HAHAHAHA!!!
So because the attacks occured outside of USA, then it's ok? The president and the intelligence community are exempt from scrutiny? Whether it's within USA boundaries or not, American interest and lives should be protected and Clinton did a horrible job. Where was the terrorist information and intelligence to prevent those attacks? What happened to Clinton?
Clinton was portrayed as some kind of genius. The most intelligent president ever. Don't you think he should have heeded to each of those events? Shouldn't he have put a better effort against Al qaeda at that time, instead of half heartedly giving a "warning" to Bush?
And if you think that the 911 attack was planned or organized within those 8 months in 2001, then you are about as naive as they come. That cell was in the USA since 2000. Some of those hijackers were already in USA in 1998 and 1999. Since you only care about what is going on within the US borders, the why didn't EL PUTO CLINTON uncover the cell during their early stategic stage in 2000?
SHAME ON EL PUTO CLINTON.
I don't see the need of pointing out any "factual" errors from your first post. The fact that you copied and paste it from a Democrat party site should be enough to warn anyone of its fallacy.
great point - since Clinton didn't catch the hijackers in 2000 then Bush can't really be blamed for all his failures leading up the attacks.
Bush was really just an innocent victim on 9-11.
All this stuff is irrelevent (and as you've pointed it since it came from a Dem website it must all be untrue):
Clinton Administration officials warned the Bush Administration about terrorist threat. Reporting for the Washington Post, Barton Gellman has written that "beginning on August 7, 1998, the day that al Qaeda destroyed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Clinton directed a campaign of increasing scope and lethality against bin Laden's network that carried through his final days in office." (12/19/01) When President Bush took office in January 2001, Clinton Administration officials briefed the incoming Bush Administration on its efforts to eliminate al Qaeda. The 9-11 Commission's March 24, 2004 Staff Report notes that, on January 26, 2001, Richard Clarke provided the National Security Council leadership with two plans for increasing counterterrorism efforts, a 1998 comprehensive plan and a 2000 strategy paper. Neither of these plans were adopted, and the Bush Administration did not develop its own counterterrorism strategy before the attacks of September 11.
The Bush Administration neglected warnings by outgoing Clinton staff during its transition into office. In his testimony before the independent commission investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that the Bush Administration had been briefed by outgoing Clinton Administration officials: "the outgoing Administration provided me and others in the incoming Administration with transition papers as well as briefings that reinforced our awareness of the worldwide threat from terrorism." (3/23/04). Daniel Benjamin, author of The Age of Sacred Terror, reported that Brian Sheridan, an assistant secretary of Defense under President Clinton, stated "I offered to brief anyone, any time on any topic [related to terrorism]. Never took it up." (Los Angeles Times, 3/30/04) Mr. Benjamin also noted that Don Kerrick, a three-star general who served as President Clinton's deputy National Security Advisor and continued through the first four months of the Bush Administration, issued a memo to the new National Security Council leadership about al Qaeda, saying, "We are going to be struck again." He never heard back: "I don't think it was above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen."
Warnings about al Qaeda began to pour in. The Bush Administration was repeatedly warned by both the U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies that al Qaeda was planning an attack. In his testimony before the independent 9-11 commission, Richard Clarke asserted that both he and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet "tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by seeing to it that intelligence reports on the Al Qaida threat were frequently given to the president and other high-level officials." Clarke further stated that "President Bush was regularly told by the director of Central Intelligence that there was an urgent threat...He was told this dozens of times in the morning briefings that George Tenet gave him." The White House has confirmed that, on August 6, 2001, President Bush's Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) specifically focused on al Qaeda's intent to attack the United States, and specifically warned that airplane hijackings could be involved. According to press reports, the PDB included a fresh report from British intelligence warning that al Qaeda was planning multiple hijackings.
The National Security Council focused on Iraq, not terrorism. The Associated Press reported that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions, officials say...Bush's principals committee was focused on missile defense, Iraq, China, international economic policy, global warming and the U.S. stance toward Russia, a subject of particular interest to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a Russian expert who has now worked for both Bush presidents." (6/29/02) One of the two meetings occurred just a week before the attacks.
The Washington Post recently confirmed this neglect of terrorism when it reported, in an article entitled, "Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn't On Terrorism," that Dr. Rice had planned to give a major speech outlining President Bush's national security priorities. The speech "was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups." (4/1/04)
Despite Warnings, Bush Administration Not Focused on Counterterrorism Strategy
The Bush Administration moved counterrorism "to the back burner." President Bush himself admitted that, when it came to the threat of terrorism, before September 11, 2001, "I didn't feel a sense of urgency." (Bush at War, Bob Woodward, 2002). Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith told the independent September 11 commission that Secretary Rumsfeld "asked him to focus his attention on working with the Russians on agreements to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and preparing a new nuclear arms control pact," not on terrorism. (9-11 Commission Staff, Statement No. 6). The 9-11 commission staff statement also notes that lower-level officials in the Department of Defense's Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) operation "told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues and was not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda."
Henry H. Shelton, who served President Bush as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffuntil October 1, 2001, confirms Clarke's account. General Shelton reports that the Bush Administration moved counterterrorism efforts "farther to the back burner," and that "the squeaky wheel was Dick Clarke, but he wasn't at the top of their priority list, so the lights went out for a few months." He characterized Secretary Rumsfeld's attitude toward the threat of terrorism as being "this terrorism thing was out there, but it didn't happen today, so maybe it belonged lower on the list." (The Age of Sacred Terror, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, 2003)
Remarkably, the Bush Administration believed too much emphasis was placed on neutralizing Osama bin Laden. When the State Department released its annual report "Patterns of Global Terrorism" on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that "unlike last year, there's no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official tells CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden and `personalizing terrorism.'" (CNN's Inside Politics, 4/30/01).
Vice President Cheney's task force on terrorism never met. On May 8, 2001, President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would "oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm." (Statement by the President) The task force was to focus specifically, in Vice President Cheney's words, on the threat of "domestic terrorism...a terrorist organization overseas or even another state using weapons of mass destruction against the U.S., a hand-carried nuclear weapon or biological or chemical agents." (CNN, 5/8/01) Moreover, President Bush announced that he would "periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts." (Statement by the President, 5/8/01) The Washington Post reports that, in the four months between the President's announcement and the September 11 attacks, "neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." (1/20/02). According to the 9-11 Commission, the Cheney Task Force "was just getting underway when the 9/11 attack occurred." (9-11 Commission, Staff Statement Number 8, "National Policy Coordination," p. 9).
The Bush Administration counterterrorism strategy - not materially different from the Clinton Policy - was not signed by the President before the 9/11 attacks.Bush Administration officials have claimed that they worked to prepare an aggressive new counterterrorism strategy for the President during his first year in office. However, they admit that the strategy was completed only two days before September 11, and that President Bush never actually saw this strategy until after September 11. Members of the 9-11 Commission have also concluded that the new Bush policy was not materially different than the Clinton plan that was first briefed by Richard Clarke eight months earlier. Instead of aggressively and immediately instituting a counterterrorism strategy in response to the urging of Clinton Administration officials and the Bush Administration's own National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, President Bush, in Clarke's words, "ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11." (60 Minutes, 3/21/04)
Bush Administration Cuts Funding for Counterterrorism The Bush Administration de-emphasized counterterrorism in Fiscal Year 2003 budget. In the weeks before the September 11 attacks, Administration officials in different government agencies were developing budget requests for the Fiscal Year 2003 budget, which was to be submitted to Congress in February 2002. The New York Times reported that, in developing his budget request, Attorney General John Ashcroft "called for spending increases in 68 programs, none of which directly involved counterterrorism." (2/28/02) In fact, "Mr. Ashcroft did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators." Finally, according to The New York Times, the Attorney General "proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness."
The Defense Department terminated surveillance of Osama bin Laden.Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - who had, according to the 9-11 Commission, urged his senior policy advisers to focus on issues other than terrorism - scaled back counterterrorism efforts initiated by the previous Administration. Upon assuming command of the Department of Defense (DoD), Rumsfeld terminated flights of the unmanned Predator drone that had been tracking bin Laden. The drone had spotted bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, but it was not launched once in the first eight months of the Bush Administration. The Washington Post has reported that, in terms of DoD counterterrorism funding, "there were also somewhat higher gaps [in 2001], however, between what military commanders said they needed to combat terrorists and what they got. When the Senate Armed Services Committee tried to fill those gaps with $600 million diverted from ballistic missile defense, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he would recommend a veto. That threat came Sept. 9." (1/20/02) Finally, shortly after Secretary Rumsfeld took the reigns at the DoD, he shut down a disinformation program intended to create dissent within the Taliban. (Daniel Benjamin, Los Angeles Times, 3/30/04)
Even after 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration cut proposed counterterrorism funds. The Bush Administration has justified its failure to prevent the September 11 attacks by saying that no one could have predicted the attacks. However, even after the attacks took place, the Administration cut the FBI's counterterrorism funding request by nearly two-thirds during debate over a supplemental appropriations package. Though the FBI requested an additional $1.5 billion to enhance its counterterrorism efforts and create 2,024 new positions, the Bush Administration requested only $538 million from Congress. And more recently, as The New York Times reported earlier this month, President Bush tried to eliminate a $12 million request by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which said it needed the small injection of new money "to increase by 50% the number of criminal financial investigators" necessary to do its part in the fight against terrorism. (3/31/04)
