<< Now [Brian] let's talk about your ability to imagine since you have so brazenly challenged mine.
Imagine (if you can) that you held info you knew could effect the lives of your fellow Americans, would you allow some memo from some congress creature (and inspite of lawyers) prevent you from getting that life or death information into the right hands? Or would you find some way around that memo (even if you erroneously believed it to be the law)in order to protect American lives? Or would you lay low (erroneously slouching behind the skirts of gorelick's law like some sort of wussie) allowing three thousand plus souls to perish because you feared that you might somehow violate the law and in the process ruin your army career?
What's your call [Brian]? >>
To such an unimaginative challenge I shall dig [The very tips of the fingers of one hand] into my bag of tricks and experience of the kind of folks to whom you allude and draw you a picture.
In the process I shall keep the necessity that you employ any imagination to the absolute minimum.
It is important, though, that I most emphatically point out to you that although I have been exposed to the kind of poor fish I suggest you cannot imagine, I am not one of them.
As to whom I am referring, imagine if you can that America is a massive talent pool. Then imagine the 25 thousand or so of to-some-slight-degree-or-other FRee enterprise American busnesses, companies, corporations and other employers, all of which get to fish, net, seine, trawl, long-line and drift-net the American talent pool.
Before the feral and other gummints get to dredge the pool's bottom for what's left -- and some tounge-chewin' babblin' idiot floatsam and jetsom to bring up the quota hire numbers -- and gets to put them all in charge of its agencies.
Then imagine (if you can) that every one of those held info he knew could effect the lives of his fellow Americans allowed some memo from some congress creature [And in spite of lawyers] to prevent him from getting that life or death information into the right hands.
OR TO ANY PLACE WHERE IT MET ALL OF THE OTHER KEY PIECES OF INFORMATION THAT COMPLETED AN OTHERWISE UNIMAGINED AND INVISIBLE-TO-ALL-BUT-A-VERY-FEW-OF-US SECURITY MOSAIC.
The imagine that none of those who held those pieces of information bothered to find any way around that memo [Some even believing it to be the law, some being too bloody stupid and/or indolent to notice - others believing that continuing to support the Clinton Crime Family pre-empted any other course of action and still others being too damned evil and/or mean-spirited to care] in order to protect American lives.
And imagine that every last one of them but one [Who is at present for his courage being stripped of his honor and Marine Corps pension] continued to lay low [Maliciously and/or erroneously slouching behind the skirts of the Gorelicker's law like the every sort of totalitarian-socialist agenda-driven wussies they are] and allowed three thousand plus souls to perish because he feared that he might somehow violate the law and in the process ruin his army career?
Get it?
Good.
Now you are imagining precisely what happened.
Blessings -- Brian
Nothing personal Brian but were you actually there? And if not, how do state with such certitude "what happened"? Hundreds of people (bureaucrats) worked the topic of terrorism with no sense of urgency prior to 9-11-01. THEY PROCESSED INFORMATION but they were so numb that they did not see the big picture....that alQuaeda had declared war on us and they meant it....FBI and CIA ignored (slept through) all the processing that should have set off bells and sirens of alarm. The government had the books of Ramsey Yousef and Sheik Rachman in New York gathering dust in the "evidence room". They were too lazy to read it and analyze it.
I am not surprised Able Danger tagged Atta and knew he was active. Other departments and agengies probably had sufficient data to detect what was coming, but didn't believe it. Where I was they called those people who reached those kinds of conclusions "paranoids".
If the 9/11 Commission told the truth they would say these agencies of the US Government had the information and that if they had put it together they would have prevented the attack: FBI, CIA, and several DoD elements. They simply guarded the information they had, failed to share it, and failed to connect the dots.
In that sense the 9/11 Commission is a whitewash. It covers up the facts, and hides them from the historical record. As they are politicians first and Americans second, the Commisioners believe their duty was to enlighten the public just enough to make us think it all came out. They think they protected the government from a devastating scandal.