Salon: Condi Rice's other wake-up call (MUST READ!)

[grytpype]

Wow. Gary Hart has some very, very harsh things to say about Rice, Cheney, and Bush. Very harsh. Read the whole thing.

http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/02/hart/index.html

Here's just one of the bombshells:

Well, let me just go through the history of things. Because we also sent copies of the report to every member of Congress. And we lobbied specific members of Congress, including Joe Lieberman, who took it very seriously. And in the spring of 2001, some members of Congress introduced legislation to create a homeland security agency. Hearings were scheduled. And our commission, which was scheduled to go out of operation on Feb. 15, 2001, was given a six-month extension so we could testify with some authority. Which we did in March and April.

And then as Congress started to move on this, and the heat was turned up, George Bush -- and this is often overlooked -- held a press conference or made a public statement on May 5, 2001, calling on Congress not to act and saying he was turning over the whole matter to Dick Cheney.

So this wasn't just neglect, it was an active position by the administration. He said, "I don't want Congress to do anything until the vice president advises me." We now know from Dick Clarke that Cheney never held a meeting on terrorism, there was never any kind of discussion on the department of homeland security that we had proposed. There was no vice presidential action on this matter.

In other words, a bipartisan commission of seven Democrats and seven Republicans who had spent two and a half years studying the problem, a group of Americans with a cumulative 300 years in national security affairs, recommended to the president of the United States on a reasonably urgent basis the creation of a Cabinet-level agency to protect our country -- and the president did nothing!

[LittleApple81]

1. Thanks. Very good interview.

[bain_sidhe]

2. "the president did nothing" - not true

He did something. He told them to stop.

[Old and In the Way]

3. And what was Dick doing that was more important?

Divvying up Iraq with his oily friends. He had other priorities.

[enough]

4. "Smoking guns all over the White House"

snip>

I have said for over two and a half years that no one has been held accountable for 9/11. No one lost his or her job, not George Tenet, not Robert Mueller, not anybody. Now this is the president who claims to be strong and tough, but he clearly does not have on his desk a sign that says, "The buck stops here." I honor Dick Clarke for what he said to the victims' families. I think George Bush should say that, I think he should apologize. I think he should take responsibility, as John Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs. That's presidential leadership, that's a strong president. This is a weak president. He will not take responsibility.

In Kennedy's case, he was clearly misled by his national security advisors who were bound and determined to go ahead with their Cuban adventure.

And he fired some of them. None of that happened here. You know why I think George Tenet is still in his job? I think there are smoking guns all over the White House. I think if you crack the White House safe, you're going to find memos from Tenet saying, "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming."

more>

[MrBenchley]

5. As somebody (Ted Rail) said the other day

So now we all knew they didn't do something BEFORE 9/11...now let's look at what they did ON 9/11. Why were there only 12 planes guarding the US that day? Why were they so late taking to the air that morning? How is it commercial aircraft can wander way off course in the businest air traffic corridor in the world without action being taken?

(By the way, you may recall the Payne Stewart incident. His tiny corporate jet suffered a pressure leak that killed everyone on board flying across the more or less empty middle of the country while Clinton was in office. And FAA records show that within 24 minutes of the tower losing touch with the Stewart plane, armed fighters were in visual range of it.)

[patcox2]

8. Rall is repeating misinformation

It was an hour and twenty four minutes before they intercepted Payne Stewarts plane. The intercept took place in the next time zone west, as reported in FAA logs it was local time, an hour later than the time reported for the start of the incident.

[indepat]

6. And they did nothing! Sadly this is not nettlesome to GWB's supporters

nor the other brain-dead in the least and neither does it tweak the curiosity of the apathetic.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Well, it's a bombshell for the mainstream, but we here on DU have known

that Bush was given everything he needed to ward of 9/11 and these things were given to him by Congress and the Clinton Administration by January 21, 2001. But, Bush, as he probably did as a boy in college with a homework assignment, procrastinated. And as he did as a man as head of a corporation, delegated.

In the end, there was no one in the Bush Administration with an ear on the rails.

The Clinton Administration did better. And I think it's time we give Clinton the respect and appreciation he deserves.

[datasuspect]

9. Found this interesting

'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes'

Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
02 April 2004


A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=507514