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| Bush's critics backing off on Sept. 11 clues |
| 2002-05-20 |
| Facing a strong counterattack from the Bush administration, some legislators on Sunday moderated their criticism of the inability of the White House and intelligence agencies to piece together hints last summer and grasp the nature of the terrorist threat ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks. "Ouch! Hey! No fair! They're whackin' us back! Make 'em stop, Mom!" A bitter public partisanship, largely forsworn by the political parties since the attacks, suddenly returned to Washington. But by Sunday, much of the criticism — and not just from Democrats — appeared to be settling at a level lower than the White House, concentrated on the FBI and CIA and on communication failures that President George W. Bush and those agencies have moved to address. Cheney offended many Democrats on Thursday by urging them not to "seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions" that might aid U.S. enemies. The suggestion that the president could have prevented the attacks, Cheney said Sunday, with barely concealed anger, "strikes me as beyond the pale." "Be offended and be damned!" "I never, ever, ever thought that anybody, including the president, did anything up to 9/11 other than their best," Representative Dick Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, said on Fox-TV. "The question is, how do we do better?" "What did he know and when did he know it?" The White House confirmed Wednesday that Bush was briefed Aug. 6 about a threat that U.S. planes might be hijacked. But Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said Sunday that the briefing memo had been an analytical paper with "nothing fresh in it," a simple summary of "tactics that Al Qaeda might use." The CIA briefing memo is reported to have warned that Osama bin Laden wanted his Al Qaeda militant group to attack targets inside the United States. The administration has emphasized that most intelligence warnings pointed to a greater likelihood of overseas attacks. This followed an earlier intergovernmental study saying that terrorists might fly airplanes into the Pentagon or other buildings, and a report from an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona, last summer that Al Qaeda might be training pilots in a plot to hijack planes. The FBI was also investigating an suspect in Minneapolis who wanted to learn how to fly jumbo jets but not how to land them. Use a bit of imagination and you can come up with lots of other horrid scenarios, just like they do on the news shows. "Might want to" and "are gonna" are two different things. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 Sounds like Should'a, Would'a, Could'a quarterbacking to me! Don't these people realise just how much verification the higher-ups demand before you can sweep down on these terrorists? Funny I remember some of these officials are the same ones who demanded this type of verification in order to protect our Rights? |
| Posted by: Mary Wehmeier 2002-05-20 13:44:08 |
| #1 Sounds like Should'a, Would'a, Could'a quarterbacking to me! Don't these people realise just how much verification the higher-ups demand before you can sweep down on these terrorists? Funny I remember some of these officials are the same ones who demanded this type of verification in order to protect our Rights? |
| Posted by: Mary Wehmeier 2002-05-20 13:13:18 |