The White House’s smarmy apologists–I mean spokespeople–Rice and Fleischer, spout defensive inanities, and Cheney tries to spin it as a political issue. Meanwhile, it becomes more and more clear that George W. Sockpuppet’s record-breaking popularity has been built on a hollow foundation of cynical political dinsingenuousness.
If the current administration had spent one TENTH the effort and attention it’s expended capitalizing on this tragedy for its own political popularity on coordination and analyzation of intelligence while it’s still relevant, they might very well have been able to at least have made it a little less fucking EASY for Al Qaeda to have accomplished what they did.
I have to agree that the administration seems more interested in spin doctoring than in simply being forthright and truthful.
Fleischer really makes me ill. When asked an uncomfortable question, he just ignores the question and spouts off a bunch of crap that has little to do with what was asked. This is nothing new for him, he does this on a regular basis.
Cheney also gets a big FUCK YOU for his disgusting comments last night.
I would like to think it’s because most of the anti-Bushie folks on this board have the good sense to wait until more information is available before tossing logs into the bonfire. Now, if it was Clinton being accused, we’d be knee-deep in accusatory rants from the resident conservatives already.
Oh man, I really hate it when morons make me wanna throw in support for Bush.
I guess no one in this country has heard the expression “hindsight is 20/20”, of COURSE every accident could have been avoided, and the information is usually somewhere within reach, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out and that’s that. I have been pretty much ignoring the whole spin-doctoring of it lately, so the administration may very well be scumming it up quite nicely right about now, but I am so sick of this “How can this happen? After all America is invincible, if something bad happens to America then it must be deliberate or else gross negligence.” I mean Jesus christ come on people, we aren’t fucking invincible, we aren’t omniscient and the more wishes by dumbasses that we would be the more support people are going to have for carnivore and random phone tapping.
CIA spook: Well of course we could have prevented 9/11 if we had been allowed to use the information we had gleaned from the porto-zion mind reader 2000 that parses the information that flows through the brain of every American, instead of being held up by congress, we would have nipped those terrorists in the bud and 9/11 would never have occured. We are working on the 2001 model right now, and if we can get it slipped through congress this one will make people absolutely incapable of doing anything that could harm this countries interests. Unfortunately we’ve been testing it on fortune 500 CEOs and Public officials and it puts them in a state closely resembling narcolepsy. So as with anything there are still a few bugs to work out.
I think it’s neat how rjung knows EXACTLY what would have happened if the tables were turned. It’s sort of like backwards ESP.
I’m curious as to what you would have had Bush do with this prior knowlege that Al Quaeda, at SOME point, MAY hijack an airplane? Shut down all air travel for a month? Lock everyone in their homes until the threat passed?
Oh, please. If 9/11 had happened on Clinton’s watch, you KNOW that a certain poster (Hint: When does Christmas come?) would have opened at least half a dozen ill-informed GD threads by now.
Right now, judging from the story in the Washington Post today, the lack of intel was due to the FBI bogarting information that other agencies could have used to put 2 and 2 together, e.g. the Phoenix agent’s memo warning of possible air terrorism. I need more info before indicting Bush of negligence in this matter.
But Jar, don’t you realize that we have to act on EVERY piece of unfiltered information that comes through the whitehouse? if not, bad things might threaten our freedom. So wait patiently don’t leave your home, we are making sure your freedom is intact. In order for us to make sure that freedom is unencumbered we will shoot anyone leaving their homes inside of the curfew hours of 4PM to 11AM, and to insure a quick response we will tap all communications devices to make sure that no one breaks the curfew. You can’t cut any corners when freedom is at stake!
I mean, god we ridicule the government NOW after september 11th for giving us a hokey terrorist warning every five minutes “Oh no grab Punxatawney Phil, he might be a terrorist target”, yet we expect that sort of thing to be the rule when there is a tragedy that could have been averted? Please.
so that IS what you wanted him to do? You would have found that feasible and not at all damaging to the economy? I would have gladly done it. I doubt very highly you would have gone along with a no air travel/house arrest, lockdown.
And my point about rjung was that instead of using this thread to discuss the problem at hand, it was immediately used to bash the opposition.
I think it’s silly to start trying to blame Bush for 9/11
<poke jarbaby in the ribs>
I’m with jarbaby on this one, while Bush may be solely responsible for the breakdown of the english language in this country, I hardly think you can blame him for 9/11.
