Assessing the Blame for 9/11

NY Times ^ | March 25, 2004 | NY Times Editorial Board

[Jim Noble]

The seminal moment of this week's hearings on 9/11 surely came yesterday when Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton administrations, opened his testimony by apologizing to the families whose loved ones died in the terror attacks. The government, Mr. Clarke said, had failed them, "and I failed you." He added, "We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed." It suddenly seemed that after the billions of words uttered about that terrible day, Mr. Clarke had found the ones that still needed saying.

The two days of hearings by the commission investigating the attacks have been invaluable in helping the American people better understand the chain of miscommunications, wrong guesses and misplaced priorities that left the nation so poorly defended against the terrorists. Mr. Clarke, by accepting responsibility, offered the American people the freedom to hold their leaders accountable for an event most had come to see as an unstoppable bolt from the blue.

Mr. Clarke is clearly haunted by the thought that if things had gone differently, the attacks might have been averted. That seems like the longest of long shots. But there are still plenty of questions to be answered about what happened, particularly about the apparent lack of urgency in the Bush administration's antiterrorism efforts before 9/11.

The Clinton administration also made mistakes. Although aware of the danger posed by Osama bin Laden, it was somehow unable to create and carry out an effective strategy to deal with him. Bill Clinton, distracted by the threat of impeachment, failed to educate the American people adequately about the nature of the danger, and what it might take to fight it. Senior officials from the Clinton and Bush administration testified, one after another, that in the pre-9/11 world, they could not have gone further in trying to run down Mr. bin Laden because, they believed, the country and our allies would not have supported it.

But there was at least no question about the Clinton administration's commitment to combat terrorism, and on occasion, like the December 1999 alert that appears to have averted an attack on the Los Angeles airport, it produced results.

The attitude of the Bush administration seems harder to pin down. Mr. Clarke's conclusion was that after George Bush became president, neither he nor the terrorism agenda got the same top-level attention. The Bush administration officials who testified denied that vociferously. Their arguments suffered from the absence of Condoleezza Rice, the person to whom Mr. Clarke reported. Ms. Rice has been doing the rounds of talk shows in an attempt to bolster her argument that the administration had found Mr. Clarke's plans wanting and immediately began a full-bore effort to come up with a new antiterrorism strategy. What the nation deserved to hear her address publicly before the commission is why that process took eight months. A new plan was not approved by the White House until the eve of the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

The real impression gleaned from the hearings is not that the Bush administration was indifferent to the threat of terror, but that its officials had trouble fully understanding it. Ms. Rice was trained as a Sovietologist. Many of Mr. Bush's other top advisers are also former cold warriors who remained loyal to the agenda of the gulf war era, the early 1990's. Their mind-set did not allow for the possibility of an extranational threat not orchestrated by any one particular government. Once 9/11 happened, they organized an effective attack on Afghanistan, where Mr. bin Laden had been operating, but they then turned their attention to Iraq, a country that no one in Mr. Clarke's operation regarded as an incubator of international terrorism.

Despite attempts by a few commission members to paint Mr. Clarke as a disgruntled former employee trying to get publicity for his new book, the former counterterrorism chief was an impressive, reasonable witness. He has done the country a service in focusing attention on the failures leading up to 9/11. The only problem with his apology was that so few of those failures really seemed to be his.

[Jim Noble]

Only the editorials endorsing Bill Clinton for reelection in 1996 and the editorial endorsing her heinous for Senator in 2000 even approach this one in dishonesty.

"Distracted by impeachment"? Is that really why Clinton did not respond to the 1993 WTC bombing?

Was Monica really a Halliburton plant?

What a disgrace for a once-proud editorial voice.

[jocon307]

Evidently Mr. Clark retains credibility only with the editorial board of the NY Times. They have truly become pathetic.

Later today we'll see the fish-wrap ping-picture on this thread, and it will be richly deserved.

[cardinal4]

Bill Clinton, distracted by the threat of impeachment, failed to educate the American people adequately about the nature of the danger, and what it might take to fight it.

Wrong answer. WTC #1 was in 93, Somalia as well. The MAG bombing was in 1995 and Al Khobar Towers was in 96. Also, ramzi Yousef's plot to blow up 10 airliners simultaneously was discovered by the Philipines in 95. Impeachment occured in 98..

[trebb]

The guy decides to do some grandstanding to up the sales of his book and pretend some humility, and the NYT thinks he's great. It should also be noted that he has absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by starting a scandal of "failure".

