MSNBC Hardball Transcript - 9/11 widows - as requested

Someone requested that I posted the transcript from yesterday's Hardball where 9/11 widows ripped into Bush and Rumsfeld. Here it is:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/965667.asp

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
Four widowed mothers have made it their mission to uncover the truth behind what the government could have done to try to prevent the attacks on September 11. They’ve become a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill, at the Justice Department, and at the White House.
And earlier this year, their fight paid off with the creation of an independent commission on 9/11.
I’m joined by two of those four women. Kristen Brietweiser lost her husband, Ron, who worked in the south tower. And Patty Casazza lost her husband, who was in the north tower.
Kristen, when you think back on that horrible day, in your mind’s eye, what do you think could have been done to prevent it?
KRISTEN BRIETWEISER, WIFE OF 9/11 VICTIM: Certainly, I think that the government could have acted more swiftly, acted more decisively.
When you have a president of the United States remaining seated, listening to second graders read to him for 25 minutes after the second tower was hit, certainly that could have been run more smoothly.
When you have a secretary of defense remaining at his desk at the Pentagon, and unknown to him was the plane that hit the Pentagon until the plane hit the building, you know, that’s a problem.
The plane that hit the Pentagon hit an hour after the attacks in New York. What exactly was the secretary of defense doing at his desk? He should have been in the war room. He should have been making decisions. He should have been protecting me and the 3,000 others who were in the towers.
I was under the understanding that when you took an oath of office, you swore to protect, lead and serve. On the morning of September 11, I question how many of our leaders actually were doing that.
MATTHEWS: Patty, do you share that criticism, that they just lacked the basic human instinct to go on the defensive and move?
PATTY CASAZZA, WIFE OF 9/11 VICTIM: I don’t know if it was a lack of human instinct or perhaps even something more sinister.
MATTHEWS: What do you think it was? When you think it hard.
CASAZZA: Well, when we looked at, when we investigated standard protocols and procedures of, let’s say, NORAD, who was supposed to scramble jets to accompany planes that were off course or whose transponders were turned off, those policies and procedures happen on a daily basis.
And on 9/11, no jets were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit. That was at 9:38. The first plane was declared hijacked between 8:13 and 8:20. That’s an hour and a half time which NORAD had to scramble the jets.
In the case of Payne Stewart, they scrambled jets within six minutes.
And that was a well-documented rescue attempt.
MATTHEWS: Patty, do you think there was enough time, if we had quick witted people who knew what was up, who had good instincts, could they have scrambled the jets and diverted those planes in time to divert the disaster?
CASAZZA: I’m not saying that we could have prevented the disaster.
But because those planes were not scrambled, we will never know. We will
never know if the hijackers would have been deterred by being accompanied
by those fighter jets.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask Kristen, what do you think of President Bush in term of his handling of 9/11? Just as a person, from that first second when he got the word that the planes, a plane had hit one of the towers.
BREITWEISER: You know, I think that there seems to be no sense of urgency since 9/11 on behalf of the administration, the president, certain members of Congress to acknowledge that there were failures, to acknowledge that things need to be fixed. I think that President Bush needs to step up to the plate. I think he needs to do a mea culpa and have a full post-mortem. I think it is absolutely.
MATTHEWS: What could you want him to say?
BREITWEISER: I would want him to say that, look, you know, there were failures on the morning of 9/11. And it will never occur again on my watch. And here’s what I’m doing to fix it, you know.
How do you set up a department of homeland security when you don’t even know what went wrong? I think there’s a lot of talk and very little action. I think there’s not a lot of cooperation with the independent commission and I don’t understand why. I would think that you would want to throw everything on the table and really fix these problems to assure the American public that things are being done and that you are safe living here. I think...
MATTHEWS: OK. If you-I’m sorry to interrupt. If you were sitting with vice president Dick Cheney now, who’s the real powerhouse in this administration, and could you grill him and he was under sodium pentathol, what would you want to know from him?
BREITWEISER: I would want to know exactly where he was on the morning of 9/11, at exactly what time the jets were scrambled, why was there a failure of the city of New York to effectively evacuate those buildings?
