airplanes to attack Bush during the G-8 summit in Genoa in June of 2001. This warning was taken so seriously that anti-aircraft missiles were deployed around Columbus Airport in Italy.
In August of 2001, Russian intelligence services notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered "in the strongest possible terms" specifically regarding threats to airports and government buildings. In that same month, the Israeli security agency Mossad issued a warning to both the FBI and CIA that up to 200 bin Laden followers were planning a major assault on America, aimed at vulnerable targets. The Los Angeles Times later confirmed via unnamed U.S. officials that the Mossad warnings had been received.
On August 6, 2001, George W. Bush received his Presidential Daily Briefing. According to reports, the briefing described active plots to attack the United States by Osama bin Laden. The word "hijacking" appeared in that briefing. Shortly after this briefing, George W. Bush departed to Texas for a month-long vacation.
Richard Clarke, former Director of Counter-Terrorism for the National Security Council, has worked on the terrorist threat for the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. administrations, amassing a peerless resume in the field. He is now a central figure in the commission investigating the September 11 attacks. Clarke has laid bare an ugly truth: The administration of George W. Bush did not consider terrorism or the threat of al Qaeda to be a priority prior to the attacks.
Clarke, along with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who as a member of the National Security Council was privy to military strategy meetings, indicate that the Bush administration was obsessed with an invasion of Iraq from the day it arrived in Washington. This obsession continued even after the attacks, despite the fact that the entire intelligence community flatly declared that Iraq was not involved.
The attacks of September 11 were not mythical, not a magic trick, not an act of God that no mere mortal could possibly have interfered with or anticipated. The warnings, the data, stretch back all the way to 1993. The Bush administration came into power and absorbed a barrage of warnings about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger told Condoleezza Rice that al Qaeda terrorism would be the single most important problem the Bush administration would deal with while in office, and handed her a huge file on the matter. Rice has admitted that she did not read that file until after the attacks of September 11 had taken place.
Of course the Bush administration could never have anticipated an attack like the one that took place on September 11. They weren't paying attention to the threat. Had they done so, the attack could have been stopped. Final proof of this can be found in the events of December 31, 1999. Al Qaeda planned, and put into motion, simultaneous attacks against the national airports in Washington DC and Los Angeles, the Amman Raddison Hotel in Jordan, several holy sites in Israel, and the USS The Sullivans at dock in Yemen. In scope, scale and import, these attacks would have matched the catastrophe of September 11. Each and every single one of these attacks, which ranged from one side of the planet to the other, were foiled by the efforts of the Clinton administration. They were able to stop these attacks because of one simple reason: They were paying attention to the threat.
September 11 could have been stopped. September 11 should have been stopped. The "No one could have anticipated this" excuse is dangerous nonsense.
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Frod this is what I have been saying on the alum forever and being attacked by the republicans with there flags firmly shoved up there asses....since forever.
They knew they made money off it.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/)You can lead a camel to water but you can't make it stink (any more than it already does)
-- Job
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In February 1993, the WTC was bombed by Muslim fanataics, killing 5 people and injuring hundreds.
Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.
In October 1993, 18 American troops were killed in a savage firefight in Somalia. The body of 1 American soldier was dragged through the streets on Mogadishu as the Somalian hordes cheered.
Clinton responded by calling off the hunt for Mohammed Farrah Aidid and ordering our troops home. Osama Bin Laden told ABC News, "The youth ... realized more than before that the American solider was a paper tiger and after a few blows, ran in defeat.
In November 1995, 5 Americans were killed and 30 wounded by a car bomb in Saudi Arabia set by Muslim extremists.
Clinton advised by Dick Clark, did nothing.
In June 1996, a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia was bombed by Muslim extremists.
Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.
Months later, Saddam attacked the Kurdish-controlled city of Erbil.
Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, lobbed some bombs into Iraq hundreds of miles from Saddam's forces.
In November 1997, Iraq refused to allow U.N. Weapons inspectors to do their jobs and threatened to shoot down a U.S. U-2 Spy Plane.
Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.
In February 1998, Clinton threatened to bomb Iraq but called it off when the United Nations said no.
On August 7, 1998, U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim Extremists.
Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.
On August 20, Monica Lewinsky appeared for the 2nd time to testify before the grand jury. Clinton responded by bombing Afghanistan and Sudan, severely damaging a camel and an aspirin factory.
On December 16, the House of Representatives prepared to impeach Clinton the next day.
Clinton retaliated by ordering major air strikes against Iraq, decribed by the New York Times as "by far the largest military action in Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991".
The only time Clinton decided to go to war with anyone in the vicinity of the Muslim fanatics was in 1999 -- when Clinton attacked Serbians who were fighting Islamic fanatics.
In October 2000, our warship, the USS Cole, was attacked my Muslim extremists.
Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.
Bush came into office telling his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice he was "tired of swatting flies" , he wanted to eliminate al-Qaida.
On September 11, 2001, when Bush had been in office for barely 7 months, 3,000 Americans were murdered in a savage terrorist attack on U.S. soil by Muslim extremists.
Since then, Bush has won 2 wars against countries that harbored Muslim fanatics, captured Saddam Hussein, immobilized Osama Bin Laden, destroyed al-Qaida's base, and begun to create the only functioning democracy in the Middle East other than Israel. Democrats opposed it all- except their phony support for war with Afganistan, which they immediately complained about and said would be a Vietnam quagmire. And now they claim to be outraged that in the months BEFORE 9-11, Bush did not do everything Democrats opposed doing AFTER 9-11.
What a surprise.
:smokin:
Source: http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2004/033104p.htm (http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2004/033104p.htm)
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Yeah, Iraq's a "functioning democracy". Idiot.
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On 2004-04-04 16:10:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Yeah, Iraq's a "functioning democracy". Idiot."
