MSNBC reports from the 911 Commision, titled, "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings':
(my emphasis)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4734564/

Then from CNN:

(??)

Then,



Yet to their benefit on this,




http://cnn.allpolitics.printthis.clickabil...&partnerID=2001

Today in the Bush News Conference he claimed a desire to adress anything he calls 'a gathering threat' by use of americas forces. Yet by too many accounts, that gathering threat was almost blindly ignored in view of other policy before 911. This is becoming all too clear by too many accounts.

I understand that there were no times and places and the US supposedly could not strike out without confirmed Intel ( although they did with Iraq). But isnt more and more data showing up that the Admin was blind to other than what they wanted to see? I dont say they could have prevented 911. However, ONE THING WAS CLEAR, OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS SET TO ATTACK THE US. Had been for years, it was coming on a level faster/more extreme than usual.

On the other hand:
Today, I also thought, considering that our gov't and Unocal were negotiating a pipeline in Afghanistan pre-911 and we had threatened attacks by fall if the Taliban did not negotiate with us in bringing stability to the nation. So, had they told me that we needed to go in and strike Afghanistan I would have written it off as an oil propaganda war on those premises. I still harbor some of that in an assessment of all the conveniences of an attack on Afghanistan but that is beside the point.


Questions for debate:
How would you decifer the testimonies if you were a comissioner ( in the ultimate blame game)?
IE:
For the libs, what actions were possible that would not have caused ire and suspicion Pre-911 ? Would we have listened to Richard Clarke then? Could they have sold us an attack on Afghanistan, The Taliban or Bin Laden?

For the conservs, why was an attack on Iraq so utterly important, yet all the pre-911 threats, naming Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, not enough to take 'swift and immediate' action then and there? Supposing that public opinion did not count, which by some accounts does not, in the safetly and security of a nation.

How would you decifer the testimonies if you were a comissioner ( in the ultimate blame game)?


I would like to preface what I think will be many posts by me in this thread with an appeal to all here not to turn this thread into just another Bush-bashing/Bush-defending argument. The questions raised by Artemise are profound and important I think. They are also pretty open-ended and I would hope that the AD community can do a better job of actually discussing the issues surrounding 9/11 and the war on terror from an American standpoint (as opposed to Republican/Democrat standpoint) than the 9/11 commission has done thus far. I, for one will attempt to do that. Now, on to the questions........

Were I a 9/11 commissioner I would look for common ground in the testimony, and I've watched these hearings pretty closely. While there are disagreements in perceptions between many of the witnesses, it seems to me that the common theme echoed by all is that our system and stance pre-9/11 was not prepared for the kind of attacks that we faced on that horrible day. It is a case of there is enough blame to go around because the system itself wasn't up to the task. Al Qaeda took advantage of our freedom to attack us. We don't profile people based on their race, religion, or national origin. We don't seek to limit the freedom of movement within our country by draconian security at our airports. We don't shut down the entire country based on rumors of attacks and nebulous intelligence information. Al Qaeda knew that and they used that against us. This theme seems to me to be a common theme that's echoed in the testimony before the 9/11 commission.

So, how to fix it? Do we give up our freedoms entirely to prevent another 9/11? No, I don't want to do that. Do we prevent Muslims from flying in our airplanes or in our airspace? No, I don't want to do that either. Do we prevent people from the middle east from taking flying lessons? No, that's not a solution either. Dang! Lots of things I don't want to do, but we need to do something to protect ourselves. There are a lot of ideas out there, and if I'm a commissioner, I'm looking for more of them. That's the direction I'd be taking in this investigation. I want to fix the problem, not try to place blame for it....



Not a lib, but in this thread, I'm non-partisan. So, I'm going to answer this question anyway. This country was not prepared to take pre-emptory military action prior to 9/11. The world was not ready to support such an action. A full scale military attack against Afghanistan prior to 9/11 would not have been possible from a logisitics or political standpoint. I don't know what other actions might have been possible in the political climate that existed at the time. That could be an entire thread itself I think.




Lessons learned I think. It is clear from the testimony before the 9/11 commission that there were signs of an impending attack. Armed with 20/20 hindsight we can say, "We should have done something and we didn't". We didn't connect the dots and thus erred on the wrong side. Saddam also at least appeared to pose a direct threat. He had used WMD in the past, invaded his neighbors, attacked Israel and Saudi Arabia and was the root cause for the large American presence in the Middle East - something that bin Laden found offensive. The entire world believed Saddam to be developing WMD and saw that as a threat to world security. Witness the vote on SC 1441. Maybe we were wrong about Iraq's WMD program, but what if we were right and did nothing to stop it? Would we see a repeat of 9/11 or worse? Could we take the chance that a truck filled with nerve gas, radioactive material or anthrax would explode on the Harbor Freeway in downtown Los Angeles at rush hour? The number of people killed in something like that would dwarf the numbers of 9/11 by ten or one hundred fold. Could we take that chance? Dare we take that chance? No, I don't think so.