</poke jarbaby in the ribs>
I’m outta here then. if Erek and I are agreeing, the apocalypse is surely on the horizon.
Besides, I’m historically known as Joe On The Fence politically, nor am I a pundit afficianado. I just know that when I heard Bush knew there may be a threat of an attack, my reaction was…
“Damn, that’s a shame we couldn’t have stopped it”
The WTC attack would most likely have happened if Gore were in office. Could our intelligence agencies play nicer. No doubt, and maybe they’ll do so (for a time). That would be a positive outcome.
But now we have the negative outcome. The Dems are getting their payback on the Reps, who in turn were getting their payback on the Dems, who were in turn…you get the idea.
I do not believe that any President, CIA offices, FBI office or all the way down to local police dept. would have allowed the events to occur had there been information that could have even semi-accurately predicted what was to come. We always live with the threat of hijacking. Yet no one ever thought of taking away everyone’s nail files and Swiss Army knives, and despite warnings of how easily weapons could pass through airport security, consumers reacted to price; to raise airport security, airlines would need to raise prices and that wasn’t about to happen. Consumers also desired convenience - I know I miss it. I liked travelling with my laptop case and overnight bag - not having to check baggage or stop at a ticket counter.
To close my rambling, I’d like to see politics removed from the inquiry (fat chance - all politicians seemingly relish witch hunts - relocate the capital to Salem) and instead focus on how intel operations can streamline and share info better, and how they can vet good information from bad. But that doesn’t play as well for the cameras or the headlines.
December hardly embraces an informed conservative view and is, in fact, the recipient of as many SDMB blows from the left as from the right.
I’m waiting for more information on this one. I’ve not seen anything yet that says with the information Bush had that he acted inappropriately or ignored a credible threat.
Al Quaida wanted to hijack a jet? Yeah, no fucking shit.
Now if something more substantial comes along, I’ll flick my Bic for your flamethrower but until then don’t be surprised your hindsight is more effective that his then reasonably prudent stance.
And yes, Ari Fleisher is a prick. I’m astonished there’s no crease down his forehead.
The reason that there aren’t other pit rants over the “news” that we had some idea that the terrorists might hijack a plane before 9/11 is that, by and large, we are all smart people.
Yes, we had this one small bit of uncorroborated information, among hundreds of thousands of other bits of information about what terrorists COULD do. And the information in itself wasn’t too scary – the terrorists might hijack a plane. Pre-9/11 the results of almost all plane hijackings for the past 20 years had been no or minimal loss of life.
Yeah, Bush had that bit of information, but what the fuck should he reasonably have done with it. We don’t have any idea of the number and relative credibility of the other terrorist possibilities examined by the administration at that time. To react to each of them would be a serious case of boy who cried wolf.
The thing about the 9/11 attacks was that they were mind-bogglingly incomprehensible. No terrorists had caused anwhere near that type of death and destruction before. Considering the amount of grumbling over the post-9/11 security precautions, could you imagine how the public would react without a dramatic illustration of the need for security.
I’m no fan of Dubya, but here he made the only rational decision.
I don’t think anybody, save Gephart and Daschle, is accusing Bush of murder or complicity in 9/11. Nor does anyone think that a public warning would have been safe or effective.
What I said was that if the FBI had shared the info it had with other agencies, or even with other field offices within its own organization, 9/11 might have been averted. But, as has been pointed out, hindsight is 20/20.
Right now, I see that another 9/11 could easily happen. Security is lax again, the FBI and CIA are still more interested in battling for turf than in doing their jobs well, and because the government is more concerned about soothing Muslim fears of discrimination than in stopping terror, more planes could be hijacked.
Or nuclear reactors could be breached.
Or chemical plants could be sabotaged.
Or downtown LA could be contaminated by a small-yield nuke
Or smallpox virus could be released into a subway air vent in Boston
No, I’m not using your reaction against you. If I had wanted to do that, I could have run a search for the relevant threads and done some c&p’ing. I’m just pointing out that it is easy for both, or all of us to sound smug about terrorism at a safe remove from the actual events.
Hmm, well, based on the info they got, they had Ashcroft stop flying commercial to make sure nothing happened to him. Apparently they took it a little seriously.
