Obama '08?

So you are saying that Truman was responsible for the Korean War. FDR was responsible for Pearl Harbor? That President Wilson was responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania?

Okay -- now what, in your opinion, should Bush have specifically done after receiving that memo? And how would that have prevented 9/11?

Most people would consider that to be a specific briefing detailing what was to occur. Bush reportedly laughed it off and did nothing. I don't believe that he could have sprung into action and stopped it, but he didn't even try.

None of this would have necessarily stopped 9/11; but it would have at least indicated an awareness on his part of the problem, or helped prepare us to deal with the aftermath in a greater fashion.

You somehow seem to forget that Bush failed to protect the country as well.

9/11 happened on his watch. Nobody else's. I know you bunch like to blame it on Clinton, that's ******* stupidity from stupid people.

If AQ attacks within the first year of Obama's term, will you blame Bush? Obviously not.

Cycloptichorn

Quote:

You somehow seem to forget that Bush failed to protect the country as well.

9/11 happened on his watch. Nobody else's. I know you bunch like to blame it on Clinton, that's ******* stupidity from stupid people.

If AQ attacks within the first year of Obama's term, will you blame Bush? Obviously not.

Cycloptichorn

So then if AQ attacks 5 minutes AFTER Obama is sworn in, will you also blame Obama for not protecting the country?
After all, the attack would have occurred on his watch.

This is what you and others have done with Bush: tried to pretend that he didn't fail

Maybe not 5 minutes but a year and a half in? 2010? Yep.

No point, I'm asking a simple question.

Exactly how long after he is sworn in will Obama be repsonsible for not preventing any attacks on the US?
Exactly when will he be able to be held responsible for anything that happens after he is sworn in?

The Clinton-Gore Plan to Stop Al-Qaeda: Would 9-11 have happened?
Would things be any different had Gore been President? Wouldn’t 9-11 have still happened?

Perhaps not, according to mainstream media source Time Magazine. In their article, They Had A Plan [requires paid subscription], they explain why: After the bombing of the USS Cole the Clinton Administration had drawn up a comprehensive plan for fighting Al-Qaeda. But they didn’t want to execute it with a new President taking office in a few months, so they briefed Bush’s team at the highest levels and told them how important it was that they carry it out. And then Bush did nothing.

Here are the relevant quotes:

[Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy] Berger says he told [his successor, Bush’s Condoleezza Rice], “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”
The terrorism briefing was delivered by Richard Clarke, [] who had served in the first Bush Administration and risen [] to become the White House’s point man on terrorism. [He was] chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group (CSG)[…]. Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole […] he had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. […] Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. “We would be handing [the Bush Administration] a war when they took office on Jan. 20,” says a former senior Clinton aide. “That wasn’t going to happen.” Now it was up to Rice’s team to consider what Clarke had put together.
Clarke’s proposals called for the “breakup” of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble — Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen — would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to “eliminate the sanctuary” where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. […] In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to “everything we’ve done since 9/11.”

[…]

An aggressive campaign to degrade the terrorist network worldwide — to shut down the conveyor belt of recruits coming out of the Afghan camps, to attack the financial and logistical support on which the hijackers depended — just might have rendered it incapable of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks. Perhaps some of those who had to approve the operation might have been killed, or the money trail to Florida disrupted. We will never know, because we never tried. This is the secret history of that failure.

This isn’t some low-level employee talking after-the-fact. This is a comprehensive plan at the highest levels of government, with the greatest stress, simply not carried out.

So what was Bush doing instead of cracking down on terrorism? Well, we now know he was busy planning to invade Iraq.

(Thanks to Al Franken’s book for drawing this to my attention.)

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

From Times Online
February 11, 2005
US aviation received 52 al-Qaeda warnings before 9/11
By Jenny Booth, Times Online

America's aviation authority received numerous warnings about al-Qaeda attacks in the six months before 9/11, including five that mentioned hijackings and two that mentioned suicide operations, it has emerged.

A previously published report by the commission set up to investigate the September 11 attacks on the United States reveals that the US Federal Aviation Authority received 52 intelligence reports on al-Qaeda between April and September 2001.

The 911 Commission report criticises the FAA for failing to strengthen security measures in light of the reports, and accuses it of allowing a false sense of security to prevail.

9/11 panel: FAA had early al Qaeda warnings

From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN
Friday, February 11, 2005 Posted: 4:21 PM EST (2121 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Dozens of Federal Aviation Administration memos warned of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden in 2001, but the agency didn't order new security measures before the September 11 attacks, a newly released declassified report by the 9/11 commission says.

The FAA's security branch generated 105 so-called daily summaries between April 1 and September 10, 2001, the report said. Fifty-two of those summaries mentioned bin Laden or al Qaeda, and five discussed hijacking "as a capability al Qaeda was training for or possessed."

Two summaries cited suicide operations, "but not connected to a threat in aviation," the report said.

So we are to believe Sandy Berger, the guy that was stuffing papers into his clothing, ha ha, what a joke. He is covering his you know what, as did the entire Clinton administration, including Clinton, who was more interested in playing around with young interns than he was protecting the country. You guys and your spin machine have no shame whatsoever.