Cite?
Are you kidding? Remember: this was to go into effect in early 2000. It would have involved much of what we did after 9/11: freezing accounts, arresting suspects and interrogating or deporting them, massive new survelliance initiatives, and actually putting people on the ground to take out the camps in Afghanistan.
Not so. The most important of these things simply meant reorganizing our intelligence agencies so that they could and would more easily share and compare information. That ALONE could well have been enough to give the FBI reports of suspected Al Qaeda getting flying lessons the proper attention, instead of getting it ignored. A specific agency whose job it is to investigate such threats with a specific eye towards terrorist plots would have gotten that info, and would have taken a long hard look at it: especially if it could compare that to intel coming from the CIA about Al Qaeda heating things up and threatening a major attack. Trying to fly planes into buildings was, despite what Condi Rice said, a known MO of these guys.
And the Department of Homeland Security was a very real iniative proposed by the Democratic party. It was opposed by Bush and conservatives. But it was hardly a hugely objectionable thing that the American public would have been against had it been allowed to go forward.
But the Bush administration was actively against those kinds of spending initatives. They openly ridiculed the idea where the Democrats and Clinton had supported it.
The people who claim that Clinton was lax cannot simply ignore the fact that Bush did nothing of any real consequence before 9/11, did none of the things Clinton is accused of being negligent for not doing. The very minor increase proposed on counterterrorism was actually threatened with a veto because it took money away from the missle defense program. They were just as wary about striking Al Qaeda (remember, every time Clinton did anything, he had the Republicans screaming “wag the dog!” and doing their best to erode his political capital as fast as possible.
Clearly, any sane person should see that, in hindsight, BOTH administrations really dropped the ball. Indeed, every President back to Reagan and maybe even Carter did not, in hindsight, give the problem enough attention. But Clinton and Bush both failed us.
However, that doesn’t change my point: that if Gore was elected, there wouldn’t have been a major knee jerk rejection of every plan that had been on the table from the outgoing Clinton administration. Clinton may have been slow to wake, but he was waking, and that waking would have continued had there not been such a huge changing of the guard and starting again from ground zero. Furthermore, things like Clark’s plan were what the Clinton administration handed to Bush, not only clearly expecting them to carry it out as soon as possible, but TELLING them to do so. Instead, it was stalled for a year and half, and even at the end given only grudging attention.
We have several top Clinton staffers who on the record at the time, and as recalled later, told incoming Bush people that terrorism should be the top priority. But on the official list of priorities as stated by Bush as a whole and also individual departments, terrorism didn’t appear. Far more work was done on figuring out how we could move on Iraq than was done about figuring out how to move on Osama: and especially now that we know that there were no huge stockpiles of WMDs ready to go in Iraq, going after Osama was clearly not only much more important as a threat to the US, but also not even as costly!
I’ll refer you to my comments in my previoius post to Una Persson for the point on the nature of speculation. You seem to be conflating a proof with speculation. Not the same thing.
Another thing to remember is what took place on 9/11/01. Do you remember Air Force One flying to points all over the nation unsure of what was going on? I remember one of the national news anchors implying that because of this, the president was not a good leader in a time of crisis. Now, if you planned such an event, would you not be prepared for it, take charge and gain every ounce of political capital possible?
Well, I might not want to seem TOO prepared …
Another thing to remember is the number of people who would need to be involved in this and their ability to keep quiet. Taking flight school in the US, hijacking 4 airliners, destroying two of the worlds largest building, flying one into the Pentagon and the people responsible for this have kept it secret? Not one person along the way has been able to make a solid connection and come forward? This will bring about the best part of conspiracy theories, the government had everyone who knew or found out about it killed.
I never posited that the Bush admin was actively invovled in the plot, only that they might have subtly signaled Al Qaeda’s fundraisers that an attack might just not be detected should it occur. This would only require the silence of Rove and Norquist at a minimum, though Rove and Cheney might have been in on it, too. I don’t think they’d have told Bush.
However, as I’ve also said, this is the weakest link in my argument, because it also involves the silence of the Al Qaeda contacts, leaving the Bush admin perpetually vulnerable to them. Frankly, this is the argument that to my mind comes closest to being a stopper for my speculation.
The final nail in the coffin of trying to dispute your claim is that it never works to try and disprove a conspiracy. A conspiracy theory is like a religion, no matter what proof you show to the person that they are deluded, some reason will be found to ignore the truth. Be it killing of witnesses or payoffs or faking evidence, the clever government is always one step ahead and keeps the truth from coming out.
You’re just saying it’s hard to reason someone out of something that they were not reasoned into in the first place. But I think I’ve been fairly logical here.
So, in your OP you asked “Whaddya think, is this a trail worth following or what?” and I say no
Fair enough.
**I feel like I have lost some brain cells just making a non-comedic reply to such nonsense. **
Sorry you felt so compelled against your better judgement. It must be hell to be so fair-minded.
Even assuming that the ‘Clarke Plan’ is not a load of crap, Apos seems to be forgetting that Clinton had 96 months in which to formulate his counter-terrorism plans. Pity for us, it took him 95 months to come up the plan. Niney-frigging-five months.
I don’t recall Gore stomping at the bit, rearing to invade Afghanistan during those first 96 months. It seems to be wishfull thinking to believe that he would have done so in the first 9 months of his adminstration. Ditto for the other steps listed.
That is a quality cite, and let me thank you for helping to fight ignorance!
A quality topic of discussion from the cite:
3a. The Tesla Howitzer and its modes of action
Oh ya,
You guys are SO on the list to be assimilated.
Not if we get ‘Tesla Howitzers’ first, we’re not…
Oh great, Brutus, thanks to you there’s going to be a “Are Tesla Howitzers For Real?” thread in GQ, which will go on for 20+ pages.
Great Zeus! Where is that infamous ‘scalar weapons’ thread!? Revelations abound!
Locked sadly. Which is a pity since I’ve learned that the new Dodge Durango is equiped with death ray taillights.
Indeed, which is why I noted that he failed us in being too slow to act, in hindsight. Of course, so did George Bush, when the threat was increasingly more and more imminent, and less and less only in hindsight. My point was not that Clinton did a good job, but simply that the bombing of Cole started a process that included both Clarke’s plan and Congress’ bipartisan undertaking, and both of these were a) supported by the Clinton administration, and b) stonewalled by the Bush administration.
Clarke’s plan was indeed quite real, and you can read about it August 12, 2002 Time magazine, as well as several NYTimes articles. You could even just pick up any of the current “Clinton is responsible for everything and basically almost bombed the WTC himself” books. There is a thing in the back that’s called an index, and in it you’ll find a list of names and places and such among which you’ll find an entry for “Clarke” and some page numbers. These numbers will correspond to the numbers of pages on which there are vague references to Clarke, along with a highly incomplete account of what went on with him and his plan, but nevertheless will confirm that it existed and was being discussed for execution by the exiting Clinton administration.
Of course you are welcome to assume that, simply because they are evil people, they wouldn’t have carried out the plan that the Bushies laughingly derided as being their “obsession” when they took over. But even if you think that, it’s pretty hard to argue that Gore would have been LESS likely to implement Clark’s plan and react to the recommendations of Hardt Rudman and others, given that his people and Clinton’s people were all much more involved in and interested in these things than Bush proved to be (remember, Bush DID basically laugh at the idea of increasing counter terrorism funds and centralizing intelligence agencies with a cabinet level department. Clinton, on the other hand, steadily increased anti-terrorism funding. Maybe Bush decided that Clinton’s raises brought things to just the right level of funding, with which he was quite happy with?)