2/10 "No one could have imagined" a plot so monstrous as
crashing civilian passenger jets into the twin towers of the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. -Rice in front of 9/11 Commission
http://csua.org/u/b0q (AOL news)
FAA got 52 Warnings before 9/11.
\_ Did anyone here see the Lone Gunmen pilot episode? Apparently
Rice didn't.
\_ That's nice troll. Why don't you read Robert Serling?
\_ Uhm, you realize that the government gets literally thousands
of terrorists threats each day, don't you? If the government were
to follow up on every threat made we would simply be paralyzed.
You also realize that the world contains 6 billion people, and
it's virtually impossible to monitor everyone, right? I'm sure
the WTC got at least two threats a day before 9/11. What are
going to do, shut down New York?
\_ Condi's specific claim is "no one could have imagined" it.
Obviously, that's not true. -tom
\_ Got evidence for this claim? The first and third ones.
\_ Agreed. Maybe that was the terrorists' strategy before 9/11 --
spreading lots of rumors on non-existing attack plans to numb the
intelligence community.
\_ Maybe. But the FAA itself knew about the possibility.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=609895
All that aside, let's see you defend the suppression of info.
\_ Suppression of info? What a wonderful world of fantasy
you live in. On the one hand you chide the president and
his men for keeping America in constant fear of terrorism
using the alert level system, then you go back in history
and complain that before 9/11 we weren't scaring the
American public into preventing 9/11. Sorry, but you can't
have it both ways. Stop flip-flopping like a Kerryite.
Do you want to live in a safe society or do you want to
live in a free society? There's no such thing as a
completely free society that is completely safe, so pick
and choose, chimpy.
\_ Uh, no, I was talking about them suppressing info NOW,
about what was going on THEN. get it? And pointing out that
Rice's statement is patent bullshit.
\_ You know, if Clancy can think of it to put into one of his pulp
novels, it's that much of a stretch of the imagination.
novels, it's not that much of a stretch of the imagination.
\_ From the independent.co.uk link above: "The latest pages note that
of the FAA's 105 daily intelligence summaries between 1 April 2001
and 10 September 2001, 52 of them mentioned Osama bin Laden,
al-Qa'ida, or both." -- so much for the "thousands and thousands"
threats BS -- they obviously were pretty sure about this attack.
\_ The FAA is one organization amongst many. If you collectively
take up all the organizations such as the FBI, CIA, the
Secret Service, the Armed Forces, NASA, the American Postal
System, Amtrak, etc. etc. you'd realize that the government
does get literally thousands upon thousands of threats per
day. And before 9/11 nobody even knew or cared much about
Osama Bin Laden. Hindsight is always 20/20. If you want to
blame someone you should go and blame Clinton for not picking
up Osama from Sudan when he was offered to us on a silver
platter by the Sudanese government.
Yesterday it was Khaddaffi, today it's Osama, tomorrow it
could be you. Anyway, terrorists aren't only middle eastern,
remember an incident in Oklahoma City? So let's try to take
your head out of your ass and utilize that brain of yours and
actually think this through before making overarching comments
based on a small dataset.
\_ You seem to think volume excuses failure. Keeping us safe
is their JOB.
\_ You seem to assume that law enforcement is 100% effective.
Unfortunately, the real world is much less perfect than
what you assume. If you had ever taken a course on crime
you'd realize that perhaps 10% of all crimes are reported,
and of that 10% perhaps 25-50% actually are followed up on.
\_ Of course not. There were increased threat reports.
There were signs everywhere. There were warnings
from the previous administrations' people. Bush's
White House did NOTHING to act on any of it. On the
day, the Hijack Coordinator at the FAA said he didn't
know if he had the authority to order an intercept of
a plane, off course and flying low. DIDN'T KNOW.
Intercepts are ordered all the time. Any time a plane
does something it's not supposed to. And the guy
DIDN'T KNOW. that doesn't fucking bother you?
\_ Blame Reagan for arming him, training him and giving
him an international stage.
\_ That Osama from Sudan story is total BS -- what would we
have charged bin Laden with, exactly, in 1996? Remember,
before 9/11, we actually respected international law and
such, and didn't just throw people we thought might be
dangerous in Gitmo. The Clinton Administration tried to get
Saudi Arabia to take bin Laden and convict him but the Saudis
wouldn't take him, fearing a extremist backlash. So, since
you say "20/20 hindsight and all", what EXACTLY should Clinton
have done, remembering that back then we actually paid more
than lip service to the Constitution and international law?
