No heeding of the warnings, too slow to respond to the attacks....Bush administration failed.

We also missed a chance to learn a better foreign relations methodology during the Iran Hostage situation.

"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

They ignored the warning.

You can believe our government agencies had been alerted to this under Clinton's watch. I sat in meetings with government officials who were told of parts of what would later be known as the Hart/Rudman report and were taking it very seriously in 1998-1999. I'd heard from someone in the FAA that they were told that there was "100% chance of a terrorist attack on American soil within the next 25 years that would kill thousands of Americans." He even gave a scenario of an attack off of New York Harbor. I was freaked out for days. For some reason, Bush/Cheney dismantled what Clinton had put in place to try and stop bin Laden. As I was watching this happen in the months just after Bush took office, I was perplexed. Then 9/11 happened and it all made sense. No conspiracy - I just think they needed something to happen to get Bush/Cheney and the leftover warmongers from Bush I the support to go into Iraq.

But, those in a position to have done so with mens rea would have to be thoroughly investigated and interrogated. But, of course, policy is "looking forward", so that's not going to be discovered.

just wondering...

Massive fail, monumental negligence, and the response was possibly worse than the buildup to the event.

They both wanted to be President, but really don't want to do the job. They just wanted the title.

The last 33 years are a perfect illustration of this fact.

Reagan, Bush I, Bush II - a combined 20 years of Complete Epic Fail that have resulted in catastrophe for our country.

How can you get serious about governing when your main objective is to tear it down?

This should be a central point of the Democratic platform.

a brazen little boots let all the world know he had hit the trifecta. and, who wanted to immediately tie 9/11 to iraq? Oh, they had an agenda-they got their pearl harbor.

and how about the anthrax attack? attacks against democratic congressmen and certain journalists? now if those attacks had been against some RW journalists or congressmen, then, the whole scenario including 9/11 would have been seen as a hit against the administration. But, the attacks were against those who would have questioned or gone against the administration. To me, the number one thing that comes up, is creating FEAR within the public, to get your agenda. and they succeeded on that front with flying colors.

and, I question that OBL tape the repugs showed during little boot's second election. Basically telling the public that OBL wants kerry to win (wink, wink), so you better vote for little boots. The whole eight fekkin years reeks.

It's far too easy to say they were incompetent. It assumes you know what they were trying to do and accomplish. They had other motives than to keep our citizens safe from terrorism, that was just an excuse.

Many of these guys (W excluded) were highly intelligent, competent people who knew how to get things done. Don't underestimate the opposition and assume incompetence, they were quite capable of any number of things, LIHOP to MIHOP.

That day was the result of massive failure to coordinate... and we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later.

Today, everyone who uses US airports, from babies to grannies, is treated as a suspect at secruity-- No liquids or pastes over 3 ounces allowed in security, and put them in a baggie, dammit! Take off your shoes, take your laptop out of your bag, take everything out of your pockets and enter the "telephone booth" for a naked X-ray, then get frisked for good measure when you get out of the telephone booth. Oh, and don't leave your car unattended at the loading zone for even a half minute, or we'll tow it away.

That's the only aspect of it that I really care about.

The conservatives like to dump everything on the doorstep of Bill Clinton (and did so within hours, contrary to their "9/12" mythologizing), but he'd built up a pretty effective counterterrorism apparatus by the time he left - usually over Republican opposition. Not perfect, but nowhere near the "practically nothing" the RWers like to claim. And they make that claim because they didn't care for the truth:

Bush took what he got from Clinton and cut it. Decreased priority, decreased resources, decreased manpower. The neocons that made up Bush's "experts" on this dismissed Clinton as "obsessed" with bin Laden when they were cocksure that the only terrorism that they needed to fight was state-supported (presumably by Saddam and/or Iran).

Heck, before 9/11 they gave $43 million to the Taliban (as the effective rulers of Afghanistan) for banning opium.

http://www.thenation.com/article/bushs-faustian-deal-taliban

I don't think you'll get much ripping here for your feelings.

I didn't know he was using them as advisers, I thought he was keeping them out of the loop. Or is that just out of the limelight (no invite to the RNC).

