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In August - Bush Admin ignored warnings...

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.

By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. “The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise.” The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... z3rOce0Eyq

Excellent read about the failure of the Bush Admin and the neo-cons to protect our country.


How anyone could continue to defend them is beyond reason. How anyone would want to put the same group back in power boggles the mind.

I will try to read it in full later, but very early on in the article....

Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called “the Blue Sky paper” to Bush’s new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat
—“getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation...

So you're saying you would be been OK for Bush to invade Afghanistan in summer 2001? Holy backtrack Batman.

89Hen wrote:I will try to read it in full later, but very early on in the article....

Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called “the Blue Sky paper” to Bush’s new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat
—“getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation...

So you're saying you would be been OK for Bush to invade Afghanistan in summer 2001? Holy backtrack Batman.

You seem to be confusing a "covert, paramilitary operation" with an all-out invasion.

Grizalltheway wrote:

89Hen wrote:I will try to read it in full later, but very early on in the article....



So you're saying you would be been OK for Bush to invade Afghanistan in summer 2001? Holy backtrack Batman.

You seem to be confusing a "covert, paramilitary operation" with an all-out invasion.

Ronald Reagan understood covert Ops Baby..!!!
He liked to have at least 4 or 5 going simultaneously for good measure



Executive Order 12333

Grizalltheway wrote:

89Hen wrote:I will try to read it in full later, but very early on in the article....



So you're saying you would be been OK for Bush to invade Afghanistan in summer 2001? Holy backtrack Batman.

You seem to be confusing a "covert, paramilitary operation" with an all-out invasion.

It doesn't matter if it's a half a dozen members of Seal Team 6, or an invasion force of 100,000, you're still violating the sovereignty of another nation. A nation we weren't at war with at the time.

Clinton actually admits that he let Bin Laden get away, but you will never hear jon say anything about it.

Bill Clinton: 'I could have killed' Osama bin Laden in 1998

A day before Sept. 11, 2001, former President Bill Clinton told an audience that he could have had Osama bin Laden killed, but chose not to, because an attack could have endangered innocent women and children in Afghanistan.

Speaking to businessmen in Australia, Clinton said he had a shot at Bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda organization would launch attacks the next day that left about 3,000 dead at the World Trade Center, Washington, D.C. and in western Pennsylvania.

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden ... He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio recording from the meeting, according to a Sky News Australia report this week.

“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.”

“And so I didn’t do it,” the former commander in chief says.

Hours after Clinton spoke of his role in the 1998 decision to not attempt to kill Bin Laden, the 2001 terror attack was underway in the United States.

Baldy wrote:Bill Clinton: 'I could have killed' Osama bin Laden in 1998

Baldy wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:
You seem to be confusing a "covert, paramilitary operation" with an all-out invasion.

It doesn't matter if it's a half a dozen members of Seal Team 6, or an invasion force of 100,000, you're still violating the sovereignty of another nation. A nation we weren't at war with at the time.

Clinton actually admits that he let Bin Laden get away, but you will never hear jon say anything about it.

Bill Clinton: 'I could have killed' Osama bin Laden in 1998

A day before Sept. 11, 2001, former President Bill Clinton told an audience that he could have had Osama bin Laden killed, but chose not to, because an attack could have endangered innocent women and children in Afghanistan.

Speaking to businessmen in Australia, Clinton said he had a shot at Bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda organization would launch attacks the next day that left about 3,000 dead at the World Trade Center, Washington, D.C. and in western Pennsylvania.

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden ... He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio recording from the meeting, according to a Sky News Australia report this week.

“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.”

“And so I didn’t do it,” the former commander in chief says.

Hours after Clinton spoke of his role in the 1998 decision to not attempt to kill Bin Laden, the 2001 terror attack was underway in the United States.

It's like you didn't even read his reasoning for not doing it.

Keep deflecting though, you're on a roll with that today.

Where does it say that they warned the administration that the attack would come from coordinated hijacked airliners?

In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing.

Weren't most of the hijackers already on US soil long before this time?

The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006.

And there was one more chilling warning to come. At the end of July, Tenet and his deputies gathered in the director’s conference room at CIA headquarters. “We were just thinking about all of this and trying to figure out how this attack might occur,” he recalls. “And I'll never forget this until the day I die. Rich Blee looked at everybody and said, ‘They're coming here.’ And the silence that followed was deafening. You could feel the oxygen come out of the room. ‘They're coming here.’”

So there was a critical meeting on July 10th, but it wasn't until "the end of July" that someone said that they will attack the US homeland? And still, without specifics?

Can someone explain how you defend US soil at that time from thousands of potential attacks without the laws that we have in place today and with agencies that did not communicate well with each other?

And yeah, we violated the sovereignty of Pakistan during the bin Laden raid. Oh well, we got the fucker!

Bad, bad day for the Conks......

CAA Flagship wrote:Where does it say that they warned the administration that the attack would come from coordinated hijacked airliners?

Well, they did arrest Moussaoui at a flight school in Minnesota on the belief he was training to crash a plane into the WTC.

Weeks before the attacks they received intelligence that terrorists in the US were planning hijackings.

The famous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" specifically mentions hijacking and terrorists scouting NYC buildings.

Skjellyfetti wrote:

CAA Flagship wrote:Where does it say that they warned the administration that the attack would come from coordinated hijacked airliners?

Well, they did arrest Moussaoui at a flight school in Minnesota on the belief he was training to crash a plane into the WTC.

Weeks before the attacks they received intelligence that terrorists in the US were planning hijackings.

The famous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" specifically mentions hijacking and terrorists scouting NYC buildings.

And it's well documented that Cheney, Rummie and company were much more concerned with the "threat" that Iraq posed. Read: finishing the job that Bush 41 didn't.