Well, the Butcher of Bagdad is behind bars and his murdering, raping sons are dead. Democracies are not built overnight, but at least Iraq and indeed, the world, is rid of Saddam and Company and thier horrific crimes against humanity in the name of Allah.
:wave:
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Look fool, prior to the invasion of Iraq, it was not a haven for Al-Qaeda or other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations. Saddam Hussein saw them as a threat to his regime, and rightly so. Al-Qaeda and their ilk did not like secular governments like Hussein's, and they were not present in any great numbers in pre-war Iraq. That has all changed. George has gotten us involved in a fucked up situation where American soldiers are dying every day. Islamic terror groups have had a field day with the recruiting opportunities Bush has provided them.
I saw Ambassador Joseph Wilson (not a liberal Democrat by any stretch) speak on this topic and he brought up the following points:
1) Saddam did not possess WMDs--and if he had, he was far too much of a control freak to share them with Al-Qaed, who would just as soon have used them against him.
2) Iraq probably had the fewest number of Islamic terrorists of any country in the Mid-East. Now, they have the greatest number. Thanks, George.
3) If creating a democracy was our goal, why didn't we go after Saudi Arabia? The same could be aked re North Korea, a country that actually does possess WMDs. However, North Korea has no oil reserves. Hmmmmmm....
For you to think that the Iraq war was about anything but the oil and reconstruction revenues that Bush and his backers are going to reap from it, you are a fool. This is going to be a fucked up situation for years to come, and we are going to be paying for it with the lives of young American soldiers. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have gotten us into the worst foreign debacle since Vietnam.[ This Message was edited by: RTP2003 on 2004-04-04 17:08 ]
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I agree the shit w/Iraq was little Bush Jr finishing his fathers mess if you think George Bush is not still our president your fooling yourself.
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.
-- Dave Barry
March 29, 2004
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Gangsters in the White House
There are gangsters in the White House.
Whenever the Bush Administration gets criticized, it responds like Tony Soprano, and Bush's capos put a hit out on whoever dares to question the don.
That's the way it was when Paul O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury Secretary, said Bush wanted to go to war against Iraq way before 9/ll. Within hours, the Bush goons were threatening O'Neill with prosecution for allegedly publicizing classified information.
That's the way it was when former ambassador Joseph Wilson went public with his account of how the Bush Administration played up the false story of uranium in Niger. Within days, the White House was outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA officer, with Karl Rove reportedly saying, "His wife's now fair game."
And that's the way it is today, with Bush surrogates unloading on Richard Clarke, the counterintelligence pro who has leveled two serious charges against the Administration.
First, that it was "lackadaisical" about Al Qaeda prior to 9/ll.
And second, that Bush's Iraq adventure has "greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Rather than just debate the merits of these accusations, rather than have Condoleezza Rice testify in public before the Sept. 11 bipartisan commission, the Bush thugs have revved up the slime machine.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist slammed Clarke for being, in Frist's words, "consumed by the desire to dodge blame for the 9/11 attacks" and for "profiteering." But he didn't stop there. Frist went on to make very unsubtle threats about prosecuting Clarke for perjury, alleging that Clarke lied to Congress.
Then the White House began to blackball Clarke. "You're not going to make another dime in Washington again," said one White House staffer, Clarke told Tim Russert.
Hostile to the very essence of democracy, which is the freedom to dissent and to criticize our government, the Bush gang wants to rule by fear, intimidation, and goon squad tactics.
-- Matthew Rothschild
Bush makes me want to puke ::puke:: [ This Message was edited by: kaydeejaded on 2004-04-04 17:19 ]
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On 2004-04-04 17:07:00, RTP2003 wrote:
"Look fool, prior to the invasion of Iraq, it was not a haven for Al-Qaeda or other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations. Saddam Hussein saw them as a threat to his regime, and rightly so. Al-Qaeda and their ilk did not like secular governments like Hussein's, and they were not present in any great numbers in pre-war Iraq. That has all changed. George has gotten us involved in a fucked up situation where American soldiers are dying every day. Islamic terror groups have had a field day with the recruiting opportunities Bush has provided them.
I saw Ambassador Joseph Wilson (not a liberal Democrat by any stretch) speak on this topic and he brought up the following points:
1) Saddam did not possess WMDs--and if he had, he was far too much of a control freak to share them with Al-Qaed, who would just as soon have used them against him.
2) Iraq probably had the fewest number of Islamic terrorists of any country in the Mid-East. Now, they have the greatest number. Thanks, George.
3) If creating a democracy was our goal, why didn't we go after Saudi Arabia? The same could be aked re North Korea, a country that actually does possess WMDs. However, North Korea has no oil reserves. Hmmmmmm....
For you to think that the Iraq war was about anything but the oil and reconstruction revenues that Bush and his backers are going to reap from it, you are a fool. This is going to be a fucked up situation for years to come, and we are going to be paying for it with the lives of young American soldiers. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have gotten us into the worst foreign debacle since Vietnam.[ This Message was edited by: RTP2003 on 2004-04-04 17:08 ]"
The situation in the world is too serious to politicize just so the liberals can get back into power.
Personally, what concerns me is North Korea: the world's largest prison camp and an economic basket case. What America must do to keep it from unleashing misery and destruction on a global scale is a daunting question.
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Dick Clarke, now there's an idiot. Lying bastard, too.
:flame:
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you raise a good point even though I am a liberal I don't support the policy of appeasement which is what Clinton did to North Korea which has long been the policy regarding this country.
Bush uses preemption with Iraq yet tries to negotiate with North Korea as if they were ration the only deterrence from nuclear war is going to be more money ie: appeasement which should have gone out with the Rhineland...didn't we learn from Hitler??? Or we need to take action the problem here is there is nothing worthwhile in North Korea. We pussyfooted around to long they now have nukes that can reach California and Bush is pulling the major bait and switch and had spread us so thin.
