Bush* was handed the Hart-Rudman Report on a Silver Platter

[Toots]

The Clinton Administration recognized that terrorism would become the number one issue for America. It requested a complete accounting of all we knew about the subject. It took years to accumulate and put together all the details and the recommendations. Finally it was completed and placed upon the desk of the Oval office for the new President on January 20th. It went into great detail about Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin and their stated goals of attacking America and Americans. It had page upon page of recommendations on how to prepare the country against such attacks. Bush* was handed this report "on a silver platter" as the saying goes. did anyone in the Administration even bother to read this report? No.. They were hell bent on pushing their "star wars" so their defense contractors could reap billions. They ignored the report and have not to this day read it even though Bill Clinton warned Bush* that Terrorism would be their number one issue. On September 10th, the day before the infamous attack Ashcroft submitted his annual budget for the Justice Dept and funding request for fighting terror were cut to virtually nothing. They had not one thought about combating terrorism. They laughed about it and said all Clinton did was shoot some camel in the ass with a missile. So when the GOP starts with their "Clinton was handed Bin Lading on a silver platter" BS you can suggest the truth to them. Terrorism was not even a thought to them. They were far to concerned about taking their long vacations and enjoying their Power. They were to busy letting their big Campaign contributors ride around in Nuclear submarines killing Japanese students with their incompetence. Remember these people were given detailed reports on Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin and how to prepare America for such and yet to this day those reports have not been read or acknowledged nor have any of the recommendations been put into effect.

[rodeodance]

1. yes, I recall reading that they just pushed it aside.

[90-percent]

2. That's one of the many aggravations....

That's one of the many aggravations, that so many from the previous administration were yelling and screaming about terrorism as a very high priority and the whole Bush team condescendingly blew them all off.

Then their failure to THINK helped 9/11 to happen and all of a sudden they get this acclaim because they are "tough on terror"?

If they were so fucking "tough on terror", there's NO WAY 9/11 would have ever happened!!

The only thing they're good at is making their fuck-up's and incompetence look like assets!

Which allows them to further their corporo-fascist agenda.

-85% Jimmy

[annabanana]

3. The lies are constant and consistent.

How can people NOT recognize the manipulation of the media in this barrage of BS?

[Skidmore]

11. Would that the truth be as constant and consistant.

Every Dem pol who appears on the media should be schooled in these truths until they seem to be tattooed on the insides of their eyelids. They should be made to repeat them endlessly until the truth becomes the orthodoxy and the lie stands out. Lewis Black did an HBO special recently in which he talked about making the myth and the printing it so that it becomes history. We need to own the truth and let it become history.

[City Lights]

4. Queen George handed it off to Unka Dickie.

From a Salon article dated 9-12-01:

<snip>

Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.

The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's attention.

Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day."

"We predicted it," Hart says of Tuesday's horrific events. "We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers -- that's a quote (from the commission's Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999."

<snip>

more... http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/

I despise these thugs!

edited for typo

[robbedvoter]

9. Nr of meetings of Unka Dickie's commission? Zero (0)

I remember a story where Diane Feinstein upon hearing of some "chatter" in September (coul'd 've been 9 or 10) rang Dick to do something. She got an appointment with his commission schedulled some months later....

[City Lights]

12. I forgot about that!

After reading your post I did some googling and found some stuff:

From People's Weekly World (can't vouch for the source :shrug:):

* July 1: Senate Intelligence Committee member, Diane Feinstein, says on CNN that intelligence informed her of a high probability of terrorist attack within three months.

