Archive for category 9/11
NYT: President Bush Ignored CIA Warnings Before August 6th PDB
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, Bush Administration, Bush Failures, Disaster, National Politics, Terrorism on September 11, 2012
On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) with the headline: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The PDB (partially declassified in 2004 as a result of the 9/11 Commission investigation) predicted an al-Qaeda attack on New York’s World Trade Center. Bush stayed on vacation in Texas, going fishing the next day.
In yesterday’s New York Times, Kurt Eichenwald reports on the contents of prior PDBs that the Bush administration kept secret (emphasis added):
While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.
The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent.” …
…And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.”
…Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.
The Bush administration was the worst in our history. And their irresponsible behavior prior to the 9/11 attacks was just one of their string of catastrophic failures.
UPDATE: Speaking to CBS “This Morning” Eichenwald explained that the neocons in the Bush administration ignored repeated warnings about al-Qaeda because they were already fixated on Iraq.
“The worst of them, the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, as the CIA was coming in and saying al Qaeda is going to attack, said, ‘Oh, this is just a false flag operation. Bin Laden’s just trying to take our eye off of the real threat, Iraq.’ And so there are presidential daily briefs that are literally saying, ‘No, they’re wrong. This isn’t fake. It’s real.’”
“In the aftermath, the White House and others said, ‘Well, they didn’t tell us enough.’ No. They told them everything they needed to know to go on a full alert, and the White House didn’t do it.”
UPDATE: Romney Adviser Calls Foreign Policy A ‘Distraction’. Uh-oh.
While it seems clear that the so-called “Cheney-ites” are running things behind the scenes, Romney has avoided much public discussion of foreign policy. Even his own advisers and supporters have no idea what Romney’s foreign policy is.
UPDATE: Cheney bashes Obama for not paying attention to intelligence briefings. Not true of course, it’s another example of GOP projection.
UPDATE: Chris Matthews: Republicans would have blamed Obama for 9/11
A Third of Veterans Say Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Not Worth Fighting
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, Afghanistan, American History, American People, Disaster, Iraq, Military, National Politics, Veterans, War on October 5, 2011
U.S. forces were sent into Afghanistan in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks on the United States to topple that country’s Taliban leaders who had harbored the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible. What initially seemed like a quick victory became the longest war in American history. The Taliban made a comeback, and now have shadow governments in nearly every Afghan province. They seem likely to overthrow the U.S.-backed government in Kabul when our troops are withdrawn.
The invasion of Iraq was launched by the Bush administration based on false claims. It was a breach of the United Nations Charter, a war of aggression. By September 2004, the Iraq Survey Group final report concluded that the dangerous weapons of mass destruction cited by President Bush as a threat to U.S. national security never existed. By March 2007, the Pentagon finished reviewing more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the U.S. invasion. The conclusion: there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime ever had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that 33 percent of the post-9/11 veterans who took part in a recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center said neither of those two wars was worthwhile considering the costs versus the benefits to the United States. That compared to 45 percent of nonmilitary poll respondents who said neither war was worthwhile.
More than 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and almost 1,700 killed in Afghanistan. These figures do not include suicides.
What We Still Don’t Know About The 9/11 Attacks
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, al Qaeda, American History, Bush Administration, Condolezza Rice, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, National Politics, Terrorism, This Blog, Torture, War, War Crimes on September 11, 2011
Ten years later, the facts are still coming out about the events of September 11, 2001. The first F-16s scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base were unarmed – the pilots knew the only way to stop a hijacked plane would be to crash into it. A little later, according to newly-released tapes, NORAD elected to ignore Vice President Cheney’s order to shoot down suspect aircraft.
The 9/11 Commission Report remains the best overall account of what happened during the attacks ten years ago. However, the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission’s investigative records remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington. About two-thirds of the material is still classified, years after the commission members wanted it released to the public. Included in the sealed archive is the complete transcript of the commission’s interview with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
While some people refer to “the official story” of the 9/11 attacks, there actually isn’t one. The closest the Bush administration ever came to issuing an official account was former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the commission in April 2004. This was when Rice claimed, incredibly, that no-one “could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.” Condi’s testimony basically amounted to a plea of incompetence on behalf of the U.S. government.
