Newsweek: ‘Your Government Failed You’ Could attacks have been prevented?

[diamond14]

‘Your Government Failed You’
Could the terror attacks have been prevented? Clarke’s testimony to the 9/11 commission raises the prospect that the answer might have been yes.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball


March 24 - In deft and sometimes dramatic testimony, former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke today did new political damage to the Bush White House by laying out a bold scenario by which the September 11 plot might have been unraveled.

The prospect of a U.S. government apology is hardly compatible with the basic White House line on September 11—that there was no way that the plot to hijack four civilian airliners and use them as weapons could have been foreseen. But the real significance of Clarke’s testimony is that he “connected the dots” in a way that for the first time demonstrated how the plot might well have been disrupted—if only the Bush administration had recognized the urgency of the Al Qaeda threat.

Yet the commission’s staff reports suggest the new Bush administration was moving slowly on many fronts: Clarke himself was upbraided in January 2001 when he asked for an immediate “principals” meeting of cabinet chiefs to develop an urgent new anti-Al Qaeda policy and was told to instead work with a committee of “deputy” chiefs. By the summer of 2001, when this committee had finally drawn up recommendations, many of the "principals" had already departed Washington for their annual vacations and the meeting was not held until Sept. 4, a week before the attacks.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4594652/

[Beloved Citizen]

1. Bush was on vacation

While Osama bin Laden put the finishing touches on a plot that killed 3,000 Americans, Bush puttered around on his vanity ranch for the entire month of August.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. This article is important, and damning --

Isikoff and Hosenball go to the trouble of using Commission staff reports to corroborate Clarke, and don't feel the need to include administration spin as they report the truth of this story, and its real-world consequences. The print press is far from perfect, but there are times when we should thank our stars for them --

[Nashyra]

3. This is huge

[diamond14]

4. terrorists ENTERED America on bush* watch...and attacked us on bush* watch

Clarke was very clear during his testimony...and it is all collaborated with LOTS of documents and others testimony before the 9/11 commission.....

To stop the attacks would have been simple....had bush* emphasized the HIGH importance of the terrorist bin laden.....

Clarke:

“I would like to think that had I been informed by the FBI that two senior Al Qaeda operatives who had been in a planning meeting earlier in Kuala Lumpur were now in the United States, and we knew that, and we knew their names—and I think we even had their pictures—I would like to think I would have released or had the FBI release a press release, with their names, with their descriptions, held a press conference, tried to get their names and pictures on the front page of every paper—"America’s Most Wanted," the evening news—and caused a successful nationwide manhunt for those two, two of the 19 hijackers,” he said.

[Beam Me Up]

5. It was NOT A FAILURE damn it!!

Yes, 9/11 could have been stopped, prevented, aborted--whatever term you want. THE FACT IS IT WAS NOT. The question that needs to be asked (and which I have NO HOPE that this 9/11 Commission WILL ask is) WHY THE HELL WASN'T IT STOPPED?

Who benefitted. Not only past tense but right now. WHO IS PROFITING RIGHT NOW FROM WHAT HAPPENED ON 9/11?

Edit:spelling

[Spazito]

6. This is a very damning article!

I saw Isikoff on the Larry King show and he was NOT backing up bush and his cabal at all. Thanks for posting the link!

[leftchick]

7. This memo read yesterday was damning to bushco*

,snip>Clarke himself was so deeply dismayed with the results of the Bush White House policy review on Al Qaeda—and thought it was so ineffective—that he fired off a memo to national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice just before the Sept. 4 meeting of cabinet chiefs. The memo, according to the commission staff, laid out Clarke’s frustrations with the Pentagon and the CIA for resisting his proposals for immediate, aggressive actions against bin Laden. In the memo, the commission staff stated, Clarke “urged policymakers to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with hundreds of American dead at home and abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done.”

... did condiliar happen to bring this up last night on her talk show circuit?

[DeepModem Mom]

8. kick

[Spazito]

9. Kick!

This article contains excellent points, it shouldn't be lost!

[diamond14]

10. kick

:kick: