It looks like they have decided to react more quickly obviously to avoid what is going on in this thread, which can be good and bad.
Much has already been fixed since 9/11 but the findings of the Commission only sets a murky coarse to follow...I hope they are very careful not to make knee-jerk decisions such as some in the Patriot Act.
As an aside, the Commission agrees that the Patriot Act is a good thing but that the individual rights concerns need to be tweaked in a way that the whole information gathering and sharing goal is less intrusive yet not hendered.
The Commission asked for 8 additional weeks to complete their work so it could be thoroughly done, so we should be just as patient about seeing the fixes through, eh?
Quote:This attitude by Republicans is the same pattern that got them into trouble prior to the 9/11 attack when the Bush adminstration took their sweet time into confronting the terrorist threat by bin Laden. They apparently have not learned their lesson. Maybe it is due to Bush's famous short attention span (which runs in the Bush family) and increases the amount of time to focus and get something done. ---BBB
That's gonna just slide through?
It's too ridiculous to address....it's heaping blame on this Admin. when the Commission just released their results which should put this kind of rhetoric to rest, I mean that's what they said essentially.
Let it go, BBB, it'll be okay...the fix is in the works. :wink:
Oh! I get it, you're trying your hand at fiction writing too.
There are four instances in the 9/11 report where the Clinton adminsitration had opportunity to take out Bin Laden, and each of the four times Sandy Berger, Clinton's then security advisor, said no. So far there has been no indication Bush was ever offered Bin Laden. Now the Clinton administration probably had a rationale for not taking Bin Laden out at the time; but to attempt to fault Bush for it now is really over the top.
It may explain why Berger was filching documents though.
Hmm ... but didnt the Clinton admin at least attack suspected bin Laden camps in Afghanistan once? Provoking, I think I remember, mostly mockery among Republicans who scornfully proposed he was just "wagging the dog" to deflect attention from the Monica thing?
(Question marks cause I'm going by (shaky) memory ...)
You're correct Nimh.
And in those eight months of Bushdom, the hole was still in the Cole, but the administration did nothing to respond to it. They held no briefing with anti-terror experts and the chief law enforcement officer of the US said he didn't want to even talk about this bin Laden fellow. They had bigger fish to fry than the security of the USA, they had a tax cut to pass and a "feed your friends frenzy" energy bill to get through a rubber stamp Congress.
Gosh, I wonder why bin Laden thought it was a good time to strike.
Slow Change Is Expected After Report
WASHINGTON MEMO
Slow Change Is Expected After Report
By DAVID JOHNSTON
New York Times
Published: July 24, 2004
WASHINGTON, July 23 - On the surface, the similarities are striking. This summer, just as in the summer of 2001, intelligence reports indicate an extraordinarily high threat of terror attack. President Bush has gone to his ranch in Texas for a break, Congress is in recess and lawmakers are heading out of town.
And now, just as then, senior administration officials are saying that the government has done everything possible to detect, disrupt and deter a terror attack - only this summer the national commission on the Sept. 11 attacks has produced an authoritative report on the government's performance before that calamitous day.
The report illustrates in stunning detail how the belief three years ago that the country was adequately protected proved to be an illusion. That experience, bolstered by the harshly critical findings in the report, suggests that administration officials may be overly optimistic now when they say that the government is doing everything possible to respond to the current threat.
In an impassioned memorandum written on Sept. 4, 2001, the day of a long-awaited White House meeting on terrorism policy that included the counterterrorism security group, or C.S.G., Richard A. Clarke, the former Clinton and Bush administration adviser, posed a question that might be pertinent today:
"Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the C.S.G. has not succeeded in stopping Al Qaeda attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the U.S. What would those decision makers wish they had done earlier? That future day could happen at any time."
The country's law enforcement, intelligence and transportation security agencies have regrouped and reorganized across a wide front to confront Osama bin Laden's terror network with far greater emphasis on collecting and sharing intelligence about the movement of Qaeda operatives and possible threats.
In its report, the commission did not directly pass judgment on the effectiveness of the many changes taken by the government since the attacks. But in concluding that far more needs to be done to coordinate the country's efforts, the panel implicitly suggested that the government counterterrorism efforts were still hampered by serious problems.
Even so, in Congress and the administration, initial reaction to the report seemed to be polite praise, but there were signs that lawmakers and administration officials may not be able to disregard the report's recommendations for long. Republicans and Democrats said that the Senate and House would hold hearings on the report's proposals in August, although it was unclear when either body would act on legislation.
Within counterterrorism circles - and among the public at large - the report has become a best-seller, but several senior officials said that its broad recommendations for greater coordination and flexibility are not easily applicable to the immediate task of obtaining and analyzing intelligence about the current threat.
As a result, for the time being, the government will have to rely on its existing structure, and in some places Mr. Bush's team has been stretched thin.
The C.I.A., the agency most responsible for detecting terrorist activity overseas, still has no director and its acting chief, John E. McLaughlin, was doing double duty as acting director and deputy director, a full portfolio that requires him to manage long-term organizational issues and the immediate threat.
At the intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies, officials said that they would continue studying the report for recommendations that might help them respond to the current threat, but that they believed they had already put into effect most of the panel's specific recommendations.
But the commission found that true coordination among agencies will not come without broad architectural changes, like the creation of a national intelligence director with far greater power over counterterrorism operations and the expansion of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, a joint F.B.I.-C.I.A. unit that assesses threat information.
Broader institutional changes proposed in the report, if and when they are adopted, will take a long time to have an impact, said Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, in a meeting with reporters.
"Let me separate out the kinds of changes we're talking about from the ability to respond to the kind of terrorist threat information that we're seeing now," she said. "When you're talking about - whatever it is that we end up doing on intelligence reform, it is not going to have an impact tomorrow. It's not going to have an impact a month from now. The impact there is coming from changes that have already been made."
Funny that the Republicans can rewrite the tax code in 52 days, but they can't get a handle on this.
Haven't they been thinking about making some changes for the past three years? What did they think was going to be in that report? "Everything's swell. No changes needed."??
They can form a energy policy that nearly bankrupts California in less than three months, for intelligence policy, well, that's something else.
Yeah, right.
Joe
They apparently got the message.
Leaders Pick Up Urgency of 9/11 Panel
Congress and Bush Vow to Speed Reforms By Dan Eggen and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A01
House and Senate leaders rushed forward yesterday with promises to quickly restructure the nation's intelligence agencies in the wake of damaging findings by the Sept. 11 commission, casting aside earlier doubts that Congress would tackle such complicated and politically divisive legislation this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9018-2004Jul23.html?referrer=email
I'm still not comfortable with rushing through anything so Big-brotherish, especially in light of the innumerable conflicts of interest of those on the panel. I will not be comfortable until a certain couple of my representatives
acknowledge that. We need to be very careful here. What interests really take priority? A lot of unsavory happenings have occured within the US as a result of our fear, a fear which many of you have expressed here already. I suggest that we don't let that fear serve to suspend our natural suspicion of who this plan might really serve. Is this all really in
our best interests? I want to be
100% sure. Set up a commission to study the commission's recommendations. Put a few knowledgeable civilians on it. I am sure there are immediate actions we can take to protect ourselves without adopting this plan immediately in it's entirety.
"Commissioner and former Senator Max Cleland made many statements
about his belief that White House obstructions and the Commission
process would fail to find the truth about the events of September
11th. He left predicting a flawed report and a cover-up."
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30011