I'm sure I will have much more to say on this issue, but for now, I would only ask that people here address Artemise's most excellent and thought-provoking questions without regard to the up-coming Presidential election. Perhaps we, the AD crowd can do a better job than the 9/11 commission.

(edited to correct syntax)

If I were on the commision, I would first eliminate in my mind all partisan and bias opinions and honestly analyze all of the statements, documents, and testimonies made in the past few months. One conclusion I will make is their is alot of blame to go around. But the fact is mistakes were made and the focus should be on solutions to better protect ourselves from such an attack again. We have an ememy in al-Qaeda that was determined to launch an attack on America and was successful. I would just point out the weaknesses in our security preparation and just recommend some type of reform to our intelligence flow. I think we are off to a good start with the creation of the Dept of Homeland Security. There are still issues that need to be worked out and debated on, but our goals are achievable.

On the next two questions, I'm not from either parties but I will try to answer both honestly.



I totally agree. I can't really see the country at that time supporting military action against the Taliban. We just didn't look at terrorism the same before 9/11 as we did today.



Can't really answer this question because I don't understand why we attacked Iraq. No evidence supporting they were an imminent threat to America.

The former head of the Navy who is on the Commission spoke on NPR yesterday and said he was a little embarrassed by the “show”. The real hearing in private apparently don’t have the rancor and need to satisfy political ends that the “public” venue does. I thought the questioning of Dr. Rice was particularly poor. The stupid “just give me a yes or no answer” to a question that needed more than that type of response was disgusting. I wanted to punch that rude Democrat in the face and I believe that most ‘moderates” felt the same way.

Dr. Rice was honest and did a wonderful job of presenting the issues in an unbiased way.

The blame game is a waste of time. We obviously had “structural problems” in intelligence sharing and it seems we had funding problems as well. Its easy to give mandates to the FBI and CIA but if funding for the necessary personnel does not follow we should not expect that the job will get done correctly or at all. Let’s hope we have learned a lesson and I hope the Commission comes out with real recommendations that are followed.


The attack on Iraq was important because the situation there was a major threat in the making. Iraq had WMD and never fulfilled a single UN resolution. To say that this country was ‘contained” and would never be a threat to this vital region or the US is a joke. The UN and the US under Clinton had walked away from the situation. Meanwhile France was pushing hard to have all sanctions dropped so they could rake in their lucrative oil contracts. Bush did the right thing in bringing this situation to a head and flushing out the real intensions in the UN.

First, I would like to second Aquilla's opinion that this was a good topic, and very-well worded by Artemise. Let's hope that the posts here can stay as objective--we might all get something out of it then.



I agree with Ted that the blame game, especially on an issue as important as this, is a waste of time and not conducive to actually improving the sitation. I believe the problems to be investigated were structural, and it should be in everyone's interest to see that the are resolved. Partisan politics should play no role here (exactly which party is for reduced national security?). This is the problem with these type of investigations in general--they tend to be more political than objective, which is also why those related to the issue are reluctant to testify.



I am not completely sure that 'swift and immediate action' wasn't taken. Given the facts, the action taken at that point in time would have been to try and corroborate them. I haven't seen much to indicate that this wasn't what happened, with the exception of the lack of response to the FBI report indicating suspicious activity in flight training schools--which unfortunately could easily have unraveled the whole plot in time. However, this is a failing of the FBI, not the administration. There are questions here which do need to be answered, but I think it premature to place blame until all parties involved have had a chance to address them. I suspect many of the issues raised were not acted upon because the evidence could not be corroborated. So, the question then becomes 'Why not?'. I think steps have already been put in place to try and alleviate the systemic problems that existed, but it would be good to see what the commission has to say on this. Unfortunately, I see politics getting involved here again--many of these measures received bi-partisan support, and neither side will be very motivated to criticize their own work.

So much for what I expect to see--what I'd like to see is a completely objective analysis of what happened prior to 9-11, what issues led to the failure of the intelligence community to put things together in time, and what should be done about it. Included in this would be an analysis of actions already taken (Homeland Security Act, Patriot Act, etc), whether they are addressing the root causes, and also whether they have created any new issues which need to be resolved.

I would have been for some sort of multinational effort to control AQ & bin laden in the light of Clarke's report, but probably not taking over Afghanistan. I would have been for following up on FBI intelligence regarding internal threats.

What I've been hearing is that it isn't practical to follow up on every indication of threat to the US. Why not? Isn't that law enforcement? Is the FBI that understaffed? If so, then we have a problem.

The following conversation happened this morning:

"I gave Tim group leadership once. He asked, since he had leadership, if he could make someone else the leader. I said 'No, you can delegate tasks but not the responsibility.'"

It was one of those Zen moments.

If the commission is guilty of the blame game, the administration is equally guilty of passing the buck.