* Sept. 10: Sen. Feinstein asks for meeting with Vice President Cheney regarding terrorism threat. Cheney’s chief of staff puts off meeting for six months.

http://www.pww.org/article/view/4678/1/198/

Found similar claims on another site:

JULY 1, 2001 - Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Richard Shelby, both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, appear on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer", and warn of potential attacks by Osama bin Laden. "One of the things that has begun to concern me very much as to whether we really have our house in order, intelligence staff have told me that there is a major probability of a terrorist incident within the next three months," Feinstein said.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2001 - A CIA plan to strike at al Qaeda in Afghanistan, including support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, is given to the White House. Sen. Dianne Feinstein asks for a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney. The California Democrat is told that Cheney's staff would need six months to prepare for a meeting.

http://www.freepressinternational.com/events.8765234.html

There are a ton of dots waiting to be connected back to the WH. It infuriates me that so few in the cesspool of media whores are willing to connect them. :mad:

[rock]

5. Also there was Gore's recommendations

as outgoing VP. One (of his many recommendations) was steel doors separating the cockpit from the passenger area. This one thing would have stopped the 911 terrorists. Of course * and the airlines thought this would cost too much.

[Triana]

6. They essentially circular filed that report. * said....

..."Dick Cheney will be handling that". * didn't even READ it.

Well. Tricky Dick II certainly "handled" it didn't he? They went over and threatened Afghanistan with their "carpet of gold or carpet of bombs" threat. Pissed off alQueda and they attacked us.

They did form the OHS, which was recommended in the report. HOWEVER when they formed it - it was AFTER 9-11 and they did not form it as recommended in the report. It was initially not even a cabinet level agency and it was totally unfunded - no $, no staff. WTF? When people griped about that * begrudgingly made it a cabinet level agency and funded it. FEMA was gutted and shoved under OHS and now it is an essentially useless agency. Nothing but an atrophied, lame limb.

What a bunch of a**holes.

Clinton formed the Hart-Rudman commission (made of Democrats AND Republicans) and they spent at least a couple of years going to and researching numerous countries to guage anti-American sentiment. The recommendations were based on that study. bu$hit tossed them at Cheney and they were never read. NOT UNTIL *AFTER* 9-11. And then SOME of the recommendations were only begrudgingly and INCORRECTLY implemented.

:mad:

AND the 9-11 Commission Report - NONE of the recommendations in that report were ever implemented either. bu$hit is too worried about photo-ops, eating cake, taking vacations, foisting propaganda on us because everyone hates the SOB, making tons of $$$$$$$$$ for the Carlyle Group members and his family's other friends in big 'biness' and eating roast pig. NATIONAL SECURITY was, has always been, and still is the LAST THING ON HIS MIND.

[City Lights]

7. Clinton and Gingrich formed the commission.

Newt was the House Speaker at the time. It doesn't get much more bi-partisan than that, and the assholes running the government when the study was released still ignored their findings. :mad: :argh:

[Jade Fox]

8. This was the original outrage.....

in the Bush history of irresponsibility about terrorism. Glad to see this story being revived here on DU for anyone who doesn't know about it.

[many a good man]

10. Makes you wonder 'what if?'

What if there was no such thing as Monica Lewinsky? The Starr Chamber would have died a humiliating, withering death. Instead of focusing on impeachment, the terror threat would have been at the top of the national agenda. Lieberman would not have been nominated VP. Gore would have tried to enact the Hart-Rudman recommendations. Even if 911 still happened, the recalcitrant Republican Congress who blocked its implementation would have been blamed. In 2002 Democrats would have swept Congress and we'd be billions in the black. Thousands of lives would have been spared.

[petgoat]

13. I don't understand why the Dems allowed Bush to paint himself

as strong on terrorism.

9/11 could not have happened under Gore. Bush's negligence was essential to the
the success of the plot.

His pet goat stunt was essential to the success of the attack on the Pentagon.
Any normal CiC would have asked "Is there fighter cover over DC?" Then flight
77 could have been intercepted. And had it been intercepted, the hijackers,
seeing that they could not complete their mission, might have surrendered rather
than kill a planeload of innocents for nothing.

[Cleita]

14. Our federal government for all intents and purposes is

broken. We are having a Constitutional crisis and the rise of BushCo is proof of this situation. I hope some of our leadership and influential Americans will take off their blindfolds and address the situation.