I hate that they still roam the earth freely when so many thousands of innocent victims do not.

I don't think any of the big names signed on, but all their protégés are looking to make their own names at the expense of ground troops and taxpayers.

Agree that he let it happen.

What is even worse is the lost potential to use it to get the country behind an effort to alter our energy policy.

THAT is the greatest tragedy from 9-11.

There should have been two things that the president committed to on 9-12-2001.

1) Every mole hill on the planet would be scoured until OBL was brought to justice. This would NOT include going to war with Iraq, it would include doing what President Obama did.

2) Bringing the country in line with an Apollo style effort to alter our energy usage - conservation (including the MPG changes President Obama implemented) and the development of alternative fuels. We should right NOW be where we will be in 10 years with MPG, and we should RIGHT NOW be the leader in the world in the development and production of solar panels.

Instead, the clowns told people to "go shopping" got us into Iraq and used 9-11 for partisan political gain.

also
MIHOP - Made It Happen on Purpose

both before, during and after the attacks. Cheney in his 'undisclosed secure location' for months on end, trembling and frothing in fear. W neglecting the PDB while Ashcroft read it and stopped flying commercial jets immediately, think about that, they all secured their own persons and families, but did nothing to protect the nation.

back in November 2000 when the election was at its impasse.

I had argued against Bush, indicating that I felt he was a lightweight and did not have the gravitas or life experiences for the job. I also remember saying these words that still haunt me to this day:
"Bush as a President will fail us as a nation in a time of real crisis"
Unfortunately, I was proven correct.

he might have "kept us safe" except for that little slip up on 9/11/01. If that had happened on a Democrat's watch, we would never hear the end of it and I'll bet a Democrat would not be elected for 20 years. I feel this country is SO MUCH SAFER now than it ever was under Bush.



Diane
Anishinaabe in MI & mom to Taz, Nigel, and baby brother Sammy, members of Dogs Against Romney, Cat Division
"Dogs Aren’t Luggage--HISS!”

Ask any Republican, they'll tell you that.

the little people.

9-11 on its very face, and in every detail was and is a failure of Republican governance.

Never forget...that fact.

that the air was safe? the repugs and their public mouth pieces for years have been telling the public how government doesn't work (just let our corporate friends service you), how you can't trust the government (we are the government); while doing every thing in their power to make that rant true. 9//11, katrina are examples how they made sure the government wouldn't work for the people; however, they are more than happy blabbing about freedoms while they spend all our money to curtail ours. before 9/11 our security network was just fine, remember FBI had been monitoring the highjackers, remember colleen rowley and then their was the august PDB report; they've spent billions on their new homeland security and hiring certain corporations for intelligence monitoring. big moolah in the security industry today.

Environmental illness is a part of my life, and from cancer to allergy, NY suffered because of the negligence and lies of a republican administration.

People died needlessly AFTER the attack because of it.

Never forget.

Bush said that an investigation would distract from the hunt for the killers.
Bush resisted any investigation as best he could and we ended up with legacy of unanswered questions and suspicion.
The lessons to be learned from 911 cannot be learned until the hard questions are asked, under oath, in a criminal investigation.
If members of the 911 commission felt that they had been lied to.
With an ending like that, there will never be an ending at all.

entity to blame in this case. "The government" as put in place/left in control via Clinton Admin, was on top of it like no one else, enter the August 6 PDB as proof/evidence, however bush/cheney/rummy/rice/repukes in power FAILED HARD and in the realm of probability FAILED PURPOSEFULLY.

So spread the meme, but change it to "The last Republican Government failed greatly."

exactly

The people who did it, and the people who were too stupid to do anything about it.

If they win, they would start another war. They'd find some excuse. Not only did they fail they used 911 to get us into wars they wanted beforehand.

which deliberately undermined the development of civil society in Afghanistan for geo-strategic reasons. If not for the meddling by right-wing extremists like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban wouldn't even exist.

private firms. It just goes to show that you can't outsource security. The Romans found this out the hard way.

I used to carry a small Swiss Army Knife with me on flights.

item could help kill so many people.

Anyone who tried to pull that kind of thing on an airliner now would probably be killed by the passengers.

