Give us torture, murder lists and large scale spying or we can't prevent terrorist attacks

[noise]

9/11 is constantly referenced to justify the necessity of all these powers. Was the failure to prevent 9/11 due to the lack of vast counterterrorism powers? No. NSA, CIA and FBI all withheld crucial info about known al Qaeda operatives. To date not one single official has credibly explained this conduct. Not one. The closest explanation is Bob Graham's theory that Saudi links to the hijackers were covered up post 9/11. The obvious question is whether the links were covered up before 9/11 which would explain the withheld info.

It's bad enough that US officials have no shame in advocating for police state policies. What makes it much worse is the fact that their advocacy is made possible by lying about the reason 9/11 wasn't prevented.

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, noise.

[msongs]

2. prez pronounces al queda dead, snowden spills the beans, al queda world wide alert this week. odd?

[AverageJoe90]

4. Something's fishy, alright, but it ain't Obama's fault.......n/t

[noise]

5. It goes directly to the issue of good faith

We are expected to believe the overreaction to 9/11 was a good faith effort by panicked officials desperate to prevent another massive terrorist attack. How was it good faith to cover up Saudi links while Bush administration officials deliberately misdirected public focus on Iraq? Or to appoint Philip Zelikow executive director of the 9/11 Commission despite his glaring conflicts of interest?

We have continuity between administrations as the Obama administration basically gave all Bush officials a pass based on premises like wanting to avoiding divisiveness, not wanting to criminalize politics, not wanting a distraction from the legislative agenda and not wanting to distract dedicated intelligence agents from protecting the Homeland. The Obama administration has continued the same sort of counterterrorism programs and maintained the same sort of secrecy we had in the Bush years. One example is the continued classification of 28 pages of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry Commission report which reportedly detail Saudi links to the hijackers. President Obama met with 9/11 families early in his term and evidently led them to believe these pages would be declassified. This has not happened.

What is at issue is not just 9/11 but the entire context of all that followed. That context has been denied to the public by way of excessive classification. Officials have fully exploited the secrecy to sell a narrative that calls for police state powers to prevent terrorist attacks. Furthermore that narrative suggests that any abuse power should be excused because it was done in good faith. The Obama administration crack down on leaks and whistleblowers is intended to protect this propaganda narrative.

[Enthusiast]

6. I can't disagree with a word........nt

[newfie11]

12. +1000000000000000000000000000000000

[Lonr]

3. Given the choice

between 'torture, murder lists and large scale spying' and 'terrorist attacks', I'll take my chances with the terrorists!

[Enthusiast]

7. I was thinking the very same.

Additionally it gave the chickenhawk neo-cons an excuse for two unnecessary unpaid for wars. Wars they expect social security recipients to pay for.

[Enthusiast]

8. The belief in

LIHOP is not a crazy idea that should be shunted away to some dungeon for conspiracy theories. It is the best explanation we have for the weirdness that has transpired in the nation since 911.

[noise]

9. The focus (and blame)

has been shifted to people who don't have access to classified information. It's easy for the media to ridicule people who speculate about 9/11. Sadly the media is never called to account for their complete failure to find out why al Qaeda investigations were obstructed before 9/11.

While they were investigating the attack on the USS Cole in November 2000, Soufan's team learned that an al Qaeda operative had met with other terrorists in Asia and received a large sum of money. Soufan says he made three formal requests through the FBI to the CIA to see if anything was known about what this operative was up to. Each time, he says, the CIA indicated that it did not know anything.

But, Soufan says he later learned the CIA knew - eight months before 9/11 - that this same operative had met in Malaysia with two terrorism suspects who would later hijack the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. And the CIA also knew that those two suspects were heading to the U.S.

"The agency knew that these al Qaeda operatives in Southeast Asia flew to America or they have visas to come to the United States, and somebody decided, 'Let's not share the information,'" Soufan said.

"And if it had been shared with you, what then?" Logan asked.

"I try not to think about that. I try not to think about, about what could have happened. Maybe, maybe thousands of American lives will be spared, maybe," Soufan said.

The CIA told us any suggestion it purposely refused to share critical information on the 9/11 plots with FBI is "baseless" and "these allegations diminish the hard work and dedication of countless CIA officers."

The Interrogator

The CIA told them and evidently that was good enough for 60 Minutes to move on.

[Enthusiast]

10. The CIA is the single most suspect body in any given situation......nt

[RC]

11. It was reported after 9/11 that the outgoing Clinton Administration gave the incoming bu$h

administration a 2½ inch thick report on the coming attack. It was know to within a few days of when. What was not known was where. Cheney had the report shelved, unread. That report has yet to see the light of day.

[Enthusiast]

14. It would not surprise me in the least..........nt

[Scuba]

13. Torture, murder lists and large scale spying are the terrorist attacks I fear.