Trump Is Right About 9/11 George W. Bush didn’t do all he could to prevent the attack—and it’s time Republicans confronted that fact. ... When the Bush administration took office in January 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Council counterterrorism “czar” Richard Clarke both warned its incoming officials that al-Qaeda represented a grave threat. During a transition briefing early that month at Blair House, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Tenet and his deputy James Pavitt listed Osama bin Laden as one of America’s three most serious national-security challenges. That same month, Clarke presented National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice with a plan he had been working on since al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole the previous October. It called for freezing the network’s assets, closing affiliated charities, funneling money to the governments of Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Yemen to fight al-Qaeda cells in their country, initiating air strikes and covert operations against al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, and dramatically increasing aid to the Northern Alliance, which was battling al-Qaeda and the Taliban there. But both Clarke and Tenet grew deeply frustrated by the way top Bush officials responded. Clarke recounts that when he briefed Rice about al-Qaeda, “her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before.” On January 25, Clarke sent Rice a memo declaring that, “we urgently need…a Principals [Cabinet] level review on the al Qida [sic] network.” Instead, Clarke got a sub-cabinet, Deputies level, meeting in April, two months after the one on Iraq. When that April meeting finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that, “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.” full article
Don't forget that Bush was on vacation for a full month six months after being sworn into office as president. Who does that? Who takes a one month vacation after only six months of work? [rQUOTEr]Bush Takes Monthlong Texas Vacation For the next 30 days, it will be home on the ranch for President Bush. With his administration 6 months old, Bush is set to shed the confines of the White House and head to his sprawling ranch in Crawford, Texas, to begin a monthlong, outside-the-Beltway retreat. "I'm headed home to the heartland to listen to the American people and to talk about the values that unite and sustain our country," Bush said in a Rose Garden speech this afternoon. 'A Little Fishing, … A Little Policy' White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters the chief executive was also looking forward to "enjoying a little down time, a little running and a little cedar clearing." "He'll do a little fishing on the ranch, I'm sure he'll have friends and family over to the ranch, he'll do a little policy, he'll keep up with events," Fleischer added. Why is the commander in chief spending four weeks in a small central Texas town outside Waco? "I think it is so important for a president to spend some time away from Washington," he told the Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree last week. Since taking office 196 days ago, Bush has spent plenty of leisurely days away from Washington, including 23 at his Crawford ranch, 36 at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland and a four-day weekend at his family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater says Bush showed the same affection for vacations when he was governor of Texas. “George Bush was religious about wanting to take time off," said Slater. Former President Ronald Reagan, who made frequent visits to his ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif., while in office, said the commander in chief never really goes off the clock, no matter where he is. "Presidents don't get vacations — they just get a change of scenery," he said in 1985. "You're still president … The job goes with you." Bush expressed similar sentiments as he vacationed in Kennebunkport in July. "The amazing thing about this job … is that the job seems to follow you around," he told reporters. 'Working Vacation,' Bush Aides Insist The president and his aides call the upcoming Crawford vacation a "home-to-the-heartland visit" and have dubbed the sprawling 1,600-acre ranch the "Texas White House." Fleischer insisted today the month away from the White House would not be all rest and relaxation. "It's going to be a working vacation — it's going to include parts work and parts vacation," he said, noting that Bush would receive daily intelligence briefings, except on Sundays, and would travel for two days out of every week for various public events. "He will be based in Crawford, Texas, but will, from there, travel to the rest of America to meet with a wide variety of Americans to listen to their concerns," Fleischer said. White House officials said the president planned to help build a house at a Habitat for Humanity event in nearby Waco next week, followed by trips to Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other states later in the month. Aides to Bush say he may also make a much-anticipated political announcement while at the ranch. The president has been wrestling with whether or not to allow federal funding for controversial embryonic stem-cell research. Doctors say the research hold the promise for debilitating diseases like diabetes and Parkinson's, but opponents say the studies are immoral because they use cells derived from human embryos, which are destroyed in the process. The president's retreat is timed to coincide with the August congressional recess, when lawmakers head home to their districts. That mass exodus got under way this afternoon. "Members of Congress are going home as well," Bush pointed out today. A monthlong retreat is not without precedent, but no president has been away from the White House for a full 30 days since Richard Nixon. When he returns from Crawford in September, Bush will have spent nearly 40 percent of his days as president at his ranch or at Camp David. But presidential historian Michael Beschloss says even if the trend continues, it will likely have little impact on Bush's presidency. "There's almost no relationship between the number of hours you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office and how good a president you are," he said.[/rQUOTEr]
If one thought Bush did almost only bad things, then one should have wanted him to take vacations. Stated another way, I'd rather see Trump take a 4 year vacation on the taxpayer's bill than actually try to do presidential things.
Starting in about 1991 or so, when those cretins declared war on the United States, no one, nobody, not the CIA, not the FBI, sure as hell not the American public, not the DOD, not the Clinton Administration, not our European allies, not the Bush Administration, nobody took the threat seriously. Mother****ing ABC News went to Afghanistan and interviewed Osama and he said straight up "I am declaring war on you, wherever you are, civilians or military, it does not matter." What did you say then? Playing this blame game is just bull****, and you should be ashamed.
Yep. He was sneaky. He attacked US embassies in Africa. Now if he had attacked US embassies in Europe...
And the World Trade Center, oops, didn't work the first time, and a US warship, and...there was nothing sneaky about it. Nobody cared.
I don't think OBL was involved in the WTC bombings. That was Khalid Sheik Mohamed. In hindsight, it is hard to take the neocons seriously - or the democrats who barely gave any resistance to the Iraq War. [rQUOTEr]But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=1[/rQUOTEr]
This is not correct at all. Richard Clarke's book from way back when goes into detail on this but there was a vocal faction which was worried about this back then. Whether or not people in charge are blameless or blameworthy or could have prevented it in any event is a separate matter but "nobody took the threat seriously" is just plain wrong as a factual matter, if your definition of "somebody" includes people high up in various national security-related institutions. What's also not disputable is that the Bush Administration's national security priorities did not include this when they took office in 2001. They included Saddam Hussein and missile defense and Russia and China - it didn't include terrorism at all, which Clarke among others have argued represented a shift away from the focus in 2000 prior to the transition.
Having a war vote three months before a midtrem might have swayed some democrat's votes don't you think?
Except it was after the attack on the warship that Clinton's team headed by Clarke did indeed take them seriously and worked to develop the plan and listed Al-Qaeda as a top threat. By then it was transition time, and the Bush people said they would rather worry about Iraq. Even though it was slow in happening, they were already being taken seriously by the Clinton team and Richard Clarke especially. It also isn't about bringing up the blame game again. This only came about because Jeb Bush has many of the people from GW's foreign policy team as part of his team. But mostly because Jeb Bush has been making the claim that GW "kept us safe". So this is in response to Jeb's claim.
Remember Clinton's pussyfooting around trying ineffectively lob a few missiles at bin Laden could have solved this long ago... and of course the planning happened largely under Bill and Hillary's time in the white house
^^ Glad Obama was still in his golf shirt. It takes a lot to pull him off the links! Bravo to our brave troops and for Obama watching on TV!
Remember this is the same president who immediately hit the golf course after addressing the American public after ISIS beheaded their first American. Unquestioned ethics and credibility.
