Sunday, September 2, 2012
Oh What Might Have Probably Wouldn't
This whole notion that a President Gore would have been able to somehow prevent 9/11 is thoroughly amusing. I mean, come on here, folks. Was the Clinton-Gore team able to prevent the first attack on the WTC? The attack on the USS Cole? The bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa? And the fact that these fellows had numerous opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden (as opposed, I'm saying, to simply blowing up aspirin factories and a bunch of empty tents) and didn't makes them look even more ineffectual.............................................................................................Look, I'm not saying here that Mr. Bush shouldn't be held accountable. There are more than likely a shit-load of dots that fellow didn't connect and/or respond to. But to go from there and say that some Democrat (disregarding that Democrat's record, especially), simply due to the fact that he IS a Democrat, would have been able to foresee such a calamity and prevent it nothing short of rank partisanship. Thankfully, dumb opinions such as this tend to be confined.
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So,what you are saying is that Gore would have disregarded the warnings just like bush. Why do you think that? Did Clinton have the same type of warnings and ignore them? Let me see your evidence.
Actually, the fact that it was Clinton - Gore in the other failures that you mentioned, I suspect that Gore may have been more attentive.
Clinton-Gore ignored threats and aggression from Bin Laden for years.
But also to Gore's credit, it is preposterous to assume he would have turned over Bin Laden to the OIC extremist terrorist gang.
BTW....has anyone actually seen or heard from Al Gore? The dems dont even want him at the convention.
He is out inventing us another Internet. The old one is full of spam.
But the Dems will have their former president unlike the republicans.
In fact, listen to Bill Maher's take on it.
Can't say what a different admin would or would not have done; but
that particular one appeared to pay far less attention to intel
info than it did for the WMD workup .
I dont care to listen to Bill Maher's take on anything.
I once saw Bill Maher get knocked on his ass in a club in Seattle back in the 90's.He said something smart to a girl he was hitting on that her boyfriend did'nt think was that funny...next thing you know Billy was sitting on his ass on the floor holding that big nose of his....he got up and quickly ran out of the club......this is a true story.
Nice to see a man who is a bully get what is coming to him.
Every time I see him on TV that scene flashes before my eyes.There was an article about the incident in one of the Seattle papers the next day.Even thought he was'nt that well known back then the people that saw it happen were laughing their asses off.
Jerry, they (the Clinton administration) had opportunities to blow Mr. bin Laden to kingdom come and they didn't.......And, yes, there were some vague warnings that the terrorists would an airplane as a missile. But do you know how many planes fly in the U.S. every day of every year? Oh yeah, Mr. Gore would have totally stopped 9/11.
That's not what I said, Will. Don't twist my words.
You're asking me to provide evidence on something that unanswerable. I don't know if Mr. Gore would have "ignored" the vague references to planes as missiles. In fact, I don't even know if Mr. Bush fully ignored them. Like I said, there are literally thousands of flights.......And did Mr. Clinton really need a warning in order to beef up our security at African embassies (that, and he never successfully retaliated to any of these terrorist acts)?
We are not discussing Clinton. Let me repeat. What I said was "the fact that it was Clinton - Gore in the other failures that you mentioned, I suspect that Gore may have been more attentive".
Two things,
First of all I doubt Gore would have allowed the person he selected as national security advisor to demote Richard Clark and almost totally ignore what Clark had to say about Bin Laden.
Clarke's role as a counter-terrorism advisor in the months and years prior to 9/11 would lead to the central role he played in deconstructing what went wrong in the years that followed. Clarke and his communications with the Bush administration regarding bin Laden and associated terrorist plots targeting the United States were mentioned frequently in Condoleezza Rice's public interview by the 9/11 investigatory commission on April 8, 2004. Of particular significance was a memo from January 25, 2001, that Clarke had authored and sent to Rice. Along with making an urgent request for a meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al-Qaeda threat in the greater Middle East, the memo also suggests strategies for combating al-Qaeda that might be adopted by the new Bush administration.
In his memoir, "Against All Enemies", Clarke wrote that when he first briefed Rice on Al-Qaeda, in a January 2001 meeting, "her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term before." He also stated that Rice made a decision that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, the Administration sent a signal through the national security bureaucracy about the salience they assigned to terrorism. No longer would Clarke's memos go to the President; instead they had to pass though a chain of command of National Security Advisor Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, who bounced every one of them back.
Within a week of the inauguration, I wrote to Rice and Hadley asking 'urgently' for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent Al-Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been 'framed' by the Deputies.
