According to Clarke’s eyewitness testimony, June 2001 is about right.
From wikipedia: Against All Enemies - Wikipedia Clarke argues that he made numerous urgent requests for a meeting about dealing with terrorism, had CIA Director George Tenet include numerous details about Al-Qaeda in daily briefings, found an unprecedented level of terrorist “chatter” before September 11. …but the Bush administration wasn’t interested. Clarke seems to believe that Al Gore might have ordered an all government shakedown in response.
…which he acknowledges might not have worked. The point is it wasn’t tried. And when GWBush was given a briefing in August 2001, he responded IIRC, “All right, you’ve covered your ass.”
Prior to 9/11, the Bush admin simply didn’t take terrorism especially seriously. And after it, they leveraged it to attack Iraq. Heck, Bush even dismantled the CIA unit tasked with hunting down Bin Laden, for reasons that aren’t clear to me. In 2006. That unit was only reconstructed by President Barack Obama.
Look Bush had different priorities. It would be nice if modern conservatives were willing to discuss them, rather than blowing smoke.
Im not blowing smoke, Im blowing facts. Sorry you dont like them. Bush had 100 odd days to do what Clinton couldnt do in years. Funny how you dont hold Clinton as responsible as Bush.
Im not defending Reps, Bush tanked the economy by using 9/11 to get revenge for Daddy. Since 9/11, the market is mixed. Those are the facts.
Im just pointing out this isnt a Partisan issue. Apparently, people here will only accept
Republican evil, Democrat Good.
The issue isnt Dems or Reps, the issue is a corrupt political system that rewards lack of performance. The media which was supposed to keep them in check, is now the tool for greater misinformation.
You mean stop a plot which hadn’t been started when Clinton left office? We aren’t holding Bush accountable for not killing bin Laden from June to September, just for not being very interested in the intelligence he got. The first meeting about it didn’t happen until early September. Maybe if he gave more of a shit about that than about taking vacation it could have been stopped. Maybe not, but at least he could have tried.
He didn’t spend a lot more effort catching bin Laden after 9/11 either. Saddam was far more of a threat, right?
Um, no. I didn’t say it had no impact, in fact I said it caused the market to fall almost 1400 points. But it was clearly not a “fiscal calamity,” as you claimed, because the DJIA was back up to pre-9/11 levels within a couple of months. And since you have very eloquently argued that Bush was ineffective during his first eight months in office, he obviously had nothing to do with the recovery, and therefore it couldn’t have been a “fiscal calamity” if no action was required for a strong recovery.
Americans were justified in being outraged and saddened at the attack, but in the grand scheme of things, it took out a few buildings. Of course it was a personal tragedy for anyone who knew any of the victims, but in strictly financial terms, it wasn’t a pimple on the ass of the true fiscal calamity that Obama inherited from Bush.
I agree. And to say I said it didn’t is even more obtuse, when I gave the actual closing DJIA numbers before and after, showing a 1400 point drop.
No, going by your posts, you don’t seem to understand much of anything that you are lecturing us on. It is not the custom of former Presidents to give daily briefings to their successors, seven months into their term. The daily brief in August was given by Bush’s national intelligence staff. But the Clinton staff did warn Bush, back in January or probably even in late 2000, that Bin Laden was going to be a huge problem, and that he should concentrate on him. Bush blew them off.
That is not a fact, any more than the “fact” in your previous post that Clinton had 8 whole years to get him. Bin Laden was not wanted for crimes against Americans until 1998, and Clinton made three major attempts to get him that we know of, and probably several others that we don’t. The fact that Bush DID have eight whole years to get him, and failed, indicates that he’s not that easy to find, even when everyone in America considers him the devil incarnate, as opposed to a small number of wonks who had heard of him during the Clinton administration.
Two and a half, not 8.
Yes, Bush took office on August 11, 2001. Just as accurate as the rest of your “facts.”
Both admins failed to capture or kill Bin Laden. But I would say that anyone who maintains that there is any comparison between the magnitude of the failures is either very partisan, or very ignorant of the facts. Or both.
I’ll take your word for it that it was not. I do maintain that it was woefully ignorant of facts.
And back down in the following months. Short upswings is not a correction, it is instability.
Market instability is not a sigh of a safe economy. There were several 2000 point swings, then the war.
Oh well thank you for allowing us that. We appreciate it
Oh we dont disagree here. But Bush did not inherit a stable economy from Clinton. You can attempt to gloss over it all you wish, but 2000 point swings are not a sign of confidence.
I disagree. Youre being obtuse. Youre attempting to paint the economy at that time as no big deal. Check the chart.
9800
11300
10000
11000
9400
11300
Those arent stable numbers.
Agreed. There is an approx 9 month change over where 2 admins are working together sharing info.
I dont think Ive disputed that.
Okay, 912 days vs, at best, 100 days. Youre still not seeing the point.
Ah yes the rebuttal of what wasnt said. If you have to make up what I say, then we dont need to discuss this. You can just start posts and talk to yourself.
Yes, because 912 days is a moderate failure, and 100 days is pure fail.
As woefully ignorant as the market recovering.
Oh we agree. Thank goodness I was here to correct your post.
Simplifying somewhat, we’ve pointed to specific bad decisions that GWBush made. One was ignoring warnings about increased Al Qaeda activity from June-Aug 2001. Two was dismantling the CIA group tasked with finding Bin Laden in 2006, reversed by Barack Obama. Third was letting Bin Laden slip through his hands in Tora Bora, which admittedly is comparable to some of Clinton’s failed attempts to get Bin Laden. Though why we expected our Afghan allies to fight The Battle of Tora Bora for us remains unclear to me. I can’t see any sort of specificity to the critiques of Clinton: what precisely should he have done?
There are more diffuse criticisms of course: 6 months after 9/11 GWBush said that the whereabouts of Bin Laden weren’t important to him. I thought that was PR or bravado at the time, but now I take him at his word. Bush was pivoting to Iraq at the time and was relying on Pakistan to fight the Taliban. Those were 2 strategic errors in my view. Any military attack on the US costing thousands of lives should not be countenanced: if hunting down Bin Laden required us to break some crockery in Pakistan, then so be it. But I’m willing to discuss that inclination.
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to have a serious conversation with a modern conservative on national security. It seems that they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge foreign policy tradeoffs. Instead, we just get bluster and tu quoque.
