Posted on 05/16/2002 9:37:10 PM PDT by joyce11111
Cheney says U.S. faces threat of worse attack
NEW YORK, May 16
- Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday raised the specter of a new, devastating terror attack on the United States and said Democratic Party criticism of the White House's handling of pre-Sept. 11 terror warnings at such a time was "thoroughly irresponsible".
Cheney said in a speech in New York that an investigation by Congress into possible intelligence failings ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which about 3,000 people were killed, should be handled with great circumspection.
"An investigation must not interfere with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack, because without a doubt a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack still exists," Cheney said at the start of the speech at a dinner marking the 40th anniversary of the New York State Conservative Party.
"The people and agencies responsible for helping us learn about and defeat such an attack are the very ones most likely to be distracted from their critical duties if Congress fails to carry out their obligations in a responsible fashion," Cheney said.
The vice president attacked Democratic Party critics of the White House's handling of pre-Sept. 11 terrorism warnings, saying that suggestions the attacks could have been prevented were "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war."
Key members of Congress had demanded earlier to know if the U.S. government had had enough information to head off the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Was there a failure of intelligence? Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way? These are the things we need to find out," said House of Representatives Democratic leader Richard Gephardt.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he was "gravely concerned."
Administration officials said President George W. Bush had been warned in August of a possible hijack plot, but the intelligence was too general to act upon.
In his speech Cheney said he wanted to tell "my Democratic friends in the Congress is that they need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions".
"The president and I believe that one of our most important responsibilities is to do all that we can to ensure that an attack like 9/11 never happens again," he said.
"We believe that a thorough investigation of the events that led up to 9/11 is entirely appropriate and at the president's direction I've worked with the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees to ensure that they get the necessary cooperation...
"There is an obligation on the part of the Congress to make certain that any investigation is conducted in a professional and responsible manner by members who are knowledgeable and are committed to improving our ability to defend the nation, not those who would seek short term political advantage," Cheney said.
Mr. Cheney, anyone that suggests that the attacks couldn't have been prevented is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy to be a national leader at any time.
I heard Woolsey confirm this account -- including the joke about the plane crash -- in an in-depth interview on NPR a few days ago. Woolsey, a xlinton appointee, chooses his words diplomatically, but he obviously views his former boss with complete contempt.
How could he be president for eight years and never meet with this man? He should be strung up, drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, beheaded and exiled - in whatever order, I don't care.
Instead, he'll probably eventually run the UN.
Woolsey said that during his two years with administration, he had only two meetings with the president. Both included other national security officials. Early on, Woolsey had tried to cultivate a more private relationship by accompanying the professional CIA briefer to his morning session at the White House. Knowing that presidents often invite the briefer -- and the CIA director if he is present -- for a dialogue about the intelligence memos, Woolsey made it a point to be there. But after cooling his heels for an hour each morning for two weeks outside the Oval Office, he gave up.
You know, I generally try to tolerate the Democrats, telling myself they're Americans just like the rest of us, but with a different, less intelligent point of view.
Sometimes I stop telling myself all of that and just admit that they're deliberately out to destroy the country.
But I don't think it's like that for liberals. It's not like the liberals view the country as something distinct, as I would a cockroach, that they have determined should be destroyed, and seek whatever means they can find to do that ... the flip side of Freepers trying to save it.
Liberals en masse are not Darth Vader. They are rat poop. They spread disease and stink in my pantry not because they have deliberately joined the forces of evil, but because they haven't risen to a sufficient level of personal integrity, social responsibility, intellectual competence or spiritual awareness to resist being carriers for disease and pestilance (of our culture, our communities, our families, our schools and the body politic, in this case).
Bump.
Tommy, you should be concerned. You and your Dim cronies have erred. You have made a misstep and you've been unmasked. Pay attention, now. This is called "backlash."
Inexplicably Clinton ignored these recommendations. Why? FBI agents have stated that they were prevented from opening either criminal or national-security cases because of a fear that it would be seen as 'profiling' Islamic charities. While Clinton was 'politically correct,' Hamas flourished.
In failing to heed the signs that America was at war with a deadly adversary, overcome the ideological obstacles created by the liberal biases of his administration and arouse an uninformed public to concern, it was the commander-in-chief who bore primary responsibility. As one former administration official told reporter Joe Klein "Clinton spent less concentrated attention on national defense than any another President in recent memory." Clinton's political advisor Dick Morris flatly charged, "Clinton's failure to mobilize America to confront foreign terror after the 1993 attack [on the World Trade Center] led directly to the 9/11 disaster." According to Morris "Clinton was removed, uninvolved, and distant where the war on terror was concerned."
By Clinton's own account, Monica Lewinsky was able to visit him privately more than a dozen times in the Oval Office. But according to a USA Today investigative report, the head of the CIA could not get a single private meeting with the President, despite the Trade Center bombing of February 26, 1993 or the killing of 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu on October 3 of the same year. "James Woolsey, Clinton's first CIA director, says he never met privately with Clinton after their initial interview. When a small plane crashed on the White House grounds in 1994, the joke inside the White House was, 'that must be Woolsey, still trying to get an appointment.'"
In 1996, an American Muslim businessman and Clinton supporter named Mansoor Ijaz opened up an unofficial channel between the government of the Sudan and the Clinton Administration. At the same time, "the State Department was describing bin Laden as 'the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world' and was accusing the Sudan of harboring terrorists." According to Mansoor, who met with Clinton and Sandy Berger, "President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Among the members of these networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening."
Excellent find - thanks - and to all - hit the phones today, make those calls, send emails, write letters. The RATS want investigations ......... while we are trying to fight a war on terrorism and trying to defned our country from further attacks? OK - let's get some of our investigative experts at FR to work - and leave the federal agencies alone so they can do their jobs of protecting this country! Add in many of the alternative press resources and we could find the truth and get it out for all Americans to know!
As Miss Marple has said - we are not spectators, we are citizens. Let us get busy and get the facts out to the media today.......and don't stop until they acknowledge the Clinton COMPLICITY in the attacks against our country! (instead of claiming President Bush knew in advance what was planned against us and did nothing).
These two "obstructionists" plus other's are going to have a lot of 'splainin' to do. Don't know if anyone else caught it, but the gals/fellows in the United States Military are doing some of their own complaining about these "arm-chair" warriors that think they have a clue as to what is happening. Their interference is making our military very nervous and they want Daschle, Gephardt and other's to butt out with their wild accusations against President Bush. This was brought up by FOX just yesterday.
It didn't. There's nothing new in this "information." The President gets briefed all the time on generic threats. [yawn]
Want to do something? Go here:
Ignorance Making You Ill? Cure It!
for links, tools, & instructions about how to contact a pile of different people, and how to send a link to this story right here ( or anywhere else ) to a "mass email" using Outlook Express.
Do be advised that since I increased my volume of mass emails to letters to editors I have gotten return vollies of virus attacks- my ISP filters them out before the get to my PC, but if yours does not, take appropriate precautions to guard your PC.
I take this as a positive- my emails are simply links with no editorial content; so the other side must fear & loath the information even reaching the public.
No, any hindsight hack sitting behind a keyboard suggesting he knows more about 9/11 than the Vice President is thoroughly an idiot.
That leaves out McKinney.
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