Have you read Hart-Rudman?
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01013102.htm

Again, that memo contained enough alarming info that Bush could have done something. Instead, he did nothing. Onetime2 specifically asked what could have been done, then criticized my suggestions as being hindsight. :)

I think Skettios sums things up nicely.
To say that there was no "actionable" intelligence is just a dodge to help explain why the administration took no action.

I think that was Rice verbatim.

There's no way around it. The memo is pretty damning for the Bush administration. But I think people are missing the point. The issue at hand isn't whether there was actionable intelligence or whether the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented (I believe Richard Clarke admitted that they couldn't be prevented). I think what it really boils down to is a matter of trust. Can we trust Bush and company to continue leading our country?

I think the answer is a clear "no". They have consistently either withheld information or blatantly lied to cover their own asses. Case in point: from the beginning the company line has been that their was never any evidence of a domestic threat, and that every indication suggested that only overseas interests would be targeted. But the PDB obviously contradicts this assertion.

They knew their lie would be revealed if they released the PDB. That's why they withheld it so long, and only released it when they had no choice. Even then they conveniently released it on a Saturday night, when they knew nobody would be paying attention.

There's an article in "The Nation" which is fairly insightful (and I think pretty fair, even though it's a very left-wing magazine):

<a href="http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1370">http://www.thenation.com/capitalgame...bid=3&pid=1370</a>

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.

The thing that concerns me the most is that people are supportive of our police officers and other law enforcement agents standing around public streets with assault rifles.

Did anyone see footage of the parade this weekend?

The need for better detection aside, we are witnessing one of the most dramatic coalescence of police power in the history of our nation. This is one of the reasons some of us point to the unrealistic proposition that an armed populace would resist government encroachment of their civil rights--the people are actually demanding it now.



Well I'll be damned, the NRA agrees with me!

--http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-gunpolitics13apr13,1,2467557.story?coll=la-home-headlines

I think people are getting sick and tired of all types of politicians not admitting blame on ANY ISSUES EVER. EVER. They always seem to defer the blame of to someone else. There is certain honour in acknowledging short-comings.

Unfortunately people are not getting sick of it. It's apparently what people live for. It's all about getting elected. Wanna win the Presidency? Claim the current President is responsible for not protecting Americans while at the same time admit that it's totally unlikely that anything done would have prevented it. That way you can't be blamed when it comes to light that the information was available not just to the President but members of Congress, the press, think tanks, FBI, CIA, NSA, past Presidents, etc, etc, etc.

Great topic for a new post!