I would want to know why certain members of the bin Laden family and certain Saudi individuals were flown out of the country a few days after the attacks, prior to them being asked questions by the FBI.
I would want to know whether the FBI was, in fact, investigating any of the 19 terrorists.
I would want to know why 28 pages of the joint inquiries report are not being released to the American public.
I would want to know why the American public is not being fully informed as to what went wrong on the morning of September 11 and why there seems to be no sense of concern on behalf of the administration to assure the American public that things have been fixed and that they are safe living in this country.
MATTHEWS: Patty, do you think that Mohammed Atta and the other perpetrators of this attack would be stopped tomorrow morning in Portland, Oregon, airport if they tried it again? Do you have any confidence we would stop them?
CASAZZA: I believe the people on the ground, as far as police officers and probably the FBI agents at the lower levels could perhaps intercept those types of individuals.
But at the higher levels, I don’t think that they have the impetus to do the job in the right way. And that is, give the people at the lower levels in these agencies the tools and equipment to do their jobs properly.
There still seems to be a stove piping communication problem among the agencies. And the very fact that we just had a gentleman in a cargo hold go from Newark to various airports and end up in Dallas tells me that we are no safer in the airports than we were on 9/11.
MATTHEWS: What do you make of the governor of California just signing a bill this week that would give every illegal alien in this state an I.D. card, making it seem like he belongs here, or she belongs here, and can get on an airplane, go wherever they want. Wherever they came from in the world, they can get an I.D. card in this state that says they belong here. Do you think that’s a good security measure after 9/11 — Patty?
CASAZZA: Absolutely not. I believe immigrants, if they are working in this country, by and large should be sponsored by the people employing them. I have no problem with people coming into this country as long as they don’t want to harm us.
I think anyone who comes in this country should get online, queue up for the proper visas or naturalization process. And with that comes an investigation by the FBI. That is the proper protocol and procedure.
MATTHEWS: By the way, the new law in California provides for no criminal background checks. You get an automatic I.D. card for just applying. It’s an amazing system they’ve got, and it’s all political pandering.
Let me go to Kristen, back to you. Bill Clinton, do you blame him at all?
BREITWEISER: Listen, I think there were certainly some failures. When you look into the 9/11 hijackers, this goes back years. I mean, you look at the meetings in Malaysia. We’ve read GAO reports. We’ve read congressional testimony on behalf of FBI supervisors and, you know, the CIA directors.
This is not just about the Bush administration. This is about the Clinton administration. This is about the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration. I mean, this goes back. This is not just focused on, you know, Bush W.’s administration. There were clearly failures.
And you know what? We need to fix these problems. We need to look at our foreign policy. We need to really start informing the American people so that we can make decisions, both at the polls and at the pumps, because.
MATTHEWS: Who is winning, Kristen? You people, trying to open the files or the people like Cheney you say are trying to keep them closed?
BREITWEISER: All I can say, Chris, is that we’re not going away.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much, Kristen Breitweiser and Patty Casazza. Thank you very much for joining us on HARDBALL.
BREITWEISER: Thank you.
CASAZZA: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: How would you like to have those two coming at you?

And what a great cartoon that is...

That cartoon makes me want to cry. :(

eom

Afternoon :kick:

"Okay what could have been done to prevent the attacks?"

{List a mile long, full practical suggestions}

"Okay, would any of that made any difference?"

{Hard to say, but isn't something better than nothing?}

"Okay, what about George Tightpants, my hero?"

{Useless as tits on a boar.}

"Okay, but you know Dick Cheney's the real power."

{And I'd like to grill him alive, too.}

"What if this exact same scenario played out again? Could it be stopped?"

{You got rocks in your head? Hijackers have shot their load. NOBODY's going to go quietly ever again.}

"Okay, but isn't this really the Democrats' fault? Specifically Bill Clinton?"

{You'd like an easy answer, and I'm not going to give it to you.}

"Well, that's all the time we have! I'll leave you viewers with the impression from my last question that it was all Clinton's fault. See you tomorrow."

on the Anniversary . Thank you Chris Matthews .

Two things the American people deserve right now. Thank you, brave widows, for standing strong in these virtues.

This transciprt should be copied and passed around the net via e-mail and every other means known to netizens near and far.