Has the nation over-reacted to 9/11?

[Julien Sorel]

Two years, two wars, and the Patriot Act afterwards, perhaps it's time to start examining this issue.

[Fixated]

1. .....

The government has overreached. The people haven't overreacted.

[Booberdawg]

2. Misleading

The nation didn't over react, but this administration used it to take us down the wrong path.

Where is Osama bin Forgotten?

[Parche]

3. We will always mourn

But people do and did over react, they wanted revenge against
anyone, or "those" people were responsible, without knowing who
"those" people were,
We need to find out why those first 3 hijacked jets were never
intercepted by the AirForce, when that is standard procedure.

[kixot]

4. That's not a very ood way to pose the question.

It almost sounds like it's minimizing the importance of 9/11. TRUE: The administration has overblown the impact of 9/11 and manipulated evidence in its favor and to hide its tracks. I just don't think that the public is responsible for reacting to such hyped up propaganda.

[Julien Sorel]

7. I'm going to reply to you, although this also applies to the other two

folks who had the same objection. This is a democracy. The people, and the people alone, are responsible for what happens in it. They had a chance to express their displeasure with the direction the nation was taking in the 02 elections, and they chose to endorse Bush and the direction he was moving in. The nation chose to support the Iraqi invasion, and according to opinion polls, still believes the war was a good thing. Bush had astronomical approval levels for a long time in the aftermath of 9/11, even as he was championing hawkish domestic and foreign policies. The government is us, collectively.

[VermontDem2004]

5. Some people overreacted

shortly after 9/11, an arab store owner right here in Mesa got shot, I know quite a few arab store owners and they are probaly the nicest people out here.

[Flying_Pig]

6. Yes, and it is exactly what the PNAC operatives....

were counting on, when they planned and executed the 9/11 tragedy. They, along with their puppets in the White House, have been fanning the flames evey day since too. It won them the 2002 elections, and they are counting on it to win the 2004 elections. America has been used worse than a two dollar whore, and most don't even know it.

[Sterling]

12. Over reacted? No. Targeting the wrong people? Yes.

If most Americans knew what really happened on 9-11 they would be rioting in the street and burning down the Whitehouse.

[davekriss]

8. Absolutely Not

Our energies have just been misdirected. Intentionally.

A good recent piece that connects the dots can be found here, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1036687,00.html.

Quote:

<snip>

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."

<snip>

We should be hopping mad! But not at the Afghani's nor Iraqi's...

[shamgar5]

14. 9/11 screw-up

In Al Franken's book Lies------------a fair and balanced look at the right, he makes the case that if this administration had taken Clinton's advice, there might not have been a 9/11. It seems that in December of 2000 a plan had been devised to combat terrorism. It was almost identical to the plan implemented by this administration since 9/11. Bush and company ignored the plan and Clinton's warning. Many in W's group felt Clinton was obsessed with Osama.
There is a VERY GOOD chance 9/11 would never have happened if they had only listened to Clinton (or if the election had not have been stolen from Gore).This is what people need to know and be mad as hell about.:mad:

[leftofthedial]

9. with wild, misleading and fearmongering led by the Bush/PNAC

misadministration

[rocktivity]

10. Exactly what do you mean by "nation"?

The government? The people? Both?

The government definitely overreacted, with the media in tow. But now we know why--they had ulterior motives. As a whole, I don't think the people overreacted. Yes, there were some calls for revenge and some isloated incidents, but I realize that it would have been much worse.


rocknation

[cally]

11. I often wonder if the same loss of life had occured in Chicago

or Indianapolis or San Francisco or Minneapolis would the attention be the same. I think not. I'm not minimizing the horror or the loss of life, but I think because many newscasters live in NY and DC that the reaction was different and many newscasters say the attacks changed to US perception. I noticed that folks in California lost attention much faster than those in NY, DC, and the national media. We mourn with our nation but it did not have the same impact out here.

I know I'm going to get flamed for this. I am not saying that I don't care what happened. My husband was in NY at the time and had a meeting at the World Trade Center scheduled for late the afternoon of 9/11. I think because it's NY and DC that the media react more strongly.

[Sterling]

13. I disagree.

I don't think that matters given the loss of life.