[Chris A]

Bob Graham, DEMOCRAT, On the SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITEE admits that he had the same exact info that Bush had PRE 9/11.

Said Graham, "Yes, we had seen all the information," ....
"Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."

Source:http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3558

LINK:http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3558

LINK:http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3543

LINK:http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/.../9/224229.shtml

LINK:www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37642

 

[rameam]

All this hubbub about the economy and Bush not acting on the info given him is all politics just to make him look bad. If anyone is to blame, it is the Democrats under Clinton.

As to the economy, it wouldn't have made any difference who was president; 9/11 was the culprit. I think under the circumstances, Bush has done a tremendous job. I intend to vote for him again.

Kerry talks a good game, but he has no plan. Just listen to him. Where's the beef? There is no meat on the bones of his plan. In fact, I don't even see any bones! All I ever hear him say is he wants to beat Bush. Now that's a real good reason to want to be president, isn't it?

 

[plschwartz]

Chris A.

In that great american epic Spaceball in the showdown between helmet and lonestar the latter gives a rather involved relationhip between them. Helmet asks him what meaning it has and Lonestar replies: Nothing.
This is what your post brings to mind. So the head of a senate committee had the same info.
Are you then suggesting he is as much as fault for not taking action as Bush was? Or what?
Please enlight us as to what you had in mind when you posted it

 

[Chris A]

plschwartz,

Democrats have been trying for months to convince the American public that Bush had secret information about September 11th and that if he had acted upon it the whole thing would have been prevented. My post simply points out that some of those same guys that are accusing Bush have had the exact same information that he had even years before he did.


My whole thing is that there was no way with the information that we had before 9/11 that this could have been prevented. The people of the United states would never have tolerated the restrictions we have in place now.

Example: California has a big fault line running through it. Every one knows about it and one day a portion of California is going to head west. There will be a large amount of lives lost. Can the loss of life be prevented? You bet it can. Will it be though? Nope. Will there be lots of unanswered questions? You bet.

9/11 Is a lot like that in everyone knew there was something out there waiting. But for the Democrats to try and say it was all Bushes fault is a bunch of partisan BS.


PS. Spaceball analogy was pretty funny

 

[Stoner]

All this hubbub about the economy and Bush not acting on the info given him is all politics just to make him look bad. If anyone is to blame, it is the Democrats under Clinton.

As to the economy, it wouldn't have made any difference who was president; 9/11 was the culprit. I think under the circumstances, Bush has done a tremendous job. I intend to vote for him again.

Kerry talks a good game, but he has no plan. Just listen to him. Where's the beef? There is no meat on the bones of his plan. In fact, I don't even see any bones! All I ever hear him say is he wants to beat Bush. Now that's a real good reason to want to be president, isn't it?

All this hubbub about the economy

As to the economy, it wouldn't have made any difference who was president

This is incorrect. The economy took a major hit by 'big oil' artificially raising prices 50% in the middle of 2000 while at the same time Bush was coincedently campagining with dire warnings of a recession. Commerce and general retailing was not able to adjust to the additional costs of everything energy related in their products or service without major cuts in production costs.At least not in the 2-3 week time span that these energy prices rose. The sudden increased costs of energy left the consumer short of surplus funds and restricted unnecessary purchases. That is a recession. That is where the economy recieved it's devistating setback. That is where my state(Ohio) went from a $1 billion surplus in it's treasury to a deficit. Bush has even commented that the economy went 'south' as he took office.
911 was a shock indeed, but not the start of economic problems. Nor the worst when considering the horrendous deficit spending habits of the Bush congress.

If anyone is to blame, it is the Democrats under Clinton.

___
I explained how Bush wished too hard for a recession and then couldn't control it
As to the info before 911, uhmmm __ If you think back, perhaps you might remember____Clinton wasn't President at the time of 911 and he seems to have left plenty of messages for Bush to figure out what was happening. Clinton can be blamed for other issues, but not 911.
There's a lot of talk of Bush ignoring the BinLaden threat. There's a tape of Bush speaking in front of gradeschoolers in Florida. If you want to view a person who seemed unconcerned during the 911 attack I suggest you view it.
You can view it here:
Click Here For Bush Video

 

[Stoner]

Chris, you made a statement:

My whole thing is that there was no way with the information that we had before 9/11 that this could have been prevented.