There are thousands of threats made every day, and it is the
job of the government
to deal with that. They stop many attacks, they miss some,
but it is their job to identify the really really big ones
and prevent those. And they failed on 9/11. Now, if there
was zero intelligence or warning they can be excused but
it is becoming clear they had a pretty good idea and didn't
do enough. It is also the airlines' fault for always
resisting tougher security measures. We created Osama
bin laden, and when Clinton handed over the keys to Bush
HE SPECIFICALLY WARNED BUSH THAT TERRORISM AND BIN LADEN
AND AL QUEDA WERE THE BIGGEST THREATS to this country. So
none of this "before 9/11 no one knew/cared about bin laden"
There is also the possibility that 9/11 could have happened
with or without bin Laden being alive/free. What's
interesting is that you excuse the Bush admin from not
stopping the attack saying no one is 100% perfect yet somehow
Clinton does get blame -- he has to be 100% perfect?
\_ Clinton gets the blame because all of the planning
happened under his watch and he did very little. The
Cole was bombed, the WTC was bombed, and Clinton
thought a missile strike was enough. Clinton was wrong.
He doesn't need to be crucified for his mistake, but it
was a mistake nonetheless. We don't really know how
seriously Bush would have taken these threats if 9/11
did not happen, since he had barely been in office. We
do know what Clinton did or did not do, though.
\_ WTC bombing under clinton was, what, 3 weeks into his
presidency? Have you heard of Project Bojinka? Year
2000 bombing plots? Bush was in office for 9 months.
His people didn't listen to ANYTHING the clinton people
said. We paid the price.
\_ How did Clinton respond to the WTC bombing and
what did he do to prevent another? You can't
blame Bush for 8 years of Clinton ineffectiveness.
\_ He arrested and prosecuted those involved you
dumb fuck! He made anti-terrorism a focus of
the administration. They stopped Project Bojinka.
They stopped the New Years bombing plot. How many
convictions did Ashcroft deliver? How many will
Gonzales? You really have no fucking clue.
\_ I do not think you can credit Clinton for
stopping the Millenium plot. The truth is
that Clinton didn't really do anything to
enhance US security at home or abroad in
spite of frequent attacks against the US.
\_ Who would _you_ credit? Ressam and 3
accomplices were stopped, arrested,
convicted, and Ressam was flipped. Under
who's watch?
\_ What policy or action of Clinton's
led to the arrest? It was just a
suspicious official looking for drugs
that happened upon the plot.
\_ Border guards had been alerted to
look for suspicious activity. There
was definitely a degree of luck, but
you can encourage luck by paying
attention. Jordan warned us. Clinton
and Co. took notice.
\_ Yeah, Bush was only in office for about a year of
calendar time, but with all the vacations he was
taking, who can say how much work of any kind he did.
\_ Not even a year, but Bill was in office for eight.
Just comparing Bush's terms to Clinton's so far
it is clear tha Bush is better at this, BUT he
also has Clinton's failures to point to.
\_ Better at what? Also,, list Clinton's "failures"
in this arena.
\_ Embassy bombings, USS Cole, Saudi bombings, etc
\_ Here's another analogy that perhaps will help those who don't
understand how difficult it is to keep something like airlines
secure. Even if you did only get one threat everday for a week
day and you knew say that there was a 70% chance it was real,
you'd have an exceedingly difficult time pinpointing where
and actually when it would occur. Let's assume you knew it was
the WTC even, how many flights are there daily that could have
been potential targets for the terrorists? Maybe a hundred?
So what are going to do, stop all flights every day because
you had a 70% chance of certainty? Void air travel altogether?
The FAA had 52 threats in a given time period, and they had
absolutely no probability measure to determine if the threat
was going to be real. What are you going to do, shut down
all air travel until all threats disappear?
Okay, say that you want to mandate safer cockpits or put
sky marshalls up there for every flight. That's going to take
a long time to get through congress and longer for the airlines
to implement without actually having gone through a threat.
The ultimate question is, how likely is there a risk of a
terrorist attack and how many people is it going to kill
and how much pain are people willing to suffer to prevent
such an attack? It's like the question on how to keep a
computer completely secure from hackers. There is a real
easy method, unplug it from the network. Are you willing
to do that?
\_ I was critiquing Rice's obviously BS excuse that she
gave the 9/11 Commission, not the failure itself.
\_ Why do you think Ashcroft started using a private jet to get
around the country instead of using an airline?
\_ Because the air traffic control frequencies used by commercial
airlines interfere with his 2 way radio to God? |
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