at the time.

during the transition, and Cheney blew him off. Gore was on top of the terrorism issue, and logically would have reacted more decisively to the Aug 6th PDB, rather than ignoring it like the Bush junta did.

MIHOP, or all of the above.

Take your pick.

If Al Gore had been in the WH, the attack on 9/11 would never have happened. Democrats are simply much better at governing than republicans, in all areas, including national defense.

Fact. End of story.

Not that they knew something was going to happen, but that they knew that the US was being targeted generally and that if something happened it would bolster their MIC aspirations. This is almost the only logical position because it's clear that the GWB administration didn't give a squat about terrorism.

If Al Gore had been allowed to take the office he won in the 2000 election, the events known as "9/11" would not have taken place. I am 100% convinced of that.

Last edited Mon Jun 2, 2014, 03:19 AM - Edit history (1)

No matter who was in charge.

I agree with you. I don't think it would have happened if Gore had been in the office that he rightfully won.

Some would have us believe that everything that happened on 9/11 would have happened in the same sequence that they happened and nothing would have kept it from happening. I don't buy that.

Those that remember those times can recall the arrogance of Bush when he began to dismantle everything Bill Clinton had initiated, including the tax increases that got us a balanced budget. They denounced the Kyoto Treaty. The ships that were near Pakistan, that Clinton had parked to keep an eye on Osama bin Laden, that Bush withdrew. Terrorism was no longer a major priority. Then he turned his back on the Israeli/Palestine crisis as Israel forced Yasser Arafat from his home and razed villages in Palestine territory.

It's difficult for me to believe that all of the above did not have something to do with the timing of 9/11.

I first read that on DU.

tax increases not tax cuts. Tax cuts did not get us a balanced budget, tax increases did.

Good catch!

Terrorists are not stupid and when GWB descended to the presidency it was a gift to them. They knew he was an no nothing idiot, didn't have his eye on the ball and they could get away with anything and they did.

A Pres. Al Gore would have been at the top of his game, already having experienced terror attacks and would have wasted no time if he had received a pres. briefing warning of attacks, if it even got to that point...I doubt it would've.

...it is a fact that Bush and his PNAC gallery of senior officials were dismissive of non-state organizations like Al Queda, and deprioritized counterterrorism. They pulled resources and personnel away, reducing the chance of detecting and preventing the plot. That would not have happened under a Gore administration.

Also, when Bush started his occupation of the Oval Office, there were existing counterterror recommendations. These were ignored because they had Al Gore's name on the cover page -- thus having cooties, apparently -- and Cheney said he's come up with a new version. Eventually. When he got around to it. Presumably Al Gore would not dismissively sneer at a report with the name "Al Gore" one it, so that wouldn't have happened either.

In short, I'm not willing to declare that it wouldn't have happened under Gore. But it would have been a lot less likely to have been pulled off successfully if he had been in charge.

Always something productive.

they would have made a political issue - never forget Iran and the hostages. It was all politics, destabilization and sabotage...ask GHW Bush, Reagan et al

If the POTUS had been a white Christian, they would have privately thanked their lucky stars that it happened under a Democratic POTUS and that he/she sent in Special Forces to take out the attackers without going to war.

Publicly, they would have bitched to high heaven.

I remember laughing my ass off. I sure do wish he was still on. Key & Peele have taking the reins in now.

The Democratic Party would have, again, be "shown" to be "weak on defense," "incapable of 'protecting' our shores," and would be out of favor for a generation or more.

On the plus side, I'm not sure we would have attacked Iraq using the 9/11 justification and I'm not sure "The Patriot Act" would have been trotted out and so eagerly embraced.

Republicans would have seen the same thing that Dems actually did, which is that there's nothing to be gained from opposing the president. Sure there would be the occasional person willing to speak in opposition to certain policies, but for the most part, the president would have gotten what he wanted, at least until after the 2002 midterms.

There would have been no "united we stand". Imagine the politicized outrage of Benghazi multiplied by several factors and you can start to picture the result.

If a Democrat had received multiple explicit warnings (as Bush did) like the August 6th security briefings the result would have been total Republican apoplexy.

They would have have voted to impeach him every day of his term. Republicans are colossal hypocrites.

...you are probably right.

The media would have said both sides were just as partisan and the Republicans would have impeached him or at least tried to.

Bin Laden would likely have died within 2 years.

and taken the steps necessary to prevent 9/11. Stupid's gang just put it on a shelf because al Quaeda wasn't important, Iraq and Syria were, followed by Iran. They just didn't take any of it seriously, there was no oil in Afghanistan. They wouldn't have demoted Richard Clarke and they certainly wouldn't have ignored the PDB memos.

And they'd certainly have never allowed bin Laden to get away because there was oil and glory to be had in Iraq.

have happened if Gore was allowed to take the position he won hands-down.

But since in was neocon PNAC'ers who wanted "a new Pearl Harbor" in order to test their new weapons systems, it did happen.

And every Republican in Congress who ignored Bush's ineptitude would have been clamoring for investigations, and ultimately impeachment.

accused of being asleep at the switch and then impeached.

Sure, they might give each president a grace period, but once a month passed, they would dig in and attack all three administrations on dereliction of duty. They'd question how something so god-awful could happen under their watch. It'd be like Benghazi but a million times stronger due to the death total. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to impeach.

you might research past events like WTC/Oklahoma/Khobar etc
to see how their rhetoric curved, but that was then, and things havent exactly improved.

They did say it leaned a bit to the left, tho.

would not have happened without them.

The media would have united in their condemnation of the Democratic President for incompetence. Impeachment proceeding would surely follow. And I believe said president would have been removed from office.

911 was either a MIHOP or at the very least a LIHOP. I'll never be convinced otherwise so don't even try.

With that said, Clinton was on the case for many years. He had planned to have a military excursion comprised of specialists to go into Afghanistan in 2000 to get Bin Laden and remove the Taliban. He never went ahead with the plan because he did not want to be accused of using national security to give Democrats political advantage.

See link below.

[url]http://www.cnn.com/US/9609/05/airport.security/[/url]

A $300 million budget for counter-terrorism measures, better screening of airline passengers, and more teams of bomb-sniffing dogs were among the measures Vice President Al Gore recommended Thursday to boost airport security.

The proposals were developed by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, which Gore heads. The panel was formed after the July 17 explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, which killed 230 people. There has been no determination of the cause of the crash.

I also recall that the front page of The New York Times for September 11th, 2001, contained an article about the Bush administration's Justice Department proposing reductions in counterterrorism spending.

As for whether the Republican Party would have united around a President Gore, assuming administration policies and the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6th (i.e., bin Laden determined to attack in the U.S.) hadn't headed off the 9/11 attacks, I can't really say, although my overall impression since 1994 is that the Republican Party's default position is to treat all Democratic presidents with contempt. Moreover, GOP campaigns against Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry were focused on defining the candidates (interestingly, both veterans who had served in Vietnam) and fomenting mockery and/or outright hatred against them, which some in the media dutifully go on board with.