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Damning 9/11 Report Exposes Bush Adminstration as Woefully Incompetent if not Criminally Negligent

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 16 February 2005
6 comments

Attack-Terrorism Governments USA

What We Don’t Know About 9/11 Hurts Us
Robert Scheer

February 15, 2005

Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?

The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot. Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.

For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks. But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.

The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.

The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA - and available to Rice - before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Given this shocking record of indifference on the part of the administration, it is politically understandable that it tried to prevent the formation of the 9/11 commission in the first place, and then for five months prevented the declassification of key sections of the final report. Commission members, including its Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, stated in the past that there was no national security concern that justified keeping those sections of the report from the public.

And let’s be clear: The failure to fully disclose what is known about the 9/11 tragedy is not some minor bureaucratic transgression. Not since the Soviets first detonated an atomic bomb more than half a century ago has a single event so affected decision-making in this country, yet the main questions as to how and why it happened remain mostly unanswered.

Even worse, what we do know calls into question our government’s explanation that a diabolical international terrorist conspiracy exploited our liberal, naive society. What has emerged, instead, is a portrait of an often bumbling terrorist gang allowed to wreak havoc because the top tiers of the administration were so indifferent to the alarms, which former CIA Director George Tenet described so graphically: "The system was blinking red."

Had the business-friendly administration put safety first and ordered a full complement of air marshals into the air, over the obscene objections of airlines loath to give up paid seats, nearly 3,000 people might not have died that day. And had the president of the United States taken some time from his epic ranch vacation that August to order a nationwide airport alert, two bloody wars abroad, as well as an all-out assault on civil liberties in this country, probably would not have happened.

Instead, an administration that resisted spending the tens of millions required to fortify airline security before 9/11 is nearing the $300-billion mark on Afghanistan and Iraq. And declassified documents have unmistakably said the latter had nothing to do with 9/11. Meanwhile, those countries that at least indirectly did, most notably "allies" Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been let off the hook.

Indeed, the 9/11 commission was not allowed to get near that story: It is an unnoticed but startling truth that the basic narrative on the tragedy derives from the interrogations of key detainees whom the 9/11 commissioners were not allowed to interview. Nor were they permitted to even take testimony from the U.S. intelligence personnel who interrogated those prisoners.

When the truth and governmental transparency are arbitrarily trumped by the invocation of national security, the public is simply incapable of making informed decisions on the most crucial decisions we face - starting with whom we elect as our commander in chief.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...

Forum posts

  • God damn the land of the greed and home of the slaves

    • Let the report be printed world wide, and stop the lies, for more lies will flow the blood of more sons and daughters and people in Iraq, Iran, Syria the list goes on. Iraq
      invasion has cost the world millions of lives if you want the put the dollars up that is being spent and we are still having money misplaced and put in the pockets of all bush buddies.

      Every paper in the America must print the report. The media on TV, Radio
      the truth must be heard.

      The lies will not stop until the truth is printed, heard by everyone.

      Its your sons and daughters that are paying the price. How many more are you willing to send to battle for a lie.

  • This article is a typical liberal story full of half truths, speculation and lies. Robert Scheer...what a moron, how can you make a statement about what is in a classified document...when it’s CLASSIFIED! TYPICAL DUMB, ANTI-BUSH, LIBERAL!

    • To "This article is a typical liberal story full of half truths, speculation and lies":

      Hey, Mr. GOP pseudo-genius, since you believe caveman technology is superior to American technology, check out the comment about your dreaded caveman below. You’re just as insulting as your divine idol ’girlie Bush’ when you join him in convincing the rest of the world (and yourself) that a caveman and his henchmen did all that damage on 9/11. You’re not just any ordinary GOP dumbass, you are a PROFESSIONAL DUMBASS, and proud of it! Next thing you’ll be saying is that Saddam Hussein is an imminent threat.

      You’re the one who will be in my crosshairs, asshole, very soon when more and more Americans numbering in the millions take up arms against you and everyone just like you. Cowards like you will make it just that much easier!

  • EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! CAVEMAN COMBAT KILLS!

    A caveman from the other side of the world penetrated the greatest strategic military and intelligence defenses the world has ever known and slaughtered more than 3,000 people on our own soil with only 20 recruits!

    WOW!

    If that’s true, then we’re all in big trouble, people, and in order to survive, we must get rid of present failed leadership, eliminate the lies and liars—the traitors—among us and help our patriots kill the caveman, and elect wise and brave and truthful patriots to lead us.
    If that’s not true, then we’re all in BIG trouble, people, and in order to survive, we must get rid of present failed leadership, expose and kill the leadership that killed our 3,000 people and eliminate the lies and liars—the traitors—among us, and elect wise and brave and truthful patriots to lead us.

    If a caveman from the other side of the world penetrated the greatest strategic military and intelligence defenses the world has ever known and slaughtered more than 3,000 people on our own soil with only 20 recruits, imagine what a modern foreign military force of 2 million recruits would do: With present failed leadership, a modern foreign military force of 2 million recruits would wipe out our entire American population of 300 million!

    A once revered and honored war leader assured us long ago, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” so present failed leadership prioritized, categorized and colorized all our fears for us – but how do we know who and what to fear the most first? Should it be:

    A caveman from the other side of the world who penetrated the greatest strategic military and intelligence defenses the world has ever known and slaughtered more than 3,000 people on our own soil with only 20 recruits?—OR the modern foreign military force of 2 million recruits that would wipe out our entire American population of 300 million?—OR present failed leadership that says a caveman from the other side of the world penetrated the greatest strategic military and intelligence defenses the world has ever known and slaughtered more than 3,000 people on our own soil with only 20 recruits.

    Wake up and wise up, people!
    Stop believing lies and liars!
    Stop fearing those who fear us!
    Stop honoring cowards who dishonor us!
    Stop defending leaders who fail to defend us!
    Stop excusing failures of present failed leadership!
    Stop enabling hypocrites who worship only mammon!

    Get your minds around the enormity of the crimes committed by Bush and the rest of the immense mob that transcends political parties and ’ethnic persuasions’ and national and international borders and languages! Their creed is greed! They’re all about money! If it takes 3,000 American lives to fill their pockets with billions of dollars, well, that’s a small price for them to pay; right? They risk nothing and no one important to them. It’s time for a French-style revolution starting from the top down, and nothing would be nicer than to have a few ’heads of States’ and ’heads of industry’ rolling on some silver platters! Talk with people you trust, and have each of those people talk with other people they trust; and it won’t take long for people to number in the millions who are ready and willing and able to rescue our nation from the criminals who have stolen our birthrights of Freedom and Justice and the American Way of Life!

    • 9/11 was Bush’s Pearl Harbor that he said he was hoping for before it happened. If he wasn’t part of it he obviously knew it was going to happen and went to Florida to his brother’s neighborhood and embedded himself among the first graders and busied himself reading My Pet Goat to them...(its was about his level, probably didn’t have too much trouble with the words) he sat there and let it happen. If you could have read his thoughts, you would have found him thinking it was xmas, his birthday, and his re-election all rolled up into one......