We are in Haiti, Afganistain, Irag......they are talking reinstating a modified draft for skilled craftsmen like machinests?? (I dunno won't be me I'm a girl thank you God I'M NOT THAT LIBERAL!)
North Korea is a real threat one that has not be dealt with they are not rational either and we have appeased them in the past all mistakes, all will come back to haunt us. Make no mistake being liberal doesn't mean hiding your head in the sand.Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself - that is my doctrine.
--Thomas Paine
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On 2004-04-04 17:51:00, Anonymous wrote:
The situation in the world is too serious to politicize just so the liberals can get back into power.
Personally, what concerns me is North Korea: the world's largest prison camp and an economic basket case. What America must do to keep it from unleashing misery and destruction on a global scale is a daunting question."
The situation in the world and in this country has gotten worse since the cons came to power here. Bush and his neo-conservative handlers have hijacked the Republican party to serve their own fiscal interests at the expense of this country's security, reputation, economy, and ehe lives of many soldiers. The war in Iraq was a ruse started under false pretenses.
They have no interest or intention of doing anything about North Korea unless oil reseves were found there, in which case we would be at war tomarrow. I can't believe people fall for Bush's lies. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban are retaking territory lost in the war, and the American occupation is starting to resemble the Russian one--control of the capitol and little else. Osama bin Laden remains free, and billions of dollars each month are spent in Iraq. Good job, George. He has created a record deficit. Remember when Republicans said deficits were a bad thing? This man is a worse president than his father was, and that's saying a lot.
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Hmmm, here's an opinion that dates back a year or so ago --- before all the controversy surrounding Clarke's book (hey, good for sales) and testimony before the 9-11 commission (hey, best to blame anybody and everybody else rather than admit you made some serious errors, yourself).
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Richard Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation
The outgoing cybersecurity czar will be remembered for his steadfast belief in the danger of Internet attacks, even while genuine threats developed elsewhere.
By George Smith Feb 17 2003 01:38AM PT
The retirement of Richard Clarke is appropriate to the reality of the war on terror. Years ago, Clarke bet his national security career on the idea that electronic war was going to be real war. He lost, because as al Qaeda and Iraq have shown, real action is still of the blood and guts kind.
In happier times prior to 9/11, Clarke -- as Bill Clinton's counter-terror point man in the National Security Council -- devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing. While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict.
September 11 spoiled the fun, though, and electronic attack was shoved onto the back-burner in favor of special operations men calling in B-52 precision air strikes on Taliban losers. One-hundred fifty-thousand U.S. soldiers on station outside Iraq make it perfectly clear that cyberspace is only a trivial distraction.
Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.
Clarke's career in subsequent presidential administrations was a barometer of the recession of the belief that cyberspace would be a front effector in national security affairs. After being part of the NSC, Clarke was dismissed to Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security on October 9th in a ceremony led by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and new homeland security guru Tom Ridge. If it was an advance, it was one to the rear -- a pure demotion.
Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.
Instead of combating terrorists, Clarke would be left to wrestle with corporate America over computer security, a match he would lose by pinfall. Ridding the world of bad guys and ensuring homeland safety was a job for CIA wet affairsmen, the FBI, the heavy bomb wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base -- anyone but marshals in cyberspace.
Information "Sharing" and Cruise Missiles
The Slammer virus gave Clarke one last mild hurrah with the media. But nationally, Slammer was a minor inconvenience compared to relentless cold weather in the east and the call up of the reserves.
But with his retirement, Clarke's career accomplishments should be noted.
In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.
In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke "played a key role in the Clinton administration's misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.
Trying his hand in cyberspace, Clarke's most lasting contribution is probably the new corporate exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. Originally designed to immunize companies against the theoretical malicious use of FOIA by competitors, journalists and other so-called miscreants interested in ferreting out cyber-vulnerabilities, it was suggested well before the war on terror as a measure that would increase corporate cooperation with Uncle Sam. Clarke labored and lobbied diligently from the NSC for this amendment to existing law, law which he frequently referred to as an "impediment" to information sharing.
While the exemption would inexplicably not pass during the Clinton administration, Clarke and other like-minded souls kept pushing for it. Finally, the national nervous breakdown that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center reframed the exemption as a grand idea, and it was embraced by legislators, who even expanded it to give a get-out-of-FOIA-free card to all of corporate America, not just those involved with the cyber-infrastructure. It passed into law as part of the legislation forming the Department of Homeland Security.
However, as with many allegedly bright ideas originally pushed by Richard Clarke, it came with thorns no one had anticipated.
In a January 17 confirmation hearing for Clarke's boss, Tom Ridge, Senator Carl Levin protested that the exemption's language needed to be clarified. "We are denying the public unclassified information in the current law which should not be denied to the public," he said as reported in the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News.
"That means that you could get information that, for instance, a company is leaking material into a river that you could not turn over to the EPA," Levin continued. "If that company was the source of the information, you could not even turn it over to another agency."
"It certainly wasn't the intent, I'm sure, of those who advocated the Freedom of Information Act exemption to give wrongdoers protection or to protect illegal activity," replied Ridge while adding he would work to remedy the problem.
Thanks for everything, Mr. Clarke.
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On 2004-04-04 17:55:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Dick Clarke, now there's an idiot. Lying bastard, too.
:flame: "
On 2004-04-04 17:55:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Dick Clarke, now there's an idiot. Lying bastard, too.
:flame: "
Actually, I am confused, it's not Dick Clarke that's a lying bastard. That would be the infamous "Tricky Dick".
:silly:
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Delivered-To: skylax@comcast.net (http://mailto:skylax@comcast.net)
Know how to tell the difference between the truth and lies of 9/11? If they're talking about hijackers having done the dastardly deed, you know
they're part of the sinister coverup extravaganza, wittingly or not.