Skjellyfetti wrote:

CAA Flagship wrote:Where does it say that they warned the administration that the attack would come from coordinated hijacked airliners?

Well, they did arrest Moussaoui at a flight school in Minnesota on the belief he was training to crash a plane into the WTC.

Weeks before the attacks they received intelligence that terrorists in the US were planning hijackings.

The famous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" specifically mentions hijacking and terrorists scouting NYC buildings.

OK, since we didn't know which planes were flying from where and when these planes would be flying, Bush should have just shut down all commercial air traffic? For how long?

Sorry, lubeboi. It's been almost 15 years now, and you're still not making much of a convincing case here.

Cap'n Cat wrote:Bad, bad day for the Conks......

Yeah, my poor knuckles have been taking a beating.

Grizalltheway wrote:

Baldy wrote: It doesn't matter if it's a half a dozen members of Seal Team 6, or an invasion force of 100,000, you're still violating the sovereignty of another nation. A nation we weren't at war with at the time.

Clinton actually admits that he let Bin Laden get away, but you will never hear jon say anything about it.

Bill Clinton: 'I could have killed' Osama bin Laden in 1998

It's like you didn't even read his reasoning for not doing it.

Keep deflecting though, you're on a roll with that today.

Pffft...300 women and children???? That's like what? A weeks worth of collateral damage from Obama's Drone War?

So Obama's Drone War is too aggressive?

I thought his foreign policy was weak and toothless.

Can you make up your mind? Or are you one of those guys that thinks he's an atheist-muslim, communist-nazi?

Skjellyfetti wrote:

CAA Flagship wrote:Where does it say that they warned the administration that the attack would come from coordinated hijacked airliners?

Well, they did arrest Moussaoui at a flight school in Minnesota on the belief he was training to crash a plane into the WTC.

Weeks before the attacks they received intelligence that terrorists in the US were planning hijackings.

The famous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" specifically mentions hijacking and terrorists scouting NYC buildings.

Minneapolis F.B.I. agent Harry Samit, although a witness for the prosecution, might have done more harm than good to the government's case. While Samit testified that Moussaoui's lies sent him "on a wild goose chase" until September 11, he refused to say for sure that but for the defendant's lies, the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented. If Moussaoui told the truth, Samit said, "I would have asked additional questions about his role in Al Qaeda and his relation to Osama bin Laden. It would have opened up a whole world of questions." But would those additional questions have persuaded his superiors to act--and act fast enough? On cross-examination, Samit testified that senior F.B.I officials in Washington repeatedly rebuffed his efforts to get a search warrant. They "took a calculated risk not to advance the investigation," Samit said, and "the wager was a national tragedy." He admitted that there was no way to be sure that warrants would have been approved in time to prevent 9/11 even if Moussaoui had not lied.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f ... count.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

On a side note, I played golf and had dinner and drinks with the attorney that was appointed to defend Moussaoui. He said he was "one fucked up SOB".

An unashamed apologist for Hillary Clinton started this thread, asking why we would put neo-conservatives back in the White House

Baldy wrote:

Skjellyfetti wrote:
Well, they did arrest Moussaoui at a flight school in Minnesota on the belief he was training to crash a plane into the WTC.

Weeks before the attacks they received intelligence that terrorists in the US were planning hijackings.

The famous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" specifically mentions hijacking and terrorists scouting NYC buildings.

OK, since we didn't know which planes were flying from where and when these planes would be flying, Bush should have just shut down all commercial air traffic? For how long?

Sorry, lubeboi. It's been almost 15 years now, and you're still not making much of a convincing case here.

Well, they could have done something other than say "we're not worried about them, let us focus on Iraq".

Grizalltheway wrote:

Baldy wrote: OK, since we didn't know which planes were flying from where and when these planes would be flying, Bush should have just shut down all commercial air traffic? For how long?

Sorry, lubeboi. It's been almost 15 years now, and you're still not making much of a convincing case here.

Well, they could have done something other than say "we're not worried about them, let us focus on Iraq".

Really? You gotta link for that quote?

Maybe if Clinton had paid attention 9/11 wouldn't have happened if we're going to reconstruct history in this thread.

The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein’s regime to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements.

The issue arose again this month after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported there was no “collaborative relationship” between the old Iraqi regime and bin Laden.

Democrats have cited the staff report to accuse Mr. Bush of making inaccurate statements about a linkage. Commission members, including a Democrat and two Republicans, quickly came to the administration’s defense by saying there had been such contacts.

In fact, during President Clinton’s eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton’s defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... 921-3401r/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Baldy wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:
Well, they could have done something other than say "we're not worried about them, let us focus on Iraq".

Really? You gotta link for that quote?

When that April meeting finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that, “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.”
......
On September 4, the Cabinet met and despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence that Iraq represented the greater terrorism threat, it approved Clarke’s plan to fight al-Qaeda. On September 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended taking $600 million from the proposed missile defense budget and devoting it to counter-terrorism. According to Gellman, Rumsfeld recommended that Bush veto such a move.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... 11/411175/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You may now commence your ad homenim attack on the source.

CID1990 wrote:An unashamed apologist for Hillary Clinton started this thread, asking why we would put neo-conservatives back in the White House

That really is the funniest part.

Let's face it: 8 years of Bill Clinton and 8 months of neocons in the White House led up to 9/11.

Who's more to blame?

If we're going to stick to "the guy who had it happen on his watch", then Clinton failed to protect the people in the World Trade Center in '93 and the kids and babies in the Murrah Federal Building in OKC in 95.

And the FBI and CIA were most definitely briefing Clinton on anti-fed terrorism after Ruby Ridge and Waco. How could he let OKC happen?