This is an incorrect way to view this,IMO.
There is no way to stop a terrorist attack if the terrorists are intentionaly ignored. This is the biggest issue with Bush's performance.
Making an honest attempt to thwart an attack does not guarantee the attack is sucessfully stopped. But if you don't try, there's a certainty for a terrorists sucess.

Bush ignored the warnings............

 

[Chris A]

Bush ignored the warnings............

So did the Senate intelligence committee.. Like I said though based upon the information we had no one was suggesting taking the kind of actions that were needed at that time to prevent 9/11. No one not even Clinton.

Said Graham, "Yes, we had seen all the information," ....
"Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."

 

[plschwartz]

Chris A.:
I think the stink on this PDB was a diversion.
Having worked for years with a lousy bureaucracy I have sympathy for Presidents who sometimes reign but not rule.
But I go back to what Clarke described when he compared the activist position Clinton took. He sat the head of the fbi cia etc down together and insisted that they act.
(I do feel that he dropped the ball after the Cole. Why will not come out for years) But both Bush and Sandy Berger went out of their way to plead with him to worry about terrorism.
And granted that the Florida standoff did not allow of an orderly transition. Still, the stunning news for me about the august 01 pdb was that it took til then for Bush to become interested enough in terrorism to have a special briefing- fully eight months or with one sixth of his administration already past. Did he have such a lag on tax policy or missile defence?
Even if he expected a terrorist attack only against american interests abroad what did he do? Did he enquire asto the progress of hardening our embassies? Was there work toward safeguarding military installations
If he had kept the same level of urgency toward terrorism that Clinton did would that have definately stopped 9/11.
Thats what clarke said no to.
But maybe if Bush had kept shaking the tree instead of clearing brush we might have gotten lucky. Even if it were one chance in 100 that migt have happened it is better then the zero chance Bush inattentiveness gave us.

This was a job that only the Cicusa could do not the Democratic head of the senate intelligence committee especially in those stonewalling days.

May the Schwartz be with you

 

[EdGreene]

The August 6 document was the last of the information which might have been used to sift out what might be in the works.
One would think that the office of the President, no matter what the intelligence infighting and refusal to share info had been among the many intelligence agencies, all of their data eventually ended up in the White House. Why can't we start there? That the data had been inputted into the White House and it seems, ignored.
Whether the data was sifted so finely by White house staff is another question, but we all know all the available data from the Clinton Administration and eight months of Bush 2 had been in the White House, where the "Buck" always stops.
If Bush2 didn't know or had no inkling of the attacks, he rightfully should blame his White House and its Myrmidon staff, not Clinton, not Clarke, not even dumb and dumber "Dr" Condi Rice, who has served him poorly, if at all.

The import of my suggestion then is the White House and/or its staff, dropped the ball.
Worse for us in the US, all that information didn't make a dent in Dubya's own thick Neanderthal skull.
1. Why were there no Air Marshals on any one of the four planes?
2. How did they get on board with box cutters?
3. Why didn't the passengers on any of the planes fight back?
*Don't go there. It is now known the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was deliberately crashed by the hijackers.

 

[LANMaster]

Chris, you made a statement:
"My whole thing is that there was no way with the information that we had before 9/11 that this could have been prevented. "

This is an incorrect way to view this,IMO.
There is no way to stop a terrorist attack if the terrorists are intentionaly ignored. This is the biggest issue with Bush's performance.
Making an honest attempt to thwart an attack does not guarantee the attack is sucessfully stopped. But if you don't try, there's a certainty for a terrorists sucess.

Bush ignored the warnings............

Jack there are thousands of warnings daily. Are you suggesting that we start a massive defense build up? Sure sounds like it to me .... unless you're simply trying to pin blame on Bush any possible way that you can. Just like the Republicans did with Clinton.

Please, don't you think that the finger pointing and the blame game that the Democrats are trying so hard to play have pretty much made the work of the 9/11 commission basically useless as a means to prevent a future attack?

The politicizing of this commission by the Democrats is harmful to this country.
I expect that it will hurt them in November. Most intelligent people who are interested in this story and politics will see how damaging the introduction of politics has been to this extremely partisan process.

