posted
"But there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." - George W. Bush, Tuesday.
In the very same press conference, President Bush said "part of [the reason I requested the PDB] had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference I was going to attend" in 2001, where he was warned that Islamic terrorists were plotting to fly airplanes into buildings. The same article I’m linking also refers to more “massive scale” attacks of the same nature. Edit: excerpts from link
quote:U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July that Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations, officials said Wednesday.
Italian officials took the reports seriously enough to prompt extraordinary precautions during the July summit of the Group of 8 nations, including closing the airspace over Genoa and stationing antiaircraft guns at the city's airport.
...
In 1996, a terrorist captured in Manila told Philippine police that Al Qaeda planned to hijack 11 U.S. airliners simultaneously and to fly a plane into CIA headquarters near Washington.
THROW OUT every extraneous issue (to what extent is Bush responsible for 9/11, what does it say about my personality that I’m posing this question, isn’t Richard Clarke a jerk) and here’s what’s left.
Bush said nobody in the government could picture anything like 9/11.
People in the government had repeatedly pictured just that.
Either Bush knew what he was saying was false, or he didn’t.
So Pixiest, Odouls, all you other apologists who have said you’re going to vote for Bush...you have three options.
Option 1: “Heck, everybody lies about terrorism.” The fact that Bush, in the process of denying personal responsibility for the 9/11 intelligence failure, deliberately represented his underlings as being less on the ball than they were, does not make me feel I can’t vote for him.
Option 2: “Hey, he doesn’t need to know every little thing.” Bush was never told the specifics of the Genoa threat. Also, after 9/11, he was never briefed on the history of the tactics Osama was using. I still, however, feel that his administration is providing competent enough leadership to vote for him.
Option 3: Some kind of justification of the statement, for example something along the lines of “Well, no one ever envisioned it--they just heard and dismissed information about it.”
Did you believe Osama Bin Laden when he said that not even he expected the Twin Towers to fall down after they were hit?
I mean, a cessna hit a house in "The world according to Garp."
I seem to recall someone flew a plane into the white house lawn when I was in high school.
The idea that it could cause the most civilian casualties of any battle the U.S. has been involved in (I think, forgive me if I'm wrong)- That, I believe, was unexpected.
P.S. your link requires registration. Just post some text. I'll take your word for it.
posted
Bush's culpability for 9/11 is not an issue for me. I'm not defending him as a president. I just think these attempts to suggest that he or his administration screwed up by failing to prevent this are absurd. I don't think anybody else could have prevented this either.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
it all depends on how we define such a massive scale. It's possible they envisions military targets being attacked by planes, but not skyscrapers in NYC. I mean, in terms of attack, don't people usually think of military and resource targets? the world trade centers-what resources there would be considered important to an enemy? What military value did they have? So that might be one way of defending it
not that I believe that crap, I just couldn't resist the challenge of trying to defend it Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
"On Such A Massive Scale" -- That's almost as good as "define 'is'".
1. Reports specifically mention commercial jetliners being hijacked, it was clear that they weren't talking cesna's.
2. The Trade Towers were an obvious target. In fact they had been targeted in a previous Al Qaida terrorist attach. If the people in the government didn't imagine they might be a target, they were clearly negligent.
3. Sept. 11 was a key date because of the anniversary of the Camp David accords. Terrorists had planned and executed actions for this date previously and given the number of warnings available, officials should reasonable have identified the week of Sept. 11 as a very probable window for terrorist actions.
I suspect that it no one may have imagined that 4 planes might be hijacked simultaneously, but enough of the other details were given that more should have been done. If no one in the government imagined that a massive attack was in the planning given that data that was available, then our leaders were clearly negligent.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I actually cant remember the exacts of this statement (and i tried for an hour to find a link, man just thinking about that makes me think of what I COULD have been doing!) but in 1981 or so, a man who plotted to hijack a plane and crach it into a building (i think it was the pentagon) was stopped on the plane and sent to jail. I remember this only becuase I saw it on dateline. I still cant find the link though so if anyone can find something on this very vague recollection feel free.
Posts: 107 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I believe that even if they *knew* this was going to happen, they couldn't have prevented it. I think it will happen again, knowing what we know now.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Oh, and to respond to the original question. The statement is obviously false, but I would personally file it under "hyperbole" and not "deception". It's just too obviously false.
posted
Condoleeza Rice IS someone we can blame. She is an archaic realist. She was schooled in the theory of international relations of realism and it is her antequated expertise that de-prioritized issues dealing with non-state actors when she came in with Bush in 2001. She basically admitted this herself at the hearings. This is not something she should be forgiven for, she should immediately lose her job and be replaced by someone who understands the mixed actor model and will not put issues and concerns dealing with non-state actors on the back burner, especially when there is more recent and relevant intelligence on them than things like Iraq, Iran and North Korea which is what she was primarily focused on. She is a dinosaur theorist from the Cold War era who should not have been brought into power in 2001 after more than ten years of progress since the end of the bi-polar world. If any of you have read her response to Francis Fukuyama's End of History thesis you would know exactly what I am talking about. She in that essay described China with North Korea as a proxy puppet taking over the former USSR's role in opposing the US and that other concerns like middle eastern terrorism and the like were minor in comparisson. We had competant, qualified individuals who would have given things like Al Qeada the proper attention required, instead we had to suffer 5000 Americans lives so she could have a "learning experience."