[Bahbah]

Oh stop with your facts already.

[Timeout]

No, a better example of the Times' dishonesty (bias) is their current defense of the wealthy donors and independent groups funding the donkeys' presidential race.

Their support for McCain/Feingold was totally grounded in the corruptive influences of large donations. No editorial page screamed louder about getting the "undisclosed, uncontrolled large contributions out of the election process". Now, less than a year later, the donkeys have become totally dependent on even less-disclosed, less-controlled donations...and the Times has no problem with it.

[Timeout]

Bill Clinton, distracted by the threat of impeachment,...

Of course, if he hadn't lied from the get-go....

[jedi150]

Like always from the Demo craps, do a misdeed and blame it on the other guy or neglect a responsibility and blame it on the other guy. Better yet, tell a lie, tell it long enough and loud enough for it to be perceived as truth. Scary thing is it works in this flock of sheeple and brain deads that seem to make up at least 50 percent of the population.

[jedi150]

Oh, I forgot to add to reinforce it by having 2 Senators (Hitlery and Scary) saying Republicans are all liars and crooks!

[StonyBurk]

Richard has no credibility.When he points a finger of blame
at the government he was part of (and still is?) And insists
your governemnt failed you -and I failed you but you really need to know those things I said before dont mean
as much a swhat I'm saying today and none of it will mean
anything tomorrow the guy i sjust pathetic. NO administration since the 70's ever wanted to consider or
allow Americans consider the Muslim Jihad against America had begun -and if our system of law enforcement is Only
Reactive then until some bad a__ does somehting nothing can be done this 9-11 commission is just a fart in the bathtub.

[eeriegeno]

What is interesting about this 'blame placement' panel is that they have refused to hear about Clinton's confession about having UBL offered from Sudan in 1998 when taking out binLaden could possibly have prevented 9/11, BUT they will hear hours of conflicting testimony from a disgruntled former employee, who just happens to be selling a book, who is harshly critical of GW Bush. All this just in time for the 2004 election cycle? My how convenient. I bet this gives the families of 9/11 victims a real warm, fuzzy feeling that this panel is arriving at the truth?

[risk]

I doubt taking out bin Laden would have prevented 9/11. But it would have signaled an end to the "crime files" approach to fighting terrorism.

The "Iraq is making terrorism worse" and "killing sheikh Yassin will bring more rage" positions are two sides of the same argument: wait, don't do anything. After all, someone might get hurt.

We need to face it: this is a world war, and while we're fighting it, some of us and some of our enemy will die.

[ChadGore]

I blame AQ

[risk]

I blame al Qaeda -- and the underpinnings of a dead civilization that some fanatics want to revive at all cost. Some of them are secular, some of them are religious. But they wall want to destroy all vestigates of western success.

[omniscient]

Scary thing is it works in this flock of sheeple and brain deads that seem to make up at least 50 percent of the population.

This entire hearing is a brilliant piece of Democrat propaganda. The facts (e.g., the Fox transcript), when they contradict the Demo line, can simply be brushed aside as irrelevant, while emotions are stirred up by gestures such as Clarke's phony apology, Kerrey's phony indignation about confidentiality, and the blatantly politically-motivated audience's applause for Clarke, as if he is some self-sacrificing whistle-blower rather than a shameless hawker of another literary hatchet job. Clarke is extremely smooth and slippery, and his act will deceive many of those who are looking for an explanation of 9/11 that suits their preconceptions.

[maica]

When spolesmen for the administration come out to refute Clarke's testimony, the Dems call "foul."

However, so far I have seen Chris Dodd on Imus and Harold Ford on Fox this morning, using the 'families' as cover for their attempt to bring down GWB.

I'm sure that dem spokesmen are all over the broadcast networks today as well.

When the White House doesn't fold up and cry "Uncle" the nasty dems just get nastier.

I am heartened by the fact that they are squealing so loudly. We must have hit a nerve.

[GailA]

Where's the mandatory BARF alert on nyslimes articles about GW?

[Luis Gonzalez]

I keep going over Clarke's testimony in my head.

Basically what he said was that in the case of 9/11, Bush acted wrong by not acting pre-emptively based on sketchy information to stop the possibility of a terrorist attack, but in the case of Iraq, he acted wrong by taking pre-emptive actions to stop possible terrorist attacks, based on solid intelligence from our allies and the United Nations?

Is it me or...?

[maica]

Reduntant = NYT + Barf alert

[Semper Vigilantis]

Did these guys watch the same hearings I did?!?