At the first Deputies Committee meeting on Terrorism held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, that they target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the MQ-1 Predators. To which Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz responded, "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed "an immediate and serious threat to the United States." According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."
Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet was running around with his "hair on fire".
At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Hadley a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaida and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again."
Second;
Gore also wouldn't have been so focused on the one of the main defence themes of the Bush admin pre 9-11;
Missile defence;
Some argue that Bush’s missile focus is diverting attention from terrorism. For instance, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) tells Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a June 2001 hearing that the US is spending too much money on missile defense and not “putting enough emphasis on countering the most likely threats to our national security… like terrorist attacks.”
[San Francisco Chronicle, 9/5/2004]
On September 5, 2001, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes: “And why can George W. Bush think of nothing but a missile shield? Our president is caught in the grip of an obsession worthy of literature” and notes that “sophisticated antimissile interceptors can’t stop primitive, wobbly missiles from rogue nations, much less germ warfare from terrorists.”
[New York Times, 9/5/2001]
On September 10, 2001, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) warns that if the US spends billions on missile defense, “we will have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threats come into this country in the hold of ship, or the belly of a plane.” In 2004, a San Francisco Chronicle editorial will suggest that if the Bush administration had focused less on the missile shield and had “devoted more attention, more focus and more resources to the terrorist threat, the events of Sept. 11 might have been prevented.”
[San Francisco Chronicle, 9/5/2004]
Mord: To give a complete picture, I'd also be interested in the Clinton Administration's reactions to any advice Clark might have given them also.
Considering that the 9/11 terrorists did their training in the US under the Clinton Administration.
On the inconsistencies and opportunism of Richard Clarke - http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,604598,00.html
In his own words, Clarke, prior to his book/"60 Minutes" appearance - “The Bush administration decided ... mid-January [2001] to ... vigorously pursue the existing [Clinton] policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings ... to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided. ...”
But historically will, we now know the Bush administration did not do any of those things.
Nor did the Clinton administration... they had left them on the table for years, according to Clarke.
Why keep returning to the Clinton administration when the basis of the article was what different would Gore do then Bush?
Cannot accept the abysmal Bush record in this regard?
It is abysmal, 9-11 proves this.
Especially given the PDB of aug 6th 2001 a full five weeks before Sept 11 2001.
Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US
Specifically states Bin laden has US assets,
Was attempting to strike NYC and wash DC
Was given directly to the President of the United States five weeks before Bin Laden succeed and Bush failed miserably.
add to that this intell;
March 2001 - Italian intelligence warns of an al Qaeda plot in the United States involving a massive strike involving aircraft, based on their wiretap of al Qaeda cell in Milan.
July 2001 - Jordanian intelligence told US officials that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on American soil, and Egyptian intelligence warned the CIA that 20 al Qaeda Jihadists were in the United States, and that four of them were receiving flight training.
August 2001 - The Israeli Mossad gives the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US and say that they appear to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future.
August 2001 - The United Kingdom is warned three times of an imminent al Qaeda attack in the United States, the third specifying multiple airplane hijackings. According to the Sunday Herald, the report is passed on to President Bush a short time later.
September 2001 - Egyptian intelligence warns American officials that al Qaeda is in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the US.
Bush had all the info he needed, if he wasn't too busy wasting time ON VACATION, and dismissing the briefing.
PS: Bill Clinton had NONE of that intell nor the legal authority to use it if he had it in 2001, only George W Bush did and failed.
July 2001 - Jordanian intelligence told US officials that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on American soil, and Egyptian intelligence warned the CIA that 20 al Qaeda Jihadists were in the United States, and that four of them were receiving flight training.
Do you think if Bush had cancelled his vacation, and had the assets he was responsible for FULLY investigate this, the FBI might have found Zacarias Moussaoui ?????
Oh wait they already found him, do you think with the intell Bush had in 2001 and the intell the FBI separately developed in 2001 they might have been able to put this one together???
Try to blame the Clenis again for this one given all Bush NOT Clinton had in 2001.
Try accepting the fact if Bush ET AL had done their damn jobs 9-11 could have been avoided.
Gore might haver done a bit better
..... just relax and accept it.
"Why keep returning to the Clinton administration when the basis of the article was what different would Gore do then Bush?"
News flash: It was the Clinton-Gore administration. If Gore had been elected, it would have been in many ways a continuation.
"Cannot accept the abysmal Bush record in this regard?"
The only realistic thing to do acknowledge that Bush continued the Clinton-Gore policies in this regard, and kept his eye off the ball.
Here's a pieceby Dick Morris from Frontpage Magazine.