Robert Scheer points out that the 9/11 Commission was never able to definitively answer some of the the most important questions regarding the origin and motives of the 9/11 attackers. The truth might lead to a re-examination of U.S. foreign policy, and possibly embarrassment for some powerful people associated with bad decisions — both overt and covert.
The history of the 9/11 attacks is still being written. There is plenty we still don’t know. What we DO know: the last decade of war has caused lots of death and destruction, and the cost to U.S. taxpayers so far is $6.6 trillion in war funding plus another $580 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. We are left with a shameful legacy of war crimes, assassinations and torture, plus the loss of some of our constitutional rights, privacy, and freedom.
UPDATE: Krugman is Right: We Should Be Ashamed of What Happened after 9/11
UPDATE: Jane Stillwater: Honoring 9-11: Time to audit the CIA’s incestuous relationship with Al Qaeda [Note: I think Jane is asking the right questions, but I don't agree with all her answers]
UPDATE: Kevin Gosztola: Ten Years After 9/11, Aviation Security Still Hysterical. It’s a world ruled by fear and terror, we just live in it and have nothing to say.
UPDATE: U.S. Attack Threat Remains Uncorroborated. Or, “Osama bin Laden is dead, but you can’t have your rights back yet because we have some more fear mongering to do.”
UPDATE: Chris Hedges:
We do not grasp that Osama bin Laden’s twisted vision of a world of indiscriminate violence and terror has triumphed.
…We could have gone another route. We could have built on the profound sympathy and empathy that swept through the world following the attacks. The revulsion over the crimes that took place 10 years ago, including in the Muslim world, where I was working in the weeks and months after 9/11, was nearly universal. The attacks, if we had turned them over to intelligence agencies and diplomats, might have opened possibilities not of war and death but ultimately reconciliation and communication, of redressing the wrongs that we commit in the Middle East and that are committed by Israel with our blessing. It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too. The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.
UPDATE: Former Senator Bob Graham Urges Obama to Reopen Investigation into Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks (Note: Bob Graham is also peddling a novel).
UPDATE: Russ Baker: Newly-revealed evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.
[T]he FBI, for reasons unknown, failed to provide the information to Congressional 9/11 investigators or to the …9/11 Commission, and thus it has remained a secret for the past decade.
…The 9/11 Commission report “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials” financed Al Qaeda. But this carefully worded statement does not foreclose the possibility that members of the Saudi royal family personally provided financing, or that senior officials funded companies or outsiders that in turn provided financing.
UPDATE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that as an engineer he’s sure the twin towers were not brought down by jetliners.
Ten Years Later, President Bush Tries to Explain His Deer-in-Headlights Reaction to the World Trade Center Attack
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, American History, Bush Administration, Bush Failures, Disaster, George W. Bush, National Politics, Terrorism, This Blog on July 29, 2011
In a rare interview with the National Geographic Channel, Bush reflects on what was going through his mind at the most dramatic moment of his presidency when he was informed that a second passenger jet had hit New York’s World Trade Center.
Bush was visiting a Florida classroom and the incident, which was caught on TV film, and has often been used by critics to ridicule his apparently blank face.
“My first reaction was anger. Who the hell would do that to America? Then I immediately focused on the children, and the contrast between the attack and the innocence of children,” Bush says in an excerpt of the interview shown to television writers on Thursday.
Bush said he could see the news media at the back of the classroom getting the news on their own cellphones “and it was like watching a silent movie.”
Bush said he quickly realized that a lot of people beyond the classroom would be watching for his reaction.
“So I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm,” he said of his decision to remain seated and silent.
“I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing a leader has to do is to project calm,” he added.
The National Geographic Channel will broadcast the hour-long interview on August 28 as part of a week of programs on the cable network called “Remembering 9/11″ that mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
I don’t know of the kids were rattled or not. President Bush sure looked rattled, if not downright snakebit. He definitely didn’t “project a sense of calm.”
A Raw Story commenter:
I think he looks like, “Holy fuck! That sonofabitch Richard Clarke was right. He warned me about this in the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing and I ignored him. My presidency is OVER. They’re gonna impeach my ass over this. I wonder if I’ll be sent to prison?”
