More shooting the wounded...
The United States could have prevented the September 11 attacks with tighter border and intelligence checks, the head of an official inquiry into the strikes said Tuesday as top administration officials gave their first public testimony. âMy feeling is a whole number of circumstances, had they been different, might have prevented 9/11,â Thomas Kean, chairman of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, told CBS television before Tuesdayâs key hearing.
| There's still time, if we can only get ahold of a time machine! |
The Clinton and Bush administrations failed to take aggressive action against terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden and other radical groups before the September 11 attacks, an official investigation into the 2001 strikes said. âWe found that the CIA and the FBI tended to be careful in discussing the attribution for terrorist acts,â read a 16-page report by the national commission on the September 11 attacks. âTheir written work was conservative phrased and caveated,â it added.
| They're still getting thumped every time they try to make a statement that's out of PC boundaries... |
Former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen said Bin Laden once issued a religious decree putting a price on his head and calling for his assassination. âHe was very precise in issuing a personal âfatwaâ against me. I was put on a list, there was a price tag, there were several attempts that I donât want to go into details about going after me,â Cohen told a national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that President Bush ordered moves to âdestroyâ Al Qaeda as soon as it took office because the previous administration under Bill Clinton had failed to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda. Powell and his predecessor Madeleine Albright both defended action taken by their administrations against bin Laden, but admitted the measures had fallen short in the run-up to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
President Bush said he would have taken action to stop the September 11 attacks in 2001 if he had prior information about them, rebuffing criticism by a former aid his anti-terror efforts were inadequate. âHad my administration had any information that the terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11 we would have acted,â Bush told reporters.
| Further proof that you can't protect yourself against every and any attack, but that blame can be assigned in all instances... |
Time for the time machine to create a scenario:
July 9, 2001: GWB makes a nationally televised address in which he accuses an obscure (to most) terrorist organization, "al-Qaeda", of responsibility in several attacks on the U.S. He then makes the sensational claim that these terrorists have planned to hijack American civilian airplanes and crash them into targets such as the WTC, Pentagon and Capitol. He states that he's going to ask Congress for a resolution to invade Afghanistan, depose the regime there, and clean out al-Qaeda.
Question: how many Senators would have voted for this, and how many would have voted to confirm an impeachment?
Second scenario:
September 9, 2001: Same as the July 9 one, except GWB adds that the plot to hijack airplanes was "imminent", and as a result he is ordering that the grounding of all civilian aircraft and closing of airports "for the time being", and instituting a profiling system at INS for people of middle-eastern ancestry.
Same question. |
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