It is quite amusing/disturbing that Bush will say absolutely anything except that he bears some responsibility for 9/11.
I still believe that 9/11 was an aberration, meaning its chances of occuring were very very low but it happened anyways. I also believe that a 9/11-type event is just as likely to occur tomorrow morning as it was on that Tuesday morning, because there is an almost infinite amount of aberrations that could occur. Oh yes, and I probably have used the word abberration wrong (and maybe spelled it wrong, too), so don't get nitpicky. Of course, if we did such-and-such, which we are of course doing now (ad naseum, perhaps), the attacks would have been prevented with ease. But hijacking planes with box cutters and using them as missiles constitutes a very small portion of the possible 9/11-type events. NOTHING-meaning, absolutely, positively NOTHING-in history occurs exactly the same way twice.
What I find far more troubling is the current international state of affairs, which seems to be in a slow, gradual, but definite descent into the abyss.
Posts: 755 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Pooka: A valiant option 3 response, and I'll excuse since you din't read the article, but 11 planes crashed into various federal buildings (as is now mentioned in my first post) counts as on a massive scale. Incidentally, I know this will sound all liberal and America-hatey, but the "most civilian casualties of any battle the U.S. has been involved in" were, I'm sure, during WWII. The Hiroshima bomb, for example, killed an estimated 200,000 people, though that includes noncivilians.
Icarus: You broke my rule ("do not discuss Bush's culpability for 9/11 in this thread") as articulated in my first post. This is solely about the lie.
Toretha: I don't know how serious you meant that, but Xavier hits the nail on the head. We must have envisioned further attacks on the WTC because of all the previous, foiled, attacks.
MPH: I'm going to tentatively file this under option 1: a defense of making a deliberately false statement. You excuse on the grounds that it's so obviously false that it can't have been meant as deception. Do you really think no viewers were deceived? I can't prove it, of course, but I'm sure I if I could conduct the poll, I'd find that 36% of Fox News viewers believe that we never imagined any attack in any way like this. And the President knows that people trust him.
BrianM: See Icarus above. (sounds like the title of a poem)
Posts: 535 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
His two sentence post where he thinks that expecting anyone to have prevented it is absurd? I don't think it would have been absurd to have had professionals who would have given terrorists the attention they needed in the intel. agencies and especially at the top. Under Clinton we probably would have caught this kind of thing even with the seperation of the agencies. Why? Because the Bush admin. is full of archaic Cold War theorists and had all the agencies refocus their efforts on the old E.c.h.e.l.o.n. system and on China, NK, Iraq and Iran.
posted
It's a bit like trying to blame the first year Assistant Principal for the Columbine Massacres isn't it?
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
How many Principals (since we're trying to compare jobs directly here) receive somewhat-daily briefings on everything that happened on the school grounds (and possibly on other school grounds)?
I don't think you can make a direct corellation, unless you know of a HS that has several tens of thousands of teachers to report back on each kid.
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
But principals DO get constant briefings on "troublemakers" which is what a better analogy here would be. To further this analogy you could say that a progressive principle was removed and a old, conservative type was put in place who isn't used to all this "new-fangled" types of troublemaking. The old principal had been warned about these kids that had been hacking into the school's database, but because the new, conservative and old-minded principal has come in, even though he recieves reports about these students he doesn't think they are as much of a problem as are drug users, even though there are no recent reports on any drug users at the school. So the new conservative principal is going to focus away school staff's attention and resources and try to find some drug users even though the hacking kids were constantly reported to the principal. He didn't know exactly when and where they were hacking in, but he was warned that they were doing it and could have taken steps with the whole system early on before they went and erased the entire grading system for that year!
quote: So Pixiest, Odouls, all you other apologists who have said you’re going to vote for Bush
I must say that I am just as pleased as can be that I was specifically mentioned as a Bush supporter. Makes me feel like I've ruffled someone's feathers. Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Brian, you're right it is a better analogy (it's hard to post thoughtful things on here when you're on the phone).
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:I don't think you can make a direct corellation, unless you know of a HS that has several tens of thousands of teachers to report back on each kid.
Right - as people have stated before, the problem was one of sifting through all that information to find the one threat that was serious (and this is assuming no threats were stopped before they ripened).
quote: Under Clinton we probably would have caught this kind of thing even with the seperation of the agencies. Why? Because the Bush admin. is full of archaic Cold War theorists
Bush's decision making ability has no barring on what Clinton would have done. The terrorists were here and in full training. The instigation of the war on terror has developed during many administrations.