In order for the people of the world to be convinced that Islamic hijackers were responsible for terrible tragedy of 9/11, we need to see
some evidence. Not hearsay, innuendo, aspersion or promises of evidence, but real evidence.
Otherwise, the whole subject is rightly regarded as a ruse, a setup to conceal the identities of the real culprits, the ones who sit smugly in
front of the TV cameras and plot their cynical war on terror - otherwise known as the war on the peoples of the world.
As President Bush continues to insist that his word be accepted as truth on numerous questions, time after time his statements have been revealed
as blatant falsehoods. Yet he continues to repeat them, and the whorish corporate media continues to accept them.
Why hasn't either the Bush administration or some element of law enforcement in the United States issued a single solid piece of evidence
connecting the hijackers to the hijacked airplanes? Why don't the alleged hijackers appear on the airport security videos? Why aren't there credit card records of their ticket purchases?
Why did FBI director Robert Mueller say very publicly to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that nothing on paper connected Arab
terrorists to 9/11? I mean, two and half years have passed. And the feds produced 19 names within 72 hours of the disaster. Notice a mathematical inconsistency here? All that has happened since is mere vigilante hysteria, hypothetical scenarios trumpeted ad nauseum by America's notoriously brainwashed Zionist press.
Seven or eight of the names on that original list have been found living comfortably in other countries. Why hasn't the FBI made any attempt to
correct the errors made on that original list? See for yourself.
http://members.fortunecity.com/911/sept ... -alive.htm (http://members.fortunecity.com/911/september-eleven/hijackers-alive.htm)
and http://www.welfarestate.com/911/ (http://www.welfarestate.com/911/)
And why, after much hullabaloo about Colin Powell using phony information in his remarks to the United Nations about the reasons for war, hasn't the U.S. government produced a single conclusive piece of evidence to back up its claim that 9/11 was the work Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists? Not a single piece!
If you disagree, tell me what it is!
There's a simple answer to this, you know. It's because there isn't any evidence. And why is that? Because those pseudo-Muslims revealed to be
so publicly incompetent at piloting jerkwater training planes had absolutely zero chance of flying sophisticated jetliners into anything
narrower than the Grand Canyon, never mind executing tricky maneuvers with extraordinarily complicated machinery.
The unknown men who played the roles of the so-called Arab terrorist hijackers were really recruited by either American and/or Israeli
intelligence services in a scheme set up as a diversion to inflame dumb Westerners against the Islamic world. The purpose was to divert the
world's attention from the Israeli genocide and dispossession of the Palestinians by blaming the attacks on Muslims.
But that was only half the objective. The other half was to enable our despicable cabal of neocon gangbangers to fleece the American public with an endless array of no-bid contracts to enrich the conscienceless billionaires who are really driving the war machine.
You know how the Bushista American government uses anything for PR to supposedly authenticate its own evil agenda. If they had any concrete
evidence against the hijackers - if they even possessed all their correct names - we would have heard about it by now. There would be an
avalanche of TV shows about them, unlike that Jewish claptrap hate crime against Muslims that appeared on NBC the other night.
After two and half years, with the whole world knowing that eight of the 19 names on the hijacker list are fraudulent, the FBI has made no
attempt to substitute new names. And why is that? Because the identities of the hijackers were constructed with mostly stolen papers, for some of
the patsies designed to take the heat. In any case, and whoever they were, there is no evidence they ever got on the planes.
But nothing. Instead we have one minor player convicted in Germany, then the conviction was overturned, partly because Americans refused to help with the prosecution.
We have the so-called 20th hijacker and assorted other preposterous character actors languishing in jails on trumped up charges. We have security camera film at the Pentagon, which surely reveal that no jetliner hit that building, locked away in Ashcroft's vault under the phony aegis of national security. We have all the rubble of the World Trade Center, which surely would have revealed the use of nuclear explosives creating shattered beams in odd places, instantly carted away with no forensic investigation. We have transcripts - but no recordings - of these phony cellphone calls, some from people who may not have even existed.
And we have the famous standdown, in which America's air defenses suddenly evaporated - the only time in our history this has happened.
We have Marvin Bush sitting suspiciously on the board of directors of the security company that had the contract for the Twin Towers.
We have Larry Silverstein, who conveniently leased and insured the towers shortly before the big hits, telling officials to "pull" a relatively intact tower, which then fell identically to the two structures that were struck by airplanes, creating the impression that
that's the way all three came down.
We have billions of dollars of windfall profits made by savvy investors in the days before 9/11, and an FBI investigation that insists nothing was amiss with these spectacular deals. Of course, we don't get the details. Only "assurances" that the trades were not suspicious, despite patterns and results that were unprecedented in the entire history of financial trading.
We have reports from firemen of explosions at the base of the Twin Towers BEFORE they fell, and the seismographic evidence to back up these assertions.
We have leader after leader saying they didn't know such a thing could happen when the government had been studying the problem for ten years. It had held at least two major drills simulating such a possibility.
And we have a president sitting in a ghetto classroom in Florida, at possibily the most pivotal moment in American history, pretending to
read a book that he was holding upside down.
Perhaps most tellingly of all, we have the tragic tale of John O'Neill, rabidly honest FBI investigator, prevented from following his leads
about Osama bin Laden because of the danger he would have discovered the links from Afghanistan back to CIA headquarters. Just review the way he
was prevented from conducting his probe of the Cole bombing, and prevented by digging into other leads by the same guys - namely insiders Louis Freeh and Thomas Picard - who prevented significant reports from other FBI agents from seeing the light of day.