‘Geronimo KIA’
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, American History, Military, National Politics, Pakistan, Terrorism, War on May 2, 2011
In August 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States of America on behalf of al-Qaeda. Now, almost 15 years later, the CIA and U.S. Navy SEALs found him and killed him. Finally. The code phrase was “Geronimo KIA.” His body was buried at sea.
I suppose the street celebrations in this country were our answer to those in other parts of the world who danced with joy after the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps some thought the war was over. Unfortunately, our state of permanent war is never-ending.
UPDATE: Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad: Pakistani Incompetence or Complicity?
UPDATE: Local news anchor: ‘President Obama is in fact dead’
UPDATE: On FDL, David Dayen tracks the changing story of what happened during the bin Laden raid. Official Bin Laden Story Changes in Various Places
UPDATE: Senate Intelligence Chair: Information That Led To Bin Laden’s Killing Did Not Come From Torture
UPDATE: Palin Thanks Bush For Bin Laden Raid, Doesn’t Mention Obama Once
UPDATE: Now That Bin Laden Is Dead, Can We Have Our Freedoms Back?
The 9/11 Official Story At Last?
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, American History, Bush Administration, Disaster, Foreign Policy, National Politics, Terrorism, the Internet, This Blog, Transparency, War on October 2, 2010
The discussion on One Utah and elsewhere of whether or not we can believe “the official government story” of the 9/11 attacks and the events leading up to them has been hampered, IMHO, by the near-total lack of an official story.
Up to now, the best we have is Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before a special session of the 9/11 Commission. The former national security adviser didn’t say much except that President Bush and other top officials were preoccupied with other policies, and slow to develop a counter-terrorism strategy. Urgent warnings from the intelligence community were ignored. “No one could have imagined them… using planes as a missile,” Rice claimed without much credibility.
The 9/11 Commission’s report, although far the best summary of what happened, was written without complete access to the secretive Bush administration. It was an unofficial report. More information has come to light since it was published.
Via the HuffPo, it seems the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs maintains a debunking website that addresses 9/11 and other conspiracy theories. The site seems to have been put up last May, and could be the closest thing we have to an official government account of the 9/11 attacks.
Dramatic, polarizing events often give rise to conspiracy theories, and the September 11 attacks were the most dramatic terrorist attacks in history. Nonsense about them abounds, especially in the popular video “Loose Change.”
See “The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories” for an overview. There was no “controlled demolition” of the World Trade Center towers. Instead, the unprecedented attack by hijacked airliners full of jet fuel destroyed support pillars, loosened fireproofing insulation, and ignited fires that destroyed the twin towers. The collapse of the north tower heavily damaged World Trade Center 7, igniting fires and causing its collapse.
A hijacked plane, not a cruise missile, hit the Pentagon, as detailed in a photo gallery. Four thousand Jews did not miss work at the World Trade Center on September 11. And al-Qaida has admitted, many times, that it carried out the attacks.
I don’t think a nine-sentence statement is good enough to fill the need for a thorough official explanation. For example, what was the U.S. government’s role before, during and after 9/11? It’s strange that there is not even a link to the 9/11 Commission website. There is no way to ask questions on the State Department site. Originally it had a blog, titled “Rumors, Myths, and Fabrications: Examining rumors, conspiracy theories and false stories,” but the link is dead.
Given the events set in motion by the 9/11 attacks, including wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the expenditure of trillions of dollars, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, millions forced to flee their homes — maybe the Obama administration could take this matter a little more seriously. Last month, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations General Assembly that 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S., he was repeating what nearly a third of Middle Easterners believe.
The following is pure speculation, but I would be surprised if the government hasn’t already written a secret history of the 9/11 attacks. We’ll learn about it, like we did with the Pentagon Papers, when someone in the know decides to go public with it — perhaps on WikiLeaks.
Blood won’t wash away blood…
Posted by Shane Smith in 9/11, Afghanistan, American History, Foreign Policy, Guantanamo, Hypocrisy, Iraq, Philosophy, Taliban, Terrorism, War on August 10, 2010
I have been listening to a lot of interviews with candidates in the upcoming Afghanistan elections. They are hard to find, but there are actually several out there if you look hard enough. Then today one of them just popped up on the radio for me as if it had been requested. It was an interview with Izatullah Nusrat, a 42-year-old village elder from Sorobi, east of Kabul. He has an interesting story, and is a one man object lesson in American diplomacy.
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