Officials ignored warning signs, 9/11 panel says

[Natoma]

I agree there will never be such a thing as 100% terrorism free environment. It will always be there in some way shape or form. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

 

[John Reynolds]

Ive seen a few clarke interviews, and everytime someone asks him about how much blame he should take. He starts out saying some, within seconds transitioning into attacking bush and his admin. He was the one who was responsible for keeping an eye on terrorist and protecting the country. I just didnt realize it was a blind eye.

later,
epic

Honestly, if he is saying that you gotta' admit that's more than you'd get out of most career federal workers or politicians.

 

[Fred]

Natoma, I think your sources are a little bit on the sensationalist side. Newsweek et al! I could tell you on a personal lvl what draconian security exists even dealing with physicists who have had access in the past to secure information dealing with nuclear research. Let's just say, its ... excessive and frankly highly intrusive.

The point is, no security system is infallible in an open free society (as Powell today presented very clearly). Spain for instance was on a high alert, and had many active intelligence agents looking for terrorist plots.

Despite all those things, something still managed to get through. Thats life!

Retrospectively assigning blame is kinda boring, and unproductive. For instance the panel was pretty much asking why Clinton and Bush1 hadn't actively invaded Afghanistan.

Powell essentially said
a) It would have been a PR disaster (L233 et al would be lambasting America on unfounded documentation and intelligence supporting our drastic claims of AQ's importance w.r.t to global terrorism and breaking a countries rights of Habius Corpus)

b) The threat and operational lvl of AQ was not known with sufficient precision to ascertain what military action was needed or not, or if such a thing would even be productive.

Witness already the horrible PR Bush2 has received w.r.t to Iraq. Essentially we are doing there, what we should have done with Afghanistan 10 years earlier. And surely Saddam is less of an open question than say the Taliban at that time.

Any way you cut it, this sort of thing is hindsight 20/20 and frankly only of importance academically and for political purposes.

More productive lines of insight would be on current lvls of security.

 

[Natoma]

Newsweek, TIME, Businessweek, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, 9/11 commission. Where else do you want me to go for my info? Whitehouse.gov? J/K.

Seriously though,

I agree there will never be such a thing as 100% terrorism free environment. It will always be there in some way shape or form. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

As for current security, see my last post on page 1.

 

[Natoma]

Witness already the horrible PR Bush2 has received w.r.t to Iraq. Essentially we are doing there, what we should have done with Afghanistan 10 years earlier. And surely Saddam is less of an open question than say the Taliban at that time.

Any way you cut it, this sort of thing is hindsight 20/20 and frankly only of importance academically and for political purposes.

Did you know that the intelligence resources were diverted away from Al-Qaeda in order to concentrate on Iraq in 2002?

The problem with Iraq is not that it wasn't a good thing to do. It's the rushed manner in which we went there that I have a problem with. As Vince said to me in another thread, "So you're not upset with the fact we got rid of Saddam. You're upset with how we went in. Is that right?"

 

[speng]

Fred said it much better than me.

I don't want to see a panel searching for who to blame...I want to see a panel searching for how to make things better now. I know there is a need to find the "cause" before you can fix it, but from my point of view this panel is only looking for who to blame....waste of time and money.

Also, if you think the borders are being ignored you are wrong. They may not be "addressed" properly and we probably don't have the resources and money to do it.

How effective is our fight against terrorism today? That should be what is constantly evaluated.

Not who caused us to fail prior to 9/11.

Speng.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-23-911-hearings_x.htm

Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.

If both failed, "the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action," the report said. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the strategy had a three-year timeframe.

 

[John Reynolds]

I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try and take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.
On the morning of the 12th DOD's focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz...was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled it off by itself, without a state sponsor--Iraq must have been helping them.

I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April when the Administration had finally held its first deputy secretary-level meeting on terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the 1993 attack on the World Trade CEnter, saying al Qaeda could not have done that alone and must have had help from Iraq. The focus on al Qaeda was wrong, he said in April, we must go after Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. He had rejected my assertion and CIA's that there had been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against the United States since 1993. Now this line of thinking was coming back.

