Quote:
Originally posted by tecoyah
While I do appreciate the "right on man", and partial understanding of the post, you pretty much just became the first person in this thread to do as I had anticipated, Blame Clinton.
My point was not to pat the current administration on the back, but to criticize the lack of accountability they have shown. It would be extremely refreshing to hear from someone who supports Bush, but is willing to accept that Major mistakes were made in the last three years.
The Clinton administration did at least pay attention to the intellegence they had gathered, and acted to prevent a few terrorist actions, they were far from perfect but put in an effort.
The issues addressed here have little to do with Clinton however, and are focused(as they should be) on the failings of our current administration.
I dont care much for Clinton, Bush, Kerry, or any number of career politicians as they are pretty much sleeping in the same perverbial bed. I am though, very concerned by the complete lack of responsibility this administration is showing, and the blind worship of the Bush follower. There may be plenty of blame to go around, but at least accept your share of it while you dish it out to others.
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Well I'm not a yellow dog Republican, blindly following Bush. I accept that he has his faults... everyone does. And I'll also admit that he's not the perfect president that we could all hope for. All I'm saying is that the events that took place on 9/11 were a shared responsibility through numerous administrations over the last 20 years. I heard some figures on the radio this morning about how much money was spent on intelligence, on FBI agents, on the military... etc. Each year the figure had been astonishing low, and security has been a complete atrocity in my opinion.
One great thing I can say about Bush is the dramatic efforts he has made to increase homeland security since the unfortunate events that took place on 9/11. This is an excerpt from a term paper I wrote about him concerning these matters...
"After the unexpected and catastrophic events which occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001, Bush began one of the most dramatic campaigns to increase homeland security and build intelligence throughout the world. Our government has been sharing information between the different branches of intelligence, something which was not seen in previous times. Bush’s most recent plan for a Terrorist Threat Integration Center is the next phase to improve upon the United States’ counterterrorism effort.
Before September 11, it was hinted that Bin Laden might be trying to make such an attempt, but the reports lacked specifics and were therefore not fully investigated. In an executive summary of a 149 page report that was prepared during the Clinton administration and available on the Library of Congress Web site, the authors wrote: "Al Qaeda's expected retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack against al Qaeda's training facilities in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998, could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation's capital. Al Qaeda could detonate a Chechen-type building-buster bomb at a federal building. Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House. Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters." On August 6, 2001, Bush also received a similar summary from the CIA, which stated that there was a possibility of a plot organized by Osama bin Laden to highjack jet aircraft.
Bush would make it a top priority to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States immediately subsequent to the attacks. Before the attacks, terrorism was viewed as strictly a police matter. The F.B.I. has since prevented a number of terrorist plots on U.S. soil, by rounding up suspected Al Qaeda members, and has established 66 different Joint Terrorism Task Forces across America, with an increased level of participation from federal, state, and local agencies. The size of the Counterterrorist Center has doubled, the number of personnel engaged in counterterrorism analysis has quadrupled, measures have been taken to prevent the flow of money to such terrorist organizations. Other measures have been taken to increase airport security, and a threat assessment alert system has been established to let the citizens become more aware when an attack could be eminent, thereby adding an important element to deter future attacks."
Anyway, I do agree that in the long run, this is going to be a very difficult issue to overcome in this next election. As you can see, that report does mention hijacking airplanes and crashing them into buildings... did not mention specifics, however, and that's going to be the thing that is going to save Bush if anything.