Thanks for the thread, ruralib.

OBAMA KILLEN OSAMA and took their 9/11 away.

These are the plainest facts I know about what happened that day, who benefited the most.

+ Blackwater

and they said white house officials said they had never thought that an attack like that was going to happen.

My first words, bullshit. we know about the memo lol

something to that effect. I often wonder how often she even showed up for work.

became and are to have destroyed so many of our rights in order to seek out a little bit more safety. You'd think we'd have learned after Pearl Harbor how not to gut react and overreach out of fear but no we didn't.

During those speeches I have little doubt there will be some well placed claims about how safe we are and how we must remain vigilant to ensure such a thing never happens again. Of course it is meant to make people feel better and in part provide cover for all the ill done in the name of our safety. None of which would stop those people bent on doing acts of terrible violence and murder on similar scales as 9/11 or even those content to do significantly less murder.

ties to the Saudi family weakened him--plus he's also a swaggering fool.

.

the biggest single fuck up by the gummint as far as I am concerned.
With an incredible needless loss of life.

nation. Bush his administration not only failed that basic principle, but failed it miserably.

And yet many right-wingers have the audacity to say, "he kept us safe." What?! He freakin' presided over the greatest single loss of American life in an attack on our country since its entire history. And don't tell me it wasn't preventable.

dated August 6, 2001 that said OBL determined to strike in the US.

Also ignored was a speech then Senator Joe Biden gave on 9/10/2001 (hey it's the anniversary of that today) warning that we didn't need to spend more money on Star Wars, what we needed to worry about was a terrorist attack coming from the belly of a plane.


BUSH & Cheney & Condi & Rumsfeld ignored it all. And we have been paying since.

Republicans simply don't know how to Govern....

The things I saw on tv that week changed me, changed me bad.

the US has killed 100x that number of Iraqis and Afghanis. Undoubtedly some were bad guys, undoubtedly some were not. All had mothers and fathers and probably brothers, sisters and children. In fact, many were children. 9/11 also caused a historic shift in American's privacy rights. Phones and emails are monitored now with no legal redress, we remove shoes, endure groping before boarding airplanes. We have practiced torture, assassinated US citizens --all in the name of security. The US has lived in fear for 11 years or at least fear has been used to solidify authoritarian polices. It is time to put those things aside and focus on actual US security -namely human infrastructure such as jobs, education, health care and the eradication of poverty. It is also time to stop acting like a frightened bully who punches before anyone else can hurt them.

IIRC it had something to do with the U.S. troop presence on Saudi soil.

There needs to be a new global security arrangement. The current method of putting U.S. military bases in every corner of the world, funded by the U.S. tax payer, for the purpose of controlling things like popular uprisings against tyrants we support, multinational access to the natural resources of every country, foreign heads of state and their militaries, etc., not only takes money away from U.S. citizens, it literally creates anti-U.S. terrorism. It's a giant control, alienate, defend, and attack feedback loop. The multinationals are using our military to open and secure markets for them.

There would be many consequences of closing our overseas bases. Power would re-align, things might become less stable (they're pretty unstable now), countries might start nationalizing resources and companies (and they should be able to), who knows what would happen? That's a big concern that would need to be factored in. I know one thing, no way should it be the current system, it makes no sense for our military to be in every corner of the earth. There needs to be shared responsibility, not a pax americana. How do we get there?

because they were (and are) clueless about how our government abuses so much of the world. Those that were paying attention figured that a major terrorist attack was almost inevitable.

The terrorists themselves said that they attacked due to our support of military bases in Saudi Arabia, which were also used to maintain a bombing program against Iraq through much of the 90's; support for dictators; genocidal sanctions against Iraq (including all food imports being cut off); support for Israel's destruction of Palestine and its wars against Lebanon.

Americans' ignorance about how our government and media works, plus Americans' ignorance about the reasons for the terrorist attacks allowed the WMD fabrication to be believed. Also this ignorance contributes to the ridiculous truther movement.

started in the early spring. Hell, Clinton told Bush something was up.
Pure fucking negligence at best. I hate to say what the worst is, but you all know.

Republicans should never be in charge of anything more dangerous than the bathroom key.