By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the objectives of our responses and "getting Iraq." Secretary Powell pushed back, urging focus on al Qaeda. Relieved to have some support, I thanked Colin Powell and his deputy, Rich Armitage. "I thought I was missing something here," I vented. "Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbour."

Powell shook his head. "It's not over yet."

Excerpt from Clarke's book.

 

[Natoma]

Speng,

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

That's my reason for making sure we probe every last nook and cranny of what went wrong then, and compare it to what we're doing today. Did you see my list of current problems we have today on page 1?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

But, Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed administration efforts to fight terrorism, an implicit rebuttal to criticism in a recent book by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, who is expected to testify Wednesday.

"President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities and it was," Powell said.

And more from Powell

http://news.findlaw.com/usatoday/docs/911rpt/powell32304stmnt.pdf

Let me return to our diplomatic activities. From early 2001 onward, we pressed the Taliban directly and sought the assistance of Pakistan and other neighboring states to put additional pressure on the Taliban to expel bin Laden and to shut down al Qaida.

On February 8, 2001, less than three weeks after this Administration came into office, we closed the Taliban office in New York, implementing the UN resolution passed the previous month.

In March, we repeated the warning to the Taliban that they would be held responsible for any al Qaida attack against US interests.

In April 2001, senior Department officials traveled to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan to lay out our key concerns, including about terrorism and Afghanistan. We asked these Central Asian nations to coordinate their efforts with the various Afghan players who were opposed to the Taliban. We also used what we called the “Bonn Groupâ€￾ of concerned countries to bring together Germany, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and the United States to build a common approach to Afghanistan. At the same time, we encouraged and supported the “Rome Groupâ€￾ of expatriate Afghans to explore alternatives to the Taliban....

...During the period I just described, we also put into play, in addition to diplomacy and intelligence activities, some of the ideas Dick Clarke’s team had presented that had not been tried by the previous administration. These activities fit the long-term time frame of our strategy and were presented to us that way by Clarke and his team -- that is, as 3-5 year actions and not immediate actions. If these ideas made sense, we explored them and, if they looked workable, we adopted them.

 

[Natoma]

So far everyone is towing the administration line. Clinton officials say Clinton did everything possible. Bush officials say Bush is doing everything possible. The 9/11 committee on the other hand is poo pooing both of those stances. They should be releasing their comprehensive report detailing their findings in a couple of months.

It's about time we found out what the hell happened.

The 9/11 commission's official report can't come soon enough.

 

[nutball]

Out of interest, was anything paralleling this inquiry held into the events of 7/12/41?

 

[Althornin]

the commission is a waste of time, an anachronism, a stupid finger pointing exersize designed to appease the unwashed masses of the american public.
Its throwing good money after bad. The fact that it even exists, that we cannot say "It happened, lets focus on how it happened rather than WHO it happened under" speaks volumes about the sad state of american society.
Strangely enough, Natoma is on the side of the masses, despite his differing social perspective. I guess i can see now how our ancecestors fled persecution, ended up here, and began persecuting.

 

[RussSchultz]

Out of interest, was anything paralleling this inquiry held into the events of 7/12/41?

Assuming you mean Pearl Harbor, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pearl_Harbor[/url]]The US government had six official enquiries into the attack - The Roberts Commission (1941), the Hart Inquiry (1944), the Army Pearl Harbor Board (1944), the Naval Court of Inquiry (1944), the Congressional Inquiry (1945-46) and the top-secret inquiry by Secretary Stimson authorized by Congress and carried out by Henry Clausen (the Clausen Inquiry (1945)).

 

[Ty]

Ive seen a few clarke interviews, and everytime someone asks him about how much blame he should take. He starts out saying some, within seconds transitioning into attacking bush and his admin. He was the one who was responsible for keeping an eye on terrorist and protecting the country. I just didnt realize it was a blind eye.

later,
epic

Condi Rice said he did a great job.

And not all whistleblowers are bad. Or is it just the ones that criticize your political leanings?

 

[Sabastian]

It is partisan finger pointing and the aim is to demonize the current administration into admitting that they were aware of the impending terrorist act and imply that possibly they are responsible for the event that 9/11 was.