The left will stop at nothing, do anything, say anything, assert anything, blog, and blog away in order to install their party back into a position of power. They are counting on a lack of intelligence among the population. People who cannot realize just how badly the Democrats want some return of power, and will be willing to buy into erroneous claims and charges against the current administration. I doubt that this plan will work, and I suspect it will backfire on the Democrats in spades.

Unfortunately the big losers in their plan will be the American people, regardless who wins the November election.

 

[bassetman]

"It is my job to protect the America"
GW Bush April 2004

 

[plschwartz]

LAN
The headline on the NYPost (Fox in print) IS
what was i supposed to do

If you had read the PDB what would you have done?
WJC GHB HST etc would have undoubtable said: Get me the details of the 70 investigations NOW.
I truely believe that Dubya cannot readily process written information; he seems to have Janet..er Condi do it for him. Thus he could not read the reports if produced. But as we know he didn't ask.He is certainly not the first handicapped pres., but this seems disabling for the job of Cicusa.

 

[Infidel_Kastro]

A penny. A penny.
Good, now I am going to give you my two-cents.
First, alot of things can be blamed on Clinton. He reduced the amount of Humint in the middle east, and relied way too heavily on Sigint, which is, IMO,the best way to get accurate information.
As many of have said on this thread, what wasthe president supposed to do? That is a good question, given that he had speculative information, with no details? Does he put sky marshals on all the planes, as Ed has suggested, sure, but the Sky marshall program at the time was extremely small. Why were there box cutters, because I don't think it was disallowed by the FAA at the time. I am pretty sure the passengers fought back, and the terrorist pilot decided that it would be better for him to crash the plane and die a martyr, then to have the passengers handle him, I am sure the least of his worries at the time was being arrested, he was probably more concerned with getting killed by the passengers.
I think alot of people are wanting to find fault here, when there is none to give. I don't think anything could have been concurred accurately with the information that has been released. Now if there is other information comes out later, then I would possibly change my opinion, but for now, I don't see fault here.

 

[LANMaster]

LAN
The headline on the NYPost (Fox in print) IS
what was i supposed to do

If you had read the PDB what would you have done?
WJC GHB HST etc would have undoubtable said: Get me the details of the 70 investigations NOW.
I truely believe that Dubya cannot readily process written information; he seems to have Janet..er Condi do it for him. Thus he could not read the reports if produced. But as we know he didn't ask.He is certainly not the first handicapped pres., but this seems disabling for the job of Cicusa.

Amazing reply.

So I would suppose that you have done a complete 180 degree turn on your objection to the Patriot Act, right?

My point is, had September 11th been prevented, you'd be sitting here crying and whining about how totalitiarian and paranoid the Administration had become. Oh wait, you're doing that anyway.

Careful, your stripes are really starting to show.

 

[plschwartz]

LAN
Does not compute
Does not compute

Please connect you post and my post

 

[LANMaster]

 

[bassetman]

PL I see that Lan took some more of his "Happy Pills"!

 

[eggplant43]

When the Bush Administration took office, they were informed by the Clinton Administration Transition Team that the greatest threat to the US was from terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, and that they would spend their greatest amount of effort and time dealing with these matters in their new administration.

The Bush Administration choose to disregard these warnings, and took a different path with a strategy aimed at protecting us with missile defense, and a focus on protecting the US from state sponsored terrorists. They not only disregarded these warnings in their thinking, they eliminated much of the funding, and therefore resources that would have allowed them to pursue this new line of thinking that had been developed.

They continued to receive warnings about the terrorist potential, but since it did not jibe with their worldview, they wouldn't even take meetings. They essentially went about transforming the government apparatus to conform with their worldview, and the strategies to deal with the problems they foresaw dealing with. They were certainly entitled to approach the US security in this way, as it was their administration, their day, and they were going to correct the mistakes of the past.

When 9/11 occurred, they were completely taken by surprise, and announced that no one could have anticipated such an unconscionable attack on the US soil. (A personal note): when I saw the first plane hit, I turned to my wife and said "this is the work of Osama bin Laden, they'd better scramble every fighter we have". Now I said these things based on common sense, and my knowledge of the contemporary world, but this administration was unable to see what I could see just paying attention and using common sense.

They now ask us to believe they were on top of this from the start, and had everything in place to deal with this, and are now being treated unfairly. It is just not true, and that's OK, people can be wrong. It is not the wrongness that counts so much, as the intelligent response and action following such a horrendous offense to mankind.