"The recent publication of some once-censored parts of the 9/11 Commission report reveals that, in 1998, federal intelligence sources had shared their concern that al-Qaeda could be planning to use passenger airplanes as missiles on suicide raids against prominent targets in the United States. This is the first time we've heard that that the possibility of such a suicide mission was raised at the federal level during the Clinton years.
But the entire thrust of the [Clinton-Gore administration's] attitude toward air safety and security was based on the happy assumption that no terrorist would ever engage in a suicide bombing using airplanes. Now the question arises: Why did not the Clinton administration re-evaluate its air safety measures in light of the 1998 warning?"
Yes, Morris is a partisan drone. But I checked this out out, and sure enough it is part of the 9/11 commission findings.
George W. Bush ignoring the warnings was merely him continuing with Clinton-Gore policies. This was a pattern that started in 1998, and not with George W Bush's inauguration a couple of years later.
"Bush had all the info he needed, if he wasn't too busy wasting time ON VACATION, and dismissing the briefing."
From Yahoo answers:
"George W. Bush spent 879 days at his Crawford Ranch. This doesn't mean this was a vacation for him, he constantly flew in staff member, held press conferences, and met with 18 world leaders at the ranch"
Doesn't sound like much of a vacation, does it?
Clinton during his 8 years had a similarly high number, 689.
Bush was warned Bin Laden determined to attack the USA while he was ON VACATION.
He dismissed the briefing by claiming the He did NOTHING about it until after 9-11
NOTHING after he was warned time and time again,
Blame Clinton all you want but Bush did NOTHING to stop Bin Laden on HIS watch.
Your Clenis derangement syndrome is showing BTW
in 1998, federal intelligence sources had shared their concern that al-Qaeda could be planning to use passenger airplanes as missiles on suicide raids against prominent targets in the United States.
And combined with the warnings Bush and Rice received in 2001, they STILL DID NOTHING to stop Bin Laden.
Your Clenis derangement syndrome is showing
The only realistic thing to do acknowledge that Bush continued the Clinton-Gore policies in this regard, and kept his eye off the ball.
NOT true, Bush and his cohorts demoted people working on terrorism to push their missile defence corporate welfare program.
See proof above.
Bush had all the warnings and intell he needed while he and he alone was commander in Chief during the spring and summer of 2001 and did nothing to stop 9-11;
Blame the Clenis all you want but the sole responsibility during the relevant period was George W Bush.
and he did nothing.
QED
Mord, I'm not saying that Bush shouldn't have done more to prevent 9/11, or even that Mr. Gore couldn't have done better (I don't, for example, think that Gore would have invaded Iraq). I'm just saying that I don't quite think that it's the slam-dunk (no pun intended) that the haters of Mr. Bush constantly make it out to be. And I certainly wouldn't put much credence into what that Clarke fellow says (the dude has flip-flopped more than Romney).......Oh, and the Jordanian and British intelligence, need I remind you that both of those esteemed agencies also thought that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Foolproof, not exactly.
Will you haven't directly addressed the question at hand,
Your false equivalence of the intell on bin laden with the intell on Iraq means nothing.
It doesn't meet the test of whether one set of intell is true or not.
The intell on Bin Laden by many many proved to be correct but Bush for some reason refused to act on it even though it directly showed Bin Laden was actively planning an attack on the USA
The Iraqi intell as flimsy as it was was blown up way beyond the sources but given Bush ET Al's predisposition to attack Iraq for both ideological and real-politic reasons was used for not good results.
Also Gore wouldn't have recruited people like Condi Rice/Donald Rumsfeld nor accepted Cheney as VP.
Three changes in administration that might have raised the competence levels and changed the outcome.
He also probably wouldn't have devoted most of his defence and national security efforts before 9-11 to recreating the government welfare program for the missile defence systems that didn't work under Reagan.
Richard Clark hasn't flip flopped as much as you claim especially if you remove the people Bush sent out to slander him, just like Bush ET AL slandered Gen Shinseki, Valeri Plame Paul O'Niel when they revealed too much truth about his incompetence, or plans pre 9-11. IE Dick Morris fox news operative.
Like Paul O'Niel who revealed the plans to attack Iraq before 9-11. Or how Gen Shinseki spoke too much truth to congress about how inadequate the plans for the Invasion of Iraq was, historically verified to all except for those who still cannot get beyond their ideological blindness.
Well I'll be damnned,the old chairborne ranger is here with a different handle.....how ya doin Col.Klink.