Democrats had better start to get in line with the whole matter of fighting terrorism. Terrorist acts won't go away with a change of American political parties. Dealing with the rising threat of terrorism will be apart of an elected democrat as well. The whole matter is rooted in Islamic fundamentalism.. it has little to do with the elected leadership of America.(However the left has trumpeted that message very loudly.) This is entirely a matter of social disparities between the west and radical Islamic fundamentalist ideology. This is not so much a political struggle as it is a social one. It is quite nearly what would be better acknowledged as a culture clash. It is a clash between western styled moral relativist and Islamic moral absolutism. Dam it I know bloody well I am going to draw fire for this post here. Islam wants to spread.. to the west in particular but the secular nature of our society really stifles the whole process. Western culture is not only American it applies across the board to western states. Europe is wrong to be critical of the current administration for its aggressive rejection of terrorist and their demands. North Americans, Europeans et al ought to stop this political wrangling. The war on terrorism is not about George Bush Jr. it is about social values that both the left and the right are serious about. The war against terrorism ought to be bi-partisan but it is not right now because of political opportunism. I will wager that if a democrat is elected in the coming US federal election that terrorist activities will not cease.

The war on terror is cultural.. from a western perspective it ought to be about a cultural war on Islamic fundamentalism. Soon enough the left will clue in to that and all this partisan wrangling will be done with. That is the cold hard truth of the entire matter. We will get to see how culturally relativistic the left is when they are besieged by Islamic fundamentalist terrorist activities.

 

[Natoma]

the commission is a waste of time, an anachronism, a stupid finger pointing exersize designed to appease the unwashed masses of the american public.
Its throwing good money after bad. The fact that it even exists, that we cannot say "It happened, lets focus on how it happened rather than WHO it happened under" speaks volumes about the sad state of american society.
Strangely enough, Natoma is on the side of the masses, despite his differing social perspective. I guess i can see now how our ancecestors fled persecution, ended up here, and began persecuting.

I can't say I quite understand what you're referring to. I've been saying over and over that I don't care who it happened under. I want to know what happened, when, and why, so that we can figure out how to stop it from happening again if possible.

Soooooo, where exactly does this post come from?

 

[speng]

I want to know what happened, when, and why, so that we can figure out how to stop it from happening again if possible.

And folks in this thread have been saying including me...that this 9/11 panel will not serve this process.


They are looking for "who to blame"...and what "should have been done then" and "who is at fault".

Not, what was the problem, how has our systems changed to address it, how can our current and future processes help to reduce the chances.

If you listen to their questioning, that's what it boils down to...and is just a waste.

Asking Collin Powell questions with a smirk on her face trying to find gaps in his answers to find someone at fault is a waste of time.

Speng.

 

[Natoma]

It is partisan finger pointing and the aim is to demonize the current administration into admitting that they were aware of the impending terrorist act and imply that possibly they are responsible for the event that 9/11 was.

Democrats had better start to get in line with the whole matter of fighting terrorism.

The 9/11 commission is completely bipartisan and has found fault with the Clinton and Bush Administration. You should read up on current events before making assumptions Sabastian.

Regarding the rest of your post, there was a very good "Tim Russert" show last Saturday in which Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes was guest. The gist of his argument was this. We're killing terrorists, but not faster than they are being bred, in part because of our policies in the middle east. A leaked Rumsfeld memo stated this assessment as well.

I'm trying to find the transcript now. It was pretty brilliant imo regarding our strategies in the middle east, and how we're not only fighting a terrorist war, but a culture war as you stated. However, it's not necessarily the culture of "destroying islam" as some might take it, but propping up Islam and giving those who live in those countries another way of doing things.

One example he used was the investment in India. When nuclear tensions arose between India and Pakistan, it was the nascent software community that caused India to back down in part because of the pressure they felt from their suppliers. Instead of preparing for war, an entire generation is preparing to move up the corporate ladder. This, he argued, is one of the benefits of outsourcing and raising up other countries economically as part of long term solutions to combatting terrorism and war in under developed nations.

 

[Natoma]

Speng,

Politicians will be politicians and frankly I don't give a damn about them and how they're going to use this information to their own political ends. Am I being optimistic that this commission will get to the bottom of things? Maybe. But right now it's the best thing we've got.