As far as I can tell, they let their hatred, and disrespect for the previous administration cloud their judgment and perspective. I believe that is the harsh light in which history will judge them. So be it. What is really important is to stop pointing fingers, and get our best resources working on a real, meaningful, doable solutions to preventing further depredations in the civilized world.

These men and women of the administration have had their opportunity to make the world a better, safer place, and have bungled it very badly. It is time to turn them out, and fix the problems.

This does not have to be about partisan debate, but it does have to include the entire civilized world working together. Let's get on with the task at hand. there's clearly plenty of blame to go around in the last three administrations. Let's just solve the problems, and stop playing these games.

 

[Infidel_Kastro]

When the Bush Administration took office, they were informed by the Clinton Administration Transition Team that the greatest threat to the US was from terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, and that they would spend their greatest amount of effort and time dealing with these matters in their new administration.

The Bush Administration choose to disregard these warnings, and took a different path with a strategy aimed at protecting us with missile defense, and a focus on protecting the US from state sponsored terrorists. They not only disregarded these warnings in their thinking, they eliminated much of the funding, and therefore resources that would have allowed them to pursue this new line of thinking that had been developed.

They continued to receive warnings about the terrorist potential, but since it did not jibe with their worldview, they wouldn't even take meetings. They essentially went about transforming the government apparatus to conform with their worldview, and the strategies to deal with the problems they foresaw dealing with. They were certainly entitled to approach the US security in this way, as it was their administration, their day, and they were going to correct the mistakes of the past.

When 9/11 occurred, they were completely taken by surprise, and announced that no one could have anticipated such an unconscionable attack on the US soil. (A personal note): when I saw the first plane hit, I turned to my wife and said "this is the work of Osama bin Laden, they'd better scramble every fighter we have". Now I said these things based on common sense, and my knowledge of the contemporary world, but this administration was unable to see what I could see just paying attention and using common sense.

They now ask us to believe they were on top of this from the start, and had everything in place to deal with this, and are now being treated unfairly. It is just not true, and that's OK, people can be wrong. It is not the wrongness that counts so much, as the intelligent response and action following such a horrendous offense to mankind.

As far as I can tell, they let their hatred, and disrespect for the previous administration cloud their judgment and perspective. I believe that is the harsh light in which history will judge them. So be it. What is really important is to stop pointing fingers, and get our best resources working on a real, meaningful, doable solutions to preventing further depredations in the civilized world.

These men and women of the administration have had their opportunity to make the world a better, safer place, and have bungled it very badly. It is time to turn them out, and fix the problems.

This does not have to be about partisan debate, but it does have to include the entire civilized world working together. Let's get on with the task at hand. there's clearly plenty of blame to go around in the last three administrations. Let's just solve the problems, and stop playing these games.

Bruce, you weren't the only one who knew it was Osama Bin Laden, I knew it, and many others did too. I think the argument, if we even want to call it that, is that although the President and his team knew that OBL wanted to attack the US, there was concrete evidence to show how, when, and where. The President could have used some of the measures that we use now, but pre-9/11, how many MORE people would have been crying about our civil liberties. The President did as best as he could given the information he had. (unless othe rinformation comes out, thats m what I have to work with). We question this particulat PDB, bnut we have no idea how many others came across his desk that claimed similar information that didn't come to fruition. I personally cannot see what everyone is griping about. There is nothing on that brief that prior to 9/11 could be effectively used to thwart this attack. After the fact, we state that the president knew, well, hind sight is 20/20, and this PDB is way too vague for anyone to do anything with.
As far as ignoring, I believe that many scenarios were run involving OBL, but no one thought he would use domestic flight and routes and use the airplanes as missles. then again, before 9/11, no one considered that the passengers would not fight back, or at least I didn't.
Scrambling jets would still be after the fact, it would create the illusion of security, but by that time, the incident would have already occurred. I just can't see the PDB as a "smoking gun".

Now after then incidnet at the bar this weekend, I will be officially signing my name as "Osama Bin Andrew"

 

[bassetman]

SDI is the new high tech ultra expensive version of France's Maginot Line, and we know how well that worked!
http://www.ifrance.com/letunnel/maginot-e.html