Mord;
1) You would have us believe that while Clinton and Gore ignored the 9/11-related warnings as did Busn, a President Gore would have been radically different and recognized and stopped them right away. That is possible, but not likely.
2) There was no such thing as missile defense corporate welfare, but there was a necessary Federal expenditure on this real defense need.
3) Both Clinton-Gore and Bush appointed and defended incompetent buddies and cronies in their administration. You make the assumption that Gore would have broken with the tradition of all Presidents, and not hired his own "Rumsfelds". Again, possible, but still unlikely.
4) "....slandered Gen Shinseki, Valeri Plame Paul O'Niel..."
Telling the truth about them is not slandering.
5) As for Presidents wasting their attention on matters, we all know Gore's obsession with the man-made global warming hoax. It is not only possible, but likely, that he would have devoted a massive amount of attention in his administration to this 'threat' while ignoring real ones.
1) Gore was NOT president so he couldn't legally mandate anything, but your Clinton derangement syndrome is still showing.
2) No "real defence need" since the systems haven't been successfully field tested as actually working in any real world scenario. EVER.
3) Gore appointed nobody in the US government during the time only Bill Clinton held the legal authority to do so, your illogic stemming from your CDS makes this point as irrelevant as the rest of the ones you make.
4) No "truths" were told;
Gen shensiki was shown to be right as to the need of troop levels etc.
Valerie Plame was working for the CIA in a NOC agent status when her cover was blown.
Paul O'Niel was slandered by people after he told the truth about the Bush admin planning to attack Iraq in 2001 before 9-11.
5) Pure unscientific speculation something you seem to excel at.
1) It was the Clinton-Gore adminsitration. A president and vice president are assumed to be on the same page, unless there is evidence otherwise. Which you have not presented at all.
1a) The reference to "Clinto derangement syndrome" is entirely a non-sequitur, as there is no evidence of this at all.
2) With missiles aimed at us, there is a real defense need. Early test failures do not indicate that an idea is bad. Just ask the Wright Brothers.
3) Refer again to #1. The appointments were made by Clinton with Gore's full support. Again, you assume some sort of difference between a President and Vice President when all evidence is that they were of one mind, and there is no evidence of any sort of division. A derangement syndrome is emerging in your faith in Gore as a someone who used magic hindsight to secretly disagree with everything Clinton got wrong: all pure imaginary speculation, as the historic record shows Clinton-Gore as a smoothly meshed governing unit.
4) Telling truths about something is not slander. Also, Plame had been outed in major national media before, and it is not outrageous that there are many contingency plans, including one to retaliate against Iraq if it kept breaking the cease fire.
5) Name one bit of unscientific speculation I have presented. Since you think I excel at it, it should be easy. As for actual unscientific speculation, that is a perfect description for Gore's global warming problem.
The whole thing would have academic had only Clinton blown bin Laden to smithereens.......And Thomas Ricks has thoroughly repudiated Mr. O'Neil's contentions about Bush wanting to go after Saddam from day one. The regime change faction in the Bush administration was actually losing and it was only after 9/11 that they started persuading the dude.
Will,you do know who Mordechai is,dont you?
Surprising that Mord alludes to / brings up untruths about Plame. I guess it shows his agenda, which colors everything. And Gore ends up being a blank slate on which to paint his dreams and aspirations, and a (as Vice President), a secret rebel against everything the Clinton administration would be proven wrong on later (something which Mord refuses to give evidence of), while being in lock step with everything Clinton was right on. A perfect being.
I bet Mord probably thinks that Gore really created the Internet too. With his other attributed superpowers, Gore could easily pop back to 1967 and do so.
Russ, I suspect that Mord is either a sock puppet for Clif or 1138. Thankfully, he's been civil so far and hopefully that continues.
Yes indeed Will,its the old army supply officer....the chairborne ranger.....the king of cut and paste....still sucking on the public teat.
A delightful mixture of metaphors, Rusty. I will now forever think of Mordaclif with an image of a brood sow covered with papercuts and dabs of glue sitting in a Barcalounger.
Actually, I DO agree with him on one thing. Rumsfeld should have listened much more to Shinseki and Bush should have had that Bremer's ass well within a month.......As for 9/11 specifically, the whole thing could have been prevented with better airport security and Bush and Clinton BOTH have some 'splainin' to do on that one.
Will: I agree with him on that, and on the Bush administration dropping the ball at other points too. What I strongly disagree with him on is the idea that the Clinton administration didn't also drop the ball.... and his 20/20 hindsight turning a would-be President Gore into someone who would have acted perfectly to every warning alongside his perfect advisors.
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