Over the past 2 days, there have been inquiries into the possibility of preventing the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11/2001. From what I've been reading on my favorite media site, it looks like both the Clinton and Bush (2) administration failed the American people miserably. According to the ex-counterterror chief, Richard Clarke, he had warned both administrations on numerous occasions about the possible threat from al-Qaida, and was repeatedly ignored.
Now that Clarke has decided to come forward and make public what he has known about the White House's refusal to see al-Qaida as a prominent threat, he has come under numerous attacks from both sides of the political fence. I realize the need for both sides to "save face", and not take the fall completely for the lack of proper action, but the Bush White House has done nothing to debunk any of the facts laid out by Clarke, but have engaged in a rebuttal of character assassination. This does nothing for me to "prove" that the Bush administration actually knew nothing about the threats posed by al-Qaida.
I for one have speculated from the beginning that the current Bush administration had plans from the beginning to "finish the work daddy began" back in the early 90's, but failed to do. This is the basis of the tesimony from Clarke, that he warned the Bush administration on numerous occasions, and was ignored. They wanted to pin everything on Iraq.
I personally don't believe that 9/11 could have been prevented, but we need to learn from our mistakes, and grow up and admit them. Hopefully, we will learn from our mistakes, grow up and take some culpability, and prevent any future horrific events like what happened 2 and a half years ago.
Posted by doug at March 24, 2004 10:09 PMit's all hindsight. if the girl scouts get together and bomb a building, someone will say we could have prevented it by acknowleging them as a threat earlier. we just don't have the resources to deal with every level of threat. even low-level threats can get something done some days. it does sound though as if they were prioritizing a bit backwards (iraq first).
we need to stop pissing off the rest of the world so much. become a member of the world. dangling money and loans in "humanitarian aid" only does so much. we are outsiders in the world community, and some will resent us for that no matter how much money we throw in their direction.
Posted by: john at March 25, 2004 01:44 PM