I think you might be amazed at the sheer volume of such information that has to be filtered through. I think I saw somewhere that the FBI gets something like 30,000 potential threats daily, just regarding threats on the President. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of information that has to be filtered through on a topic as big as national security. You can't possibly staff up enough to investigate everything thoroughly--you need to implement filtering mechanisms. This is where the focus of the investigation should be: why didn't certain facts make it through these filters, and, if they did, why wasn't more action taken.

9/11 couldnt have been prevented and neither can all future attacks. It is going to happen and unless we turn ourself into a police state it will happen. The US is to large and the funding needed to protect us in this current era isnt here and it never will be. We may stop them here and there and we may stop them 95% of the time but they will strike us. I would say its simple mathmatics. We shouldnt be looking to blame Americans for 9/11 we should punish the people who carried it out. Neither Clinton or Bush is at fault.

I would agree with what the others have said about there is blame to go all around with in the government. Whether it was funding, personnel or just plain asleep at the wheel.

The part that disturbs me with all of this is it seems certain information was getting to the top of both adminstrations and was not acted on. For instance, about Al-Qaeda wanting to hijack aircraft, sorry to say during the Bush adminstration it not informing the FAA of this information if not just to be on a higher alert status at the security check points and in the control towers.

But as even Kalabus has said we won't be able to stop all terrorist attacks, just look at the Israeli Palestine conflict and that shows you can not stop terrorists you just have to make it harder for them to succeed.

For solutions if I was on the commission when it comes to the actual interior of an commercial airline I think they actually have done a pretty good job at protecting us from further terrorist attacks except for the cargo area with mail and shipped cargo not being scanned. I would also suggest tighter security at our borders with scanners of all the types needed as well at ports. I know this will cost alot of money but as we have shored up the commercial airline for the most part they will try to take advantages in different ways in my opinion. I would also include some type of security checks for commercial bus and trains like they have already started to do but more needs to be done.

For the libs, what actions were possible that would not have caused ire and suspicion Pre-911 ? Would we have listened to Richard Clarke then? Could they have sold us an attack on Afghanistan, The Taliban or Bin Laden?

This is sort of a hard question because look at what happened to Bill Clinton when he used bombs to hit the Al-Qaeda training camps, when it was said he used it to deflect the news about Monica. He definitely would not have gotten the support needed to go in after Al-Qaeda with nothing more than bombs. But as the information was becoming more and more clear with evidence that Al-Qaeda was behind the Cole bombing I hope that there would have been support for an invasion to capture or kill Al-Qaeda members.

The one thing that they have done which is definitely good is creating a Homeland Security Office. Where all intelligence information can be accumulated at and vetted to try to help connect the dots. Between the CIA watching someone outside of the country to the FBI watching someone that has entered our country that the CIA knew about but was unable to forward the information to the FBI because of the laws that the government set up.

Questions like this is why I decided to register on AD. Thanks, Artemise.

Questions for debate:
How would you decipher the testimonies if you were a commissioner ( in the ultimate blame game)?
The answer to this will probably betray my more idealist principles. I think if the commission members find themselves swept up in the finger pointing that seems to go on at times, they will ultimately fail in their charter, which I grabbed from their website.



Certainly the words "full and complete account" indicate perhaps some holding to task of the human elements & decisions made (ie, blame), but as I think more than one person has testified during the hearings, the critical outcome from this process should be to make recommendations to address the systemic failures in the lines of communication between governmental agencies and to redress the clearly inadequate capabilities of our agencies of intelligence & law enforcement areas in the post cold-war era.

As a commissioner, I think the decryption of testimony should spend less time on whether Ashcroft or Pickard is lying and more on identifying where the gaps in communication are, where the shortfalls in intelligence gathering, analysis, and action are, and reconcile that with some of the reforms that have already taken place.

For the libs, what actions were possible that would not have caused ire and suspicion Pre-911 ? Would we have listened to Richard Clarke then? Could they have sold us an attack on Afghanistan, The Taliban or Bin Laden?

I think for the answer to that, you need look no further than Clinton's actions in the months prior to the Millennium celebration. If the account given in Clarke's book is correct, Clinton was holding near daily principles meetings in order to understand where the potential threats were in the days leading up to 12/31/99. It is my belief that those meetings and and the preparations that took place during that time (none of which were invasive for the American public) were critical in ensuring that no act of terrorism took place in North America during those celebrations. Specific Al Qaeda plots on US soil were discovered and avoided during that time (one was LAX, the other escapes me at the moment).

Listening to Clarke more might have helped, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'm not going to raise the questions of what was and was not said between him and Conde. As others have pointed out already, I don't believe an attack on Afghanistan or the Taliban (other than lobbing Tomahawks, which had already been done) would have been politically possible before 9-11. Without Pakistan or Uzbekhistan's support, the logistics of such an attack simply weren't possible. Never mind the question of whether the political capital existed at the time to sell it to the American people or the world.

Doc