The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 - The New York Times, page 1

The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 - The New York Times

The Deafness Before the Storm
(New York Times - nytimes.com)

Additional excerpts from "Presidential daily briefings" call into question the response of the Bush Admin. to the threat posed by AQ prior to the 9/11 attacks.

A brief synopsis of the article:

Bush Admin. released one Top-Secret "presidential daily briefing" per a FOIA request - the August 6 briefing which had the headline “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

Bush Admin. have defended their lack of action on the daily briefing as being too vague.

A reporter from the NYTimes has been obtaining portions of prior daily briefings that depict the warnings as much more consistent, much earlier than August, and more specific than the one on August 6.

The Bush Admin. however was also much more consistent in ignoring these earlier warnings as well, thinking they were a distraction from the planned war in Iraq.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that [August 6] daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

You'll have to visit the article link above, to read of the warnings Bush had of the impending strike. Had his advisors been paying attention, the nation could have gone on higher alert status to at least safeguard the airports, but they failed in every way to do their job.

The scary part, is many of these same advisors are set to return to the White House as foreign policy advisers/War Cabinet to W. Mitt Romney) (see also Mitt Romney's Neocon War Cabinet)

This illustrates one point well, the "deafness" of ideologues who set their course based on preconceived notions that ignore reality. Bush did that in 2001 - ignored the threat of AQ to instead remain blindly devoted to invading Iraq. Are we doing the same now? Ignoring reality to remain blindly devoted to invading Iran?

The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 - The New York Times
vs
Washington Post - Obama Skipped At Least Half of His Security Briefings
=
Dumbing down reality

If only everything was that simple. Maybe it is.

reply to post by timetothink

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True, but the claim Clinton had Bin Laden in his sights has been overblown. Both the 911 Commission report and Richard Clarke have refuted that claim, saying there had not been an opportunity to strike at Bin Laden or the intel was never there. Clarke served first under Bush41, then Clinton, and Bush43. He had also been explicit in trying to get Bush43's admin to recognize or address the threat from OBL/AQ.

reply to post by talklikeapirat

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Do you understand the difference between Bush, and the Bush Administration, and Obama, and the Obama Administration?

The Obama Administration has followed through on security advisories and eliminated Osama Bin Laden.

The Bush Administration ignored security advisories of an imminent attack. The result was 9/11.

I don't expect the President himself to sit in on all those meetings, that's why they have Cabinets and Advisors.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

---

You... mean... that... the... US... is... not... a...


Monarchy?

Lies!

Originally posted by timetothink
So was the Clinton White House.

Clinton was warned time and again that Bin Laden was planning another attack after the 1993 one and Clinton did nothing

Not true. I rarely post in the 9/11 forum but....

Clinton stirred the hornets nest long before Bush and company got into office...

reply to post by PurpleChiten

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There were indications that something was going to happen, but, nothing about what was specifically was going to happen. If a member of the intelligence community would have came out and said that they were going to crash airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House, he would have been put into a rubber room in a I love me jacket.

This article in the NYT is just a hit piece. They have the luxury of being able to go back and connect the dots, after 911 happened.

By the way, what in the hell did Clinton do counter terrorist attacks or to warn the Bush Administration about 911. Be specific. Last I heard his people trashed their offices before turning them over to the Bush Administration.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
reply to post by PurpleChiten

---

By the way, what in the hell did Clinton do counter terrorist attacks or to warn the Bush Administration about 911. Be specific. Last I heard his people trashed their offices before turning them over to the Bush Administration.

en.wikipedia.org...

Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US was the President's Daily Brief prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency and given to U.S. President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001. The brief warned of terrorism threats from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda 36 days before the September 11, 2001 attacks.[1]

www.gwu.edu...

Bush Administration's First Memo on al-Qaeda Declassified
January 25, 2001 Richard Clarke Memo: "We urgently need . . . a Principals level review on the al Qida network."

Washington, D.C., February 10, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted the widely-debated, but previously unavailable, January 25, 2001, memo from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice - the first terrorism strategy paper of the Bush administration. The document was central to debates in the 9/11 hearings over the Bush administration's policies and actions on terrorism before September 11, 2001. Clarke's memo requests an immediate meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss broad strategies for combating al-Qaeda by giving counterterrorism aid to the Northern Alliance and Uzbekistan, expanding the counterterrorism budget and responding to the U.S.S. Cole attack. Despite Clarke's request, there was no Principals Committee meeting on al-Qaeda until September 4, 2001.

The January 25, 2001, memo, recently released to the National Security Archive by the National Security Council, bears a declassification stamp of April 7, 2004, one day prior to Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 8, 2004. Responding to claims that she ignored the al-Qaeda threat before September 11, Rice stated in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

Two days after Rice's March 22 op-ed, Clarke told the 9/11 Commission, "there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February."

en.wikipedia.org...(August_1998)

The August 1998 bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan (codenamed Operation Infinite Reach by the United States) were American cruise missile strikes on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998. The attack was in retaliation for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224 people (including 12 Americans) and injured 5,000 others.

About 75 cruise missiles were fired by the U.S. into the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan at four Afghan training camps:
Al Farouq training camp
Muawai camp run by the Pakistani Harkat-ul-Mujahideen to train militants to fight Indian troops in Kashmir[9][10]
Training camp in the Jarawah area near Khost
Zhawar Kili al-Badr which was directed by bin Laden, and known to be a meeting place for leaders.[11][12]
The attack was made partly in an attempt to assassinate bin Laden and other leaders.[13] After the attack, the CIA heard that bin Laden had been at Zhawar Kili al-Badr but had left some hours before the missiles hit.[14]

Huh, what the hell? Turns out that Clinton did indeed try to kill Bin Laden and warned Bush about the threat. Also turns out that Bush ignored those warnings.

I almost forgot, F&S to the Marketeer for another fine OP.

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