The Deafness Before the Storm (suggests Bush White House ignored pre-9/11 warnings)

The New York Times ^ | September 10, 2012 | Kurt Eichenwald

[EveningStar]

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal...

[T]he administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it...

[Doogle]

maybe this clown Eichenwald should try to find out what sandy berger was stealing from the national archives.....

[Sylvester McMonkey McBean]

I thought it was Clinton’s administration that refused on multiple occasions to have bin Laden served up?

I must have my history wrong.

[I see my hands]

The unassailable fact is if you post left wing propaganda you are a left wing propagandist. A=A

[Nifster]

and why do we continue to post the same crqappy article over asnd over??? it is written by a POS and it is a POS. Why give him space???

[Rembrandt]

There is no BUSH on the ticket this time. This is just an attempt to distract attention from the Messiah’s ineffectiveness.

[EveningStar]

Who would give a crap about this anyway?

The Left certainly does, and they need to be challenged and discredited for bringing this up ad nauseum.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”The Left certainly does, and they need to be challenged and discredited for bringing this up ad nauseum”

I have nothing against you posting it to show what they are up to, but the average person wont care about this either way.

[EveningStar]

The unassailable fact is if you post left wing propaganda you are a left wing propagandist. A=A

Fallacious reasoning on your part.

[EveningStar]

and why do we continue to post the same crqappy article over asnd over??? it is written by a POS and it is a POS. Why give him space???

You can always ask a mod to delete the thread. :)

[EveningStar]

There is no BUSH on the ticket this time. This is just an attempt to distract attention from the Messiah’s ineffectiveness.

I think you may be on to something. :)

[sport]

I agree with I see my hands.

[jersey117]

They are the scum of the earth over at the times. They should all be on the unemployment line. They can spew these lies about President Bush but can’t dig into Obama’s commie background.

[I see my hands]

[annieokie]

rofl

[Zhang Fei]

The one thing for which Bush should have been pilloried, his politically-correct, yet moronic criticisms of racial profiling (a key characteristic of "compassionate conservatism"), goes unmentioned in the New York Times:

LOS ANGELES, Sep. 11 -- Ironically, in an attempt to appeal to the growing number of Arab-American and Muslim voters, exactly eleven months ago George W. Bush called for weakening airport security procedures aimed at deterring hijackers.

On Oct. 11, 2000, during the second presidential debate, the Republican candidate attacked two anti-terrorist policies that had long irritated Arab citizens of the U.S.

At present [i.e., the evening of 9/11], of course, there is no definite evidence that Arabs or Muslims were involved in today's terrorist assaults. Many incorrectly assumed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that Middle Easterners were involved. Nor is there direct evidence that Bush's attack on airline safety procedures made the four simultaneous hijackings easier to pull off.

Bush said during the nationally televised debate, "Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what's called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that." Then-Governor Bush went on, "My friend, Sen. Spence Abraham [the Arab-American Republic Senator from Michigan], is pushing a law to make sure that, you know, Arab-Americans are treated with respect. So racial profiling isn't just an issue at the local police forces. It's an issue throughout our society. And as we become a diverse society, we're going to have to deal with it more and more."

Four years later, a USAir ticket agent spoke out:

Michael Tuohey was going to work like he had for 37 years, but little did he know that this day would change his life forever. On September 11, 2001, Tuohey, a ticket agent for U.S. Airways, checked in terrorist Mohammed Atta for a flight that started a chain of events that would change history.

Tuohey was working the U.S. Airways first-class check-in desk when two men, Atta and his companion Abdul Azziz-Alomari, approached his counter. From all outward appearances, the men seemed to be normal businessmen, but Tuohey felt something was wrong.

"I got an instant chill when I looked at [Atta]. I got this grip in my stomach and then, of course, I gave myself a political correct slap...I thought, 'My God, Michael, these are just a couple of Arab businessmen.'"

To what extent was this ticket agent (and other ticket agents) influenced by Bush's lemming-like parroting of Clinton's and Gore's crusade against racial profiling? If there is one aspect of Bush's policies that led to 9/11, this is it. Of course, the Dems had the same position on profiling, which is to say that whichever party won in 2000, 9/11 was a foregone position, given the politically-correct ethos fostered by both party establishments. Now, if Clinton hadn't held office from 1993 to 2000, bin Laden might have been killed by a GOP president. But that's all water under the bridge.

 

[MNJohnnie]

Yes the 09-11 Commission totally debunked this nonsense but like all good Progressive Fascists, the NYT never lets an inconvenient truth get in the way of their propaganda

[annieokie]

YEP.

What about NIXON?

What about Halliburton?

What about ........ (fill in the blank)

They are beginning to sound like Muslims finding one thing after another to be pissed about.

They are getting very predictable these days, now that their President EMPTY CHAIR has nothing to run on.

[Voter62vb]

Focus on Bush....no no...dont look at all the fail surrounding DNC-Obama Inc......focus on Bush....agi voo Bush.

[dead]

An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

"Neoconservative," like "crypto-fascist" is usually a good indicator of a non-serious journalist. While the term, in certain contexts, can have specific meaning, when used like this "neoconservative" just means "very conservative, even worse than normal conservatives" to this writer and the typical NYT reader.

Once again, there is no specificity in any of the claims. News that Al Qaeda had plans to kill Americans was not exactly news.

If Bush and his merry band of cryptoneoconservativebullies had proceeded with the only action available to them based on the non-specific information - capturing, detaining and interogating recent islamic arrivals, particularly young islamic men between 20 and 40 years of age from countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Afghanistan - Kurt Eichenwald and his ilk would have started calling them Nazis. And every leftwing legal organization in the country would have been filing appeals on the poor victims of his islamaphobia.

[TBP]

Even if that were true, the Bush Administration had been in office for 8 months when 9/11 occurred, while Clinton had had 8 years to do something (including making a stronger response to the 1993 bombing) and had been offered bin Laden 3 times, passing on him each time. Bush’s share of the responsibility for 9/11 is small at most. Clinton’s is humongous.