NYT: Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable

[Bozita]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/politics/05PANE.html

April 5, 2004

Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, April 4 — The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.

Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.

In a joint television interview, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, indicated that their final report this summer would find that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.

They also suggested that Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, would be questioned aggressively on Thursday about why the administration had not taken more action against Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and about discrepancies between her public statements and those of Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, who has accused the administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats in 2001.

more...

[Pale_Rider]

1. Where was Bush?

55 seconds after hearing that America was under Attack.


4 minutes, 35 seconds after hearing that America was under Attack.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/bush-911.htm

See Bush, see Bush do nothing.

[Old and In the Way]

2. Here's the Whopper

"President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot."

Hard as it might be for Bush's political advisers to accept, but Clinton was not President for the 9 months leading up to 9/11. The truth will clearly show that the Clinton team cleanly handed the baton to the Bush administration.

What we need to understand is whether the Bush team fumbled the baton or dropped it on purpose.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. good synopsis.

Clinton is looking pretty good for anyone who knows how to read between the lines.

This is the extent of the Clinton criticism:

1) He was given three opportunities to kill bin Laden. But, when you dig deeper, you discover that he did strike the first time but was blasted by the media and the Republicans for wagging the dog; and the other two opportunities were called off by the C.I.A.

2) He gave the order to eliminate bin Laden because bL was an imminent threat to the U.S.A., but the C.I.A. didn't understand how serious Clinton was. (Oh, please. This is the C.I.A. for God's sake! When have they ever needed permission to off someone!)

3) He had the predator ready to be launched with missiles, but the C.I.A. conservatively decided to just allow it to be a test run. (When has the C.I.A. ever acted conservatively?)

4) Though he didn't have an immediate retaliation plan for the U.S.S. Cole, the reality is that the U.S.S. Cole attack occurred just a short month prior to an election that dragged on through the month of November. And all expectations of him giving the hostile Bush administration a plan for military action was unlikely, given that Clinton inherited Somalia from Bush I. And we all know how well that turned out.

5) The Clinton Administration enforced trade embargos against Afghanistan, which the Bush Administration ignored.

Yep, it's looking better and better every day.

[Terran]

8. When Clarke was on the Daily Show,

John Stewart asked him about he had energized the Clinton administration on the al Qaeda issue, and Clarke said that, in fact, Clinton himself had been the one to energize Clarke on the issue, no the other way around.

[DrBB]

5. God, they are cowards aren't they

Good catch, O&IIW, good catch. "We despise everything the Clinton administration stood for, except when we need to hide behind their skirts to cover our own ghastly mistakes."

Moral cowardice, thy name is GOP.

[lumpy]

12. 'Cleanly handed the baton to the Bush administration'

Well said. Bush and his backers have recklessly frittered away the positive legacies left by all previous US administrations. It isn't 9/11 that has changed our pitifull lives forever. We, as a resilient nation, could have overcome that attack and retained our hard won respect as a leading world nation if our leadership had responded in a rational manner. Now this nation is known as the agressor. Bushco has changed our lives forever.

[dbt]

4. At the very LEAST, the attacks were "interceptible."

The one question that keeps popping up regarding the morning of September 11, 2001:

Where the FUCK were the INTERCEPTORS?

Why were those jetliners allowed to fly unchallenged until it was too late to stop them?

This is the one question that NOBODY will answer. Why is that?

:freak:
dbt

[KDLarsen]

6. Even better...

.. why were they only going at half speed, once they had been ordered from Washington to New York? Why was Dubya not pulled from the classroom and asked to authorize the shooting down of a civilian aircraft (come on, they alread knew that 3 further aircrafts were hijacked)?

[Old and In the Way]

11. even better, still-

So Condi never expected planes would be used as weapons?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x10224


(6:00 a.m.)

President Bush has just spent the night at Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, Florida. Surface-to-air missiles have been placed on the roof of the resort. <Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/02> Bush wakes up around 6:00 a.m. and is preparing for his morning jog. A van occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent pull up to the Colony stating they have a “poolside” interview with the president. They are turned away for not having an appointment.


So what was the purpose of the surface-to-air missiles?



From www.cooperativeresearch.org Bush 9/11 Timeline

[Malva Zebrina]

7. a natural skeptic thinks this is a whitewash

Yes, 9-11 was preventable--if Clinton would have blah, blah blah and if Bush had good info from the CIA and FBI and had more time blah blah blah. Soooooo --there is no one person or one government that could have prevented it. This is double talk.


I heard Kean this morning saying Condi's testimony is going to be "exciting"

We have become a country where something as grave as this incident, has become another bread and circus event. Even this is being set up as a Bush "event" , like all other PR events that are hyped for Bush.

[TahitiNut]

9. Of course they were preventable. It's politically idiotic to say otherwise

First of all, several attacks were prevented during the Clinton/Gore administration, most particularly the millennium attacks. Second, sky marshals, reinforced cockpit doors, and intensive screening of carry-on luggage would've been more than sufficient. Indeed, just an alert to the airlines might've been more than enough. Let's remember, the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania was short one hijacker. While there were clearly some other factors, it's clear that any reduction in the number of hijackers would've precluded their success.

Finally, to deny the preventability of these attacks is to say the the "fried-freedom" actions taken in the subsequent months was for naught. If they weren't preventable before 9/11 then they're not preventable afterward either.

It's an indication that they're getting to the bottom of their spin barrel when they attempt such a thin facade.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. to be questioned "aggressively"

That is in their opinion. We'll see.