So, how does all that make you regard the supposedly impartial government panel investigating these matters? When they talk about
Presidential Daily Briefings months before the event, or chitchat with presidential flunkies who leak out these pseudorevelations about this and that tidbit of essentially trivial information. And especially when they talk about the dastardly hijackers (without being able to name them) as if there is no question of their guilt. Talk about your misleading urban legends! This one is the champ.
Well, no sense feigning surprise. We knew this commission was a set-up from the get-go. Recycled Watergate investigators, even. Part of the same bunch that has run the country and covered up everything for the past 30 years or more.
Surely you didn't expect a real investigation. Thomas Kean declared at the outset of his hearings that Osama bin Laden was guilty. End of
discussion. As soon as he made that statement, there was no way the hearings could be legitimate.
Asserting that genuine Arab hijackers did not carry out the attacks of 9/11 requires analysis of two concomitant categories: the history of
American (and Israeli) involvement (and subterfuge) with Arab terrorists, and methods of remote control of aircraft, or other means of
piloting the aircraft.
The remote control aspect continues to be a bone of contention among legitimate pilots, with some asserting only real pilots could have made such extemporaneous maneuvers and others insisting only remote control could have accomplished such a feat. An interesting new perspective on this debate can be found here:
http://joevialls.altermedia.info/wtc/radiocontrol.html (http://joevialls.altermedia.info/wtc/radiocontrol.html)
A third natural area of study in this regard would be the intimate histories of those whom officials claim to be the hijackers, including
putting the microscope on their behavior in the days and weeks before the tragedy.
Many researchers claim the name al-Qaeda was made up in middle '90s by a variety of American functionaries (one of them being none other than
Richard Clarke) as an all-purpose villain the U.S. could blame as a convenient reason for its military adventurism. And a group of Israeli
provocateurs was recently discovered trying to create their own faux version of al-Qaeda.
How many more hints do you need? The absence of any relevant arrests or discovery of any clues to the hierarchy of this supposedly worldwide terror group should tell you a lot.
Al-Qaeda doesn't exist except for when they want it to, to blame for any sort of strategic terror they have created themselves for some political
reason, like influencing the elections in Spain. Hah, that one really backfired.
Why haven't American intelligence operatives gone to these foreign countries to interview these named hijackers who turned out to be alive?
Simple. Because they knew the list was fiction in the first place, and the Arab-types who have been named as terror gurus are mostly their own
employees, or people who have been set up by them.
It is a celebrated fact that Mohammed Atta and some of his friends were seen in nightclubs in the hours before 9/11, certainly a fact that
argues against them being able to carry out their supposed missions because they were motivated by Islamic religious zeal. So their appearance in strip clubs blows the whole story that they were devout Muslims giving their lives to Allah. Devout Muslims don't drink, never mind cavort with strippers.
If we knew who the hijackers were, we'd know their names, wouldn't we? Or is it now worth bombing other nations and murdering thousands of
innocent people because we say we know who the hijackers were, even though we don't know their names? It is the great shame of the American
people that they have approved of the murders of thousands of people because of that blatant lie.
Many of the men who were fingered as 9/11 hijackers received preferential treatment from American immigration officials when it came to entering and leaving the U.S. on numerous occasions. Many of these same names reportedly trained at various U.S. military installations.
What has resulted after two and a half years of work by America's crack intelligence agencies, besides the persecution of Muslims throughout the
world?
Well, hundreds of innocent people have been unjustly imprisoned and tortured at Guantanamo. All of them innocent, hapless dupes rounded up
in a Rumsfeld-ordered dragnet in Pakistan after U.S. planes had (inadvertently or otherwise) allowed the Taliban fighters to escape with the Pakistani army from Afghanistan.
Two pathetic flunkies have been arrested and held without due process. One of them, the notoriously pathetic shoe bomber who was obviously a
deranged personality and not a member of any terror network, was ceremoniously sentenced to life in prison.
Other than that, no al-Qaeda kingpins have been even named, never mind apprehended. No clue about how the 9/11 attacks were engineered has ever
emerged. This is simply not consistent with being able to name all 19 hijackers the day after the attacks. It is a case of pretending you have all of the information instantly, and then pretending you no information for the next two years. What a smell!
This means two things: that the list of 19 names was a total fabrication, and that the worldwide terror network called al-Qaeda is also a total fabrication, the wet dream brainchild of the CIA and the Mossad to be trotted out as an excuse for a whole string of terror attacks - Madrid, Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, etc. - that were really carried out by the CIA and the Mossad themselves, cleverly involving designated patsies to give the operations a suitably foreign flavor.
Al-Qaeda does not exist except as a bogeyman invented by Western powers to justify their evil agenda. There were no hijackers flying those
planes on 9/11. And honest FBI agents have been prevented from publicizing that fact.
If you disagree, prove it! The world knows you can't, though the high-tech mass murder by the United States and Israel spreads around the
world because of this falsified version of events.
History will show - and the public will soon realize - that those who are telling these lies not only allowed 9/11 to happen, but planned it
for their own personal advantage.
The only question that remains is will the American public awaken to this murderous, treasonous scam before the perpetrators achieve their objective and bury the whole planet in the flames of their insane perfidy.
Just remember. If they're talking about the hijackers, they're part of the coverup, whether they know it or not.
Much more productive would be analyzing the tiny hole in the Pentagon, how the ejected material in the WTC photos prove there were unexplained
explosions, or how those emotional cellphone calls could not possibly have been made as government flunkies have presented them.
But you won't hear the official 9/11 commissioners talking about any of that, because they are definitely part of the coverup. You can obviously tell, because they keep talking about the hijackers.
* * *
Other than a general alert to citizens of the world about the basic lies that continue to underlie all political debate in the United States at this time, there is another, more pressing reason to discuss and contemplate all these matters at this time.
On Tuesday, April 20, and Wednesday, April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the power claimed by the President to designate
people as "enemy combatants" and have them incarcerated by the military- indefinitely, without charges, and without access to the court
system--solely on his say-so.
