Well, it's nice to see it's all coming out. 'Bout damn time. Strip all the nonsense away, and maybe we can get to the bottom of this. What I read from what he says is this:
1. We couldn't have taken out bin Laden prior to 9/11 because the Intelligence was too shaky. (Still is)
2. Even if we HAD taken him out, they probably would've still hit the towers on 9/11.
Regardless of the honesty or dishonesty behind all the speechifying, this brings us to the official "brass tacks". Clinton wanted to kill Osama, but couldn't, and even if he did, it wouldn't have mattered. (Substitute Bush's name in there if you prefer) Enough finger-pointing! Hindsight IS 20/20!
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...ion/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that he had no indication in the months before September 11, 2001, that the al Qaeda terrorist network was planning attacks with hijacked jetliners.
In testimony before the independent commission investigating the attacks, Rumsfeld also said even killing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would have been unlikely to prevent the attacks because the men who carried them out were already inside the United States.
Rumsfeld said the National Security Council was working on a new strategy to deal with al Qaeda in the spring and summer of 2001.
But "I knew of no intelligence during the six-plus months leading up to September 11 to indicate terrorists would hijack commercial airliners, use them as missiles to fly into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center towers," he said.
In any event, any large-scale effort to attack al Qaeda inside its sanctuary in Afghanistan was unlikely to draw public or congressional support before the attacks, which killed 3,000 people, he said.
Rumsfeld's predecessor, William Cohen, told the commission that the Clinton administration debated whether to launch airstrikes to kill bin Laden on three occasions in 1998 and 1999, but decided against them because of doubts about the intelligence and concerns about killing civilians.
"There were three occasions. Each time, the munitions and people were spun up," Cohen told the commission. "They were called off because the word came back, 'We're not sure.' "
**More in the article, click the link if you so desire!**
P.S. I still don't believe a word Rumsfeld says, on general principle, but this was interesting.