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Originally posted by HarmlessRabbit
Ok, I can play that game. Based on that memo, Bush should have installed an armed federal marshal or uniformed soldier in the first class cabin of every flight into or out of new york city.
Based on that memo, Bush should have ordered an additional check on anyone currently visiting the usa from the arab nations. He should have also ordered a round-up of any current FBI, CIA, or INS leads. Had he done so, perhaps they would have found the August 16 note from the INS investigator who arrested Zacharias Moussaoui, saying he seemed like "the type of person who could fly something into the World Trade Center." Or, they might have found the memo from a Missouri FBI agent saying that "a 747 loaded with fuel could be used as a weapon".
Or, perhaps a search of the FBI and CIA database for Al Quaeda information would have shown the plot, thwarted by Clinton in 1996, for Al Quaeda to hijack a plane and fly it into CIA headquarters. Perhaps that would have started some wheels turning in peoples minds.
On February 15, 2001, the Hart-Rudman report said the possibility of "mass-casualty terrorism directed against the U.S. homeland was of serious and growing concern" and called for better information sharing among intelligence agencies. Perhaps had any action whatsoever been taken on that report, some of the evidence above would have been easily linked.
Instead, what was Bush doing in August? He was on his ranch in Texas, on the longest presidental vacation in over 30 years.
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You're talking about a ridiculous amount of manpower and money that would never have been approved before 9/11. Hell, even now, post 9/11 there isn't enough manpower to check on every visitor from an "Arab" country.
Based on this memo he'd also have had to station people at every federal building and every airline terminal in the NY metropolitan area to even have a shot at doing anything. And even then there would be little they could have done about it since the rules in place at the time didn't cover most of what the hijackers did.