As my friend Alvin notes, "This is a critical moment in United States history."
"How the court rules on these cases will determine the type of country we will be living in. We urge those of you who can to be present outside the Supreme Court on these dates," said Alvin. For more information please see http://www.nlg.org/eccases/ (http://www.nlg.org/eccases/)
It is one thing to realize all law enforcement and defense strategies in America in 2004 have become lies.
It is quite another to incorporate those lies into the law itself, and that is about to happen next week.
The decision expected will make a time of darkness grow even darker, and practically guarantee that freedom and justice for all is now an outmoded phrase that has been conveniently discarded by the evil robots who now control the lives of every person on earth.
******
John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays seen on hundreds of websites around the world, and also "The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001," a 48-page booklet written
for those who insist on believing the government's version of events. For more information about both, go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/ (http://www.johnkaminski.com/)
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
So, If there's anyone out there who doubts that the WTC events were orchestrated from the White House, I'd like to hear what that doubt is based on.
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that was excellent
although far to much for the head in sand types to even begin to bite let alone chew and made far to much sense...
hmmm boggles the mind
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No, THIS is what really happened, the U.S. hijacked the "hijacked" commercial airliners.
http://serendipity.ptpi.net/aa11.html (http://serendipity.ptpi.net/aa11.html)
:silly:
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And but another 9-11 "theory" ... though I see no mention of Jamie G. Guess Corn wasn't aware (like everybody else) of the role this lady played. Wonder what other "facts" (not fantastical imaginings) are yet to emerge?
The 9/11 Investigation
by DAVID CORN
[from the August 4, 2003 issue]
The attacks of September 11 might have been prevented had the US intelligence community been more competent. And the Bush Administration is refusing to tell the public what intelligence the President saw before 9/11 about the threat posed by Al Qaeda.
These are two findings contained in the long-awaited, 800-page final report of the 9/11 joint inquiry conducted the Senate and House intelligence committees, which was released on July 24. As is traditional in Washington, the contents of the report were selectively leaked before it was officially unveiled. And several news outfits noted that the report contained "no smoking guns" and concluded, as the Associated Press put it, that "no evidence surfaced in the probe...to show that the government could have prevented the attacks." Those reports were wrong--and probably based on information parceled out by sources looking to protect the government and the intelligence community.
In the report's first finding, the committees note that the intelligence community did not have information on the "time, place and specific nature" of the 9/11 attacks, but that it had "amassed a great deal of valuable intelligence regarding Osama bin Laden and his terrorist activities," and that this information could have been used to thwart the assault. "Within the huge volume of intelligence reporting that was available prior to September 11," the report says, "there were various threads and pieces of information that, at least in retrospect, are both relevant and significant. The degree to which the [intelligence] community was or was not able to build on that information to discern the bigger picture successfully is a critical part of the context for the September 11 attacks." One Congressional source familiar with the report observes, "We couldn't say, 'Yes, the intelligence community had all the specifics ahead of time.' But that is not the same as saying this attack could not have been prevented."
The final report is an indictment of the intelligence agencies--and, in part--of the administrations (Clinton and Bush II) that oversaw them. It notes, "The intelligence community failed to capitalize on both the individual and collective significance of available information.... As a result, the community missed opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States; and, finally, to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack. No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information.... The important point is that the intelligence community, for a variety of reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering and preventing Osama bin Laden's plan to attack the United States on September 11, 2001."
The committees' report covers many missed--and botched--opportunities. It shows that warnings and hints were either ignored or neglected. Some of this has been covered in interim reports released last year and in media accounts. But the final report does contain new information and new details that only confirm an ugly conclusion: A more effective and more vigilant bureaucracy would have had a good chance of detecting portions of the 9/11 plot. "The message is not to tell the intelligence community," said the source familiar with the report, "that you didn't have the final announcement of the details of the September 11 attacks and therefore you could not prevent it. We have to have an intelligence community that is able to connect dots and put the pieces together and investigate it aggressively."
An example: The FBI had an active informant in San Diego who had numerous contacts on 2000 with two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. And he may also have had more limited contact with a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour. In 2000, the CIA had information that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar--who had already been linked to terrorism--were or might be in the United States. Yet it had not placed them on a watch list for suspected terrorists or shared this information with the FBI. The FBI agent who handled the San Diego informant told the committees that had he had access to the intelligence information on al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, "it would have made a huge difference." He would have "immediately opened" an investigation and subjected them to a variety of surveillance. It can never be known whether such an effort would have uncovered their 9/11 plans. "What is clear, however," the report says, "is that the informant's contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the September 11 plot. Given the CIA's failure to disseminate, in a timely manner, the intelligence information on...al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, that chance, unfortunately, never materialized." (The FBI's informant--who is not named in the report--has denied any advance knowledge of 9/11, according to the report, but the committees raise questions about his credibility on this point, and the Bush Administration objected to the joint inquiry's efforts to interview the informant.)
The CIA was not the only agency to screw up. So did the FBI. In August 2001, the bureau did become aware that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in the United States and tried to locate them. But the San Diego field office never learned of the search. The FBI agent who was handling the informant in San Diego told the committees, "I'm sure we could have located them and we could have done it within a few days." And the chiefs of the financial crime units at the FBI and the Treasury Department told the committees that if their outfits had been asked to search for these two terrorists they would have been able to find them through credit card and bank records. But no one made such a request.
The final report notes that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were never able to develop precise intelligence that would have allowed a US attack on bin Laden before 9/11. And it reveals that there were even more warnings than previously indicated that Al Qaeda was aiming to strike at the United States directly. In an interim report released last year, the committees provided a long list of intelligence reports noting that Al Qaeda was eager to hit the United States and that terrorists were interested in using airliners as weapons. The new material in the report includes the following:
§ A summer 1998 intelligence report that suggested bin Laden was planning attacks in New York and Washington.
