Looking for Someone to Blame for 9/11? Here's Two Suggestions:
An FBI budget official told the Joint Inquiry that counterterrorism was not a priority for Attorney General Ashcroft before September 11, and the FBI faced pressure to make cuts in counterterrorism to satisfy his other priorities. -- from the 9/11 report, p. 47 (p. 79 in the PDF file)
Those priorities focused mainly on depriving the terminally ill of rights they had been granted by their states: the right to assisted suicide in Oregon, and the right to medicinal marijuana for AIDS and cancer patients in California. Ashcroft obviously saw these are greater threats to America than some fundamentalists who had declared war on America and already carried out devastating attacks overseas (embassy bombings and the Cole attack). No wonder Ashcroft has been an even more arrogant prick ever since: He could have done a lot to prevent 9/11, but chose instead to inflict more pain and suffering on those who have already suffered plenty.
Here's an interesting point: I searched the whole report document for the word "Taliban," and it doesn't appear; not once, although Afghanistan being a "safe haven" for al Qaeda members is mentioned several times. "Iraq" appears a few times, but not in any context that implies that the Iraqi government had anything to do with 9/11.
And if you are looking for somebody else to go, if for shear incompetence or blatant lying (take your pick), compare these two quotes:
From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. This information did not stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or collective U.S. Government reaction to, this form of threat.
Discussion: [While the credibility of the sources was sometimes questionable and the information often sketchy, the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did
receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons. For example, the Community received information in 1998 about a Bin Ladin operation that
would involve flying an explosive- laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and, in summer 2001, about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy from an airplane or crash an airplane into it. The FBI and CIA were also aware that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and several others had discussed the possibility of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters as part of “the Bojinka Plot” in the Philippines, discussed later in this report. Some, but apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community and to other agencies]. -- from the report, pp. 9-10 (42-43 in the pdf file)
I don't think anybody could have predicted ... that they would try to use an airplane as missile. Had this president known of something more specific or known that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted on it. -- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Spring 2002.
Of course, the buck should stop in the oval office. That lame-brain Texan hired these clowns; it's his fault!
An FBI budget official told the Joint Inquiry that counterterrorism was not a priority for Attorney General Ashcroft before September 11, and the FBI faced pressure to make cuts in counterterrorism to satisfy his other priorities. -- from the 9/11 report, p. 47 (p. 79 in the PDF file)
Those priorities focused mainly on depriving the terminally ill of rights they had been granted by their states: the right to assisted suicide in Oregon, and the right to medicinal marijuana for AIDS and cancer patients in California. Ashcroft obviously saw these are greater threats to America than some fundamentalists who had declared war on America and already carried out devastating attacks overseas (embassy bombings and the Cole attack). No wonder Ashcroft has been an even more arrogant prick ever since: He could have done a lot to prevent 9/11, but chose instead to inflict more pain and suffering on those who have already suffered plenty.
Here's an interesting point: I searched the whole report document for the word "Taliban," and it doesn't appear; not once, although Afghanistan being a "safe haven" for al Qaeda members is mentioned several times. "Iraq" appears a few times, but not in any context that implies that the Iraqi government had anything to do with 9/11.
And if you are looking for somebody else to go, if for shear incompetence or blatant lying (take your pick), compare these two quotes:
From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. This information did not stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or collective U.S. Government reaction to, this form of threat.
Discussion: [While the credibility of the sources was sometimes questionable and the information often sketchy, the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did
receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons. For example, the Community received information in 1998 about a Bin Ladin operation that
would involve flying an explosive- laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and, in summer 2001, about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy from an airplane or crash an airplane into it. The FBI and CIA were also aware that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and several others had discussed the possibility of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters as part of “the Bojinka Plot” in the Philippines, discussed later in this report. Some, but apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community and to other agencies]. -- from the report, pp. 9-10 (42-43 in the pdf file)
I don't think anybody could have predicted ... that they would try to use an airplane as missile. Had this president known of something more specific or known that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted on it. -- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Spring 2002.
Of course, the buck should stop in the oval office. That lame-brain Texan hired these clowns; it's his fault!
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