George W. Bush took office in January 2001. But even before he officially became CNC, GWB would have received preparatory security briefings.
Certainly upon taking office, He would have been immediately briefed on the full national security situation - including all the lintel on Osama bin Laden (OBL) - the same lintel President Bill Clinton had, but failed to act on.
Keep in mind too that the ongoing history clearly demonstrated that the U.S. was on the receiving end of a continuously escalating campaign of asymmetrical warfare, planned and conducted by OBL and his Al Qaeda terrorist organization: the 1993 bombing of the WTC, the 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the June 2001 attack on the USS Cole.
Recall that the Clinton Administration balked on terminating OBL, when the opportunity was presented by the Afghanistan opposition forces (anti-Taliban).
All this history and intelligence was available to President GWB; yet he either ignored it, or else decided OBL was not worth pursing - IOW, GWB did not consider OBL a credible threat to the United States.
Particularly, since his father was, at one time, head of the CIA, President GWB should have had a greater appreciation for national security issues. For whatever reasons, he did not adequately utilize the resources at his disposal, nor act timely upon the intelligence reports to which he received on a daily basis.
So, yes, it is justifiable to assign some portion of the responsibility to President GWB in failing to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001. Just as much as it is valid to assign responsibility to WJC.
Good post, thanks for the documentation.
No, it really isn’t reasonable unless you decide to analyze the events through hindsight. Even then you conveniently fail to provide context. Such as Bush was coming off one of the most divisive elections in American history with little mandate to do much of anything. conditions were so hostile he was struggling to fill positions in his staff because Democrats were keeping their appointment backed up in committee. This is a man who entered the WH with “W’s ripped off keyboards.
Yet you seem to be under the illusion there was some smooth transition where he peaceably went to work and should have been able to 1) deduce this threat superseded all the other threats on his desk and 2) persuaded a divided republic to take action.
It was never reasonable to blame GWB for 9-11 and no one ever did until several years later because Democrats wanted to break that glow he had around him and win elections again. It was a cynical tactic that paid some dividends but to see it repeated in a Republican primary is a disgrace.
You want to disagree with the decision to go to war, fine, but you go down that road of blaming GWB for 9-11 and you deserve to be called out.