§ In September 1998 Tenet briefed members of Congress and told them the FBI was following three or four bin Laden operatives in the United States.
§ In the fall of 1998 intelligence reports noted that bin Laden was considering a new attack, using biological toxins in food, water or ventilation systems for US embassies.
§ In December 1998 an intelligence source reported that an Al Qaeda member was planning operations against US targets: "Plans to hijack US aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals...had successfully evaded checkpoints in a dry run at a NY airport."
§ In December 1999 the CIA's Counterterrorism Center concluded that bin Laden wanted to inflict maximum casualties, cause massive panic and score a psychological victory. To do so, it said, he might seek to attack between five and fifteen targets on the millennium, including several in the United States.
§ In April 2001 an intelligence report said that Al Qaeda was in the throes of advanced preparation for a major attack, probably against an American or Israeli target.
§ In August 2001 the Counterterrorism Center concluded that for every bin Laden operative stopped by US intelligence, an estimated fifty operatives slip through, and that bin Laden was building up a worldwide infrastructure that would allow him to launch multiple and simultaneous attacks with little or no warning.
Despite these warnings, the intelligence bureaucracy did not act as if bin Laden was a serious and pressing threat. A CIA briefing in September 1999 noted that its unit focusing on bin Laden could not get the funding it needed. In 2000 Richard Clarke, the national coordinator for counterterrorism, visited several FBI field offices and asked what they were doing about Al Qaeda. He told the committees, "I got sort of blank looks of 'what is al Qaeda?" Lieut. Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, said that in 2001 he knew that the NSA had to improve its coverage of Al Qaeda but that he was unable to obtain intelligence-community support and resources for that effort.
According to the report, an FBI budget official said that counterterrorism was not a priority for Attorney General John Ashcroft prior to 9/11, and the bureau faced pressure to cut its counterterrorism program to satisfy Ashcroft's other priorities. (The report did not state what those other priorities were.) In a particularly damning criticism, the report notes, "there was a dearth of creative, aggressive analysis targeting bin Laden and a persistent inability to comprehend the collective significance of individual pieces of intelligence."
One crucial matter is missing from the report: how the White House responded to the intelligence on the Al Qaeda threat. That is because the Administration will not allow the committees to say what information reached Bush. The Administration argued, according to a Congressional source, that to declassify "any description of the president's knowledge" of intelligence reports--even when the content of those reports have been declassified--would be a risk to national security. It is difficult to see the danger to the nation that would come from the White House acknowledging whether Bush received any of the information listed above or the other intelligence previously described by the committees. (The latter would include a July 2001 report that said bin Laden was looking to pull off a "spectacular" attack against the United States or US interests designed to inflict "mass casualties." It added, "Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning. They are waiting us out, looking for a vulnerability.")
It is unusual--if not absurd--for an administration to claim that the state of presidential knowledge is top-secret when the material in question has been made public. But that's what Bush officials have done. Consequently, the public does not know whether these warnings made it to Bush and whether he responded.
The White House also refused to release to the committees the contents of an August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief (PDB) that contained information on bin Laden. In May 2002 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed this PDB only included information about bin Laden's methods of operation from a historical perspective and contained no specific warnings. But the joint inquiry appears to have managed to find a source in the intelligence community who informed it that "a closely held intelligence report" for "senior government officials" in August 2001 (read: the PDB prepared for Bush) said that bin Laden was seeking to conduct attacks within the United States, that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure here and that information obtained in May 2001 indicated that a group of bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the United States with explosives. This is quite different from Rice's characterization of the PDB. Did she mislead the public about it? And presuming that this "closely held intelligence report" was indeed the PDB, the obvious question is, how did Bush react? But through its use--or abuse--of the classification process, the Administration has prevented such questions from inconveniencing the White House.
The committees tried to gain access to National Security Council documents that, the report says, "would have been helpful in determining why certain options and program were or were not pursued." But, it notes, "access to most information that involved NSC-level discussions were blocked...by the White House." Bush has said, "We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the 11th." Just not those details about him and his National Security Council.
One big chunk of the report that the Administration refused to declassify concerns foreign support for the 9/11 hijackers. Of these twenty-seven pages, all but one and a half have been redacted. The prevailing assumption among the journalists covering the committees--and it is well-founded--is that most of the missing material concerns Saudi Arabia and the possibility that the hijackers received financial support from there. Is the Bush Administration treading too softly on a sensitive--and explosive--subject? "Neither CIA nor FBI officials," the report says, "were able to address definitively the extent of [foreign] support for the hijackers globally or within the United States or the extent to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or inadvertent in nature. Only recently, and at least in part due to the joint inquiry's focus on this issue, did the FBI and CIA strengthen their efforts to address these issues.... [T]his gap in US intelligence coverage is unacceptable." At one point in the final report, the committees reveal that a July 2002 CIA cable included a CIA officer's concerns that persons associated with a foreign government may have provided financial assistance to the hijackers. "Those indications addressed in greater detail elsewhere in this report obviously raise issues with serious national implications," the report notes. But these "indications" are not addressed elsewhere in the report. The Administration would not declassify the material.
The report does include a list of quotes from unnamed US officials each of whom says that Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to cooperate with the United States on matters related to bin Laden. "In May 2001," according to the report, "the US government became aware that an individual in Saudi Arabia was in contact with a senior al Qaeda operative and was most likely aware of an upcoming operation." The following sentences--which likely cover how the United States responded to this intelligence and what the Saudis did or did not do--is deleted from the report, thanks to the Bush Administration.
It's a pity that the committees were, on a few matters, rolled by the White House, and that Bush has gotten away with concealing from the public what he knew and when, and what he did (or did not do) about a serious threat to the nation. But for seven months, the joint inquiry has been engaged in trench warfare with the Administration over the declassification of this report. It is a credit to the joint inquiry and its staff director, Eleanor Hill, that the committees squeezed as much out of the Administration as they did. The joint inquiry has done far better in this regard than the average Congressional intelligence committee investigation.
The report is a good start in establishing the historical record. It reads at times like tragedy, at other times almost as farce. The signs were there. Few paid attention. Two, if not more, of the hijackers were within reach of US law enforcement, but nobody saw that. Five days after the attacks, Bush said, "No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society." And in May 2002, Rice said, "I don't think anyone could have predicted these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." Actually, the report has proof that the attacks of 9/11 were foreseen. Not in terms of date and time. But intelligence reporting indicated and terrorism experts warned that Al Qaeda was interested in mounting precisely these types of attacks. Yet the US government--the Bush II and Clinton administrations--did not prepare adequately. The attacks were far less outside the box than Bush and his aides have suggested. Thwarting them was within the realm of possibility.
The Administration has yet to acknowledge that--let alone reveal how--Bush responded to the intelligence he saw. The joint inquiry's work provides a solid foundation for the 9/11 independent commission, which is now conducting its own inquiry. Perhaps that endeavor will be able to learn even more and address the questions the Bush Administration did not allow the committees to answer.
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*BUMP*
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Bush and Clinton are the same. They are politicians who represent powerful interests. They have different bases of support in the voting public, but they act on behalf of the same moneyed power. There is nothing special about the US in history. Powerful people have done what they wanted since the dawn of civilization. People choose sides or have their sides chosen for them, but in the end it comes down to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, whether Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, French, British, American, Russian or Israeli. The international configuration that allowed Americans to be the richest people in the world no longer exists. The US citizenry is in debt beyond what they can ever pay. The government is in the same boat. Foreign central banks hold a good deal of this debt. The country is being sucked dry by gamblers, who take all of their money and tuck into hedge funds down in the Virgin Islands. The "War on Terror" is a last ditch attempt to allow the US elites to maintain their position by controlling resources and isolating rival economic blocs militarily. Not long after the birth of the US, most of the big countries of the world were on a similar footing in terms of industrial advancement. Over the next couple of hundred years, some, like the Asian Big Two, China and India, collapsed into ruin. Now, the leader for the last hundred is losing its industrial base in order to maintain the status quo for the wealthy who owned US industry. Those two sad sack Asian countries are seeing an increase in manufacturing and communications industries at the expense of the US work force. The one way the US can temporarily stay afloat is to control the oil producing nations and the transportation corridors. The elite can stay in control by holding the light switch for China, India, Brazil etc. and at the same time keep Russia from having a resurgence. The problem is that the US would need millions of soldiers to conquer the Arabs and Persians and to isolate China and Russia. They just can't do it. As the US citizen is less able to consume, it becomes more important for the elites to control the one thing that made Americans, Americans, cheap energy. If the workers of these new industrial and communications powerhouses have money to spend and cheap energy, then the US consumer is no longer the market of last resort. Also, very importantly, countries begin to sell oil in currencies other than the US dollar, then the US dollar will lose its value. If it has no value, then even the low-paying jobs that more and more Americans are left with will not provide consuming power.
But if the US Air Force can keep control of the world's petro resources in the hands of the US elite, then the hollowing out of the US can continue for awhile longer.
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Nobody blamed Israel. That was a non sequitor.
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Nobody blamed Israel. That was a non sequitor.
No kidding! I just spent a while looking for who blamed Israel and where before flipping to this page.
Eliscue, the only reference I could find was Israel properly, in my view, listed along with all the other relevant squares on the chess board under discussion.
If you're going to give your blind fidelity to every joker who comes along claiming to be a good Jew, you just let off the hook Mel Sembler, Mel Wasserman, Joe Gotlieb, Art Barker, Mitchell S. Rosenthal and, I'm sure, some others richly deserving of your disdain and condemnation.
That's not to say that the whole industry is somehow more affiliated w/ people who grab the Rabbi and cry sanctuary than any other brand of carpet baggers and Bible thumpers. It's not at all. The public sector, though largely ignored by program vets and advocates--especially those who have pinned their hopes on government regulation for remedy--is primarily dominated by Phoenix House (Mitchell S. Rosenthal - Jewish, Stepcraft, Synanon) Teen Challenge (David Wilkerson, Fundie Christian) w/ DFAF (Straight, Inc, Mel Sembler) running political and indstry interferrance and, amazingly, taken into the conservative Christian, Jewish and Stepcraft tents with full, unquestioned faith.
Then there are the fucking Mormons, and who can explain that! At the end of the day, there's a brand a brand and style for whatever scares ya.
But lets focus on those closest to this administration for now because they are the most dangerous to all 6 billion of us atm. That I know of, there's Mel Sembler who has demonstrated throughout his career that he's a fascist, authoritarian, slave making lunatic. He holds so much sway with the Bush people that he is the first and only sitting US Ambassador to have an embassy named after him. And there's Bob Lichfield representing the Mormons as well as some significant ties w/ the Gothards, (Institute of Basic Life Principles), which is a sort of personal growth/lgat thing that works through the fundie Christian sects) cropping up in association with the Bush people.
Now contrast the behavior, intellectual honesty and just basic human decency and integrity of any of these sadistic lunatics with those of a guy like Arnold Trebach.
"By their fruits ye shall know them" is a favorite passage out of the new testament, but remember that it was allegedly spoken by a now famous Jew in a day before even the idea of a Christian faith had really formed.
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What does Alberto Gonzalez call himself on whatever day he likes to call Sabath? Does it matter?
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=7995 (http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=7995)
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Speedy Gonzales?