Bush should have known better. Clinton should have known better. Bush senior should have known better. Many people should have known better. To somehow think Clinton would have got it right (esp after so many failures in his administration) because Bush has signed on "archaic Cold War theorists” is misleading.
The difference between "experience" and “inexperience" is "bad experience."
Before 9-11 there was apparently not enough experience to wake up America's leadership to the potential threat of air planes. When the first dirty bomb or contagious virus spreads, we will have investigations why we focused so much on airplanes.
The sad point is we are one step behind. I don't see anyone competent or smart enough to anticipate and stop the "next big thing." I do think (and I am open to new information) that Kerry has NOTHING positive to offer our current challenges.
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I actually agree with Dr. Rice that China and Korea could make this war on terror look like a kindergarten field trip. I'm glad they haven't.
I was referring to US casualties, HDB my bad.
So do you believe that Bin Laden didn't intend to collapse the towers? Did you not see him describing it as... "THE AWESOME!" (Roughly translated).
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I like the idea behind this post, keep the discussion centered on one, "Gotcha" moment.
I will offer a fourth reason for President Bush saying what he said.
He didn't think anyone in the government envisioned flying planes into buildings because he only considers those insiders who are in his little clique, those who think like him and are very high-policy setting officials. He doesn't think to include beaurocrats, lesser officials, and anyone who disagrees with him despite their employment in "the Government". Their jobs are to obey and be silent. To question or speak up or blow a whistle is personally treasonous.
In other words--President Bush didn't envision it, and those who he trusts didn't envision it, so the whole government didn't envision it.
PS That said, I believe that this hunting for 9/11 fault is a waste of time. The President's administration thought Terrorism was an important, but not urgent problem--AS DID PRACTICALLY EVERYONE ELSE IN AMERICA!!
Unfortunately President Bush won't admit this because it doesn't spin well. His attempts at spin are only keeping the issue alive in the press just as Clinton's spin of Monica kept it alive.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I like whoever posted on another thread that the problem was TOO much information. I don't think he lied because if you are presented with a million possibilities and contingencies, you can't envision they all will happen. You have to be selective on what you focus on. Up till 9-11, we were more focusedon car bombs for obvious reasons.
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
You know, in the follow-up book that Tom Clancy wrote, the premise was that terrorists would take out the stock market, which is a huge target. They did it with computers, much more effectively, of course, but still. WTC had been a target twice before. The stock market is across the street. I don't know why it wouldn't be considered a target. Anything that is a symbol of American wealth and greed it a target. I don't understand why the government doesn't get that.
Oh, and by the way, "According to Variety, the FBI, in reaction to the events of September 11, approached some of Hollywood's top writers to help them come up with possible terrorist attack scenarios, in order to aid in preparation of homeland security." Hopefully, next time, we won't get the "no ever thought of that" comments.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
This thread is more pep rally than discussion, but whatever . . .
quote:Unfortunately President Bush won't admit this because it doesn't spin well. His attempts at spin are only keeping the issue alive in the press just as Clinton's spin of Monica kept it alive.
How could he let it die? By "admitting" that he's "to blame"? And then asking for leniency for his mistakes? It's not Bush keeping this issue allive.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote: AS DID PRACTICALLY EVERYONE ELSE IN AMERICA!!
Thank God somebody said it.
Before 9/11 we were all, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, playing. we were all playing. Plain and simple. we were reveling in our happy ignorance of world affairs and our biggest problem was those pesky 1.29 gas prices, and a little slowdown in the economy. And that's what we were riding the Bush administration to fix, and that's what they were taking as priorities. There were no threads around on Bush's lack of attention to Al Qaeda until well well WELL after 9/11
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Hijacking is a federal offence, n'est-ce pas?
So...you've got four airplanes in the air--all hijacked. Some are altering course, all are off-line.
Sure, with 20/20 hindsight, I can say that someone shoud have been able to put it all together. What do you do when you're an air-traffic-controller (assuming you hadn't gotten laid off during the Reagan administration...), and you have a hijacked plane? I would imagine, even then, that you CALL THE FBI!
So, the FBI has four call-ins on hijacked planes on the northeast seaboard. Alarms should be going off already.
Were there any alarums going off? Seems like, "NO."
I don't know where to take this, but I thought I'd toss it in.
As always...I could be wrong.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
The August 6 PDB that everyone is making a huge deal about said that the hijacked plains were going to be used to secure release of Islamic militants, not used as missiles.. let me see if I can find a copy of the PDB...
The part of the memo that actually mentions hijacking...
quote:We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a xxxxxxxxxx service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
In fact it is even more vague than I remember. It says they can't even corroborate the reports.
quote: Under Clinton we probably would have caught this kind of thing even with the seperation of the agencies.
This is a riduculous and laughable statement. Clinton had Osama Bin Laden offered to him 3 times and turned him down 3 times. He was the one who seperated the agencies and cut their funding. The WTC was bombed once under Clinton as it was! Not to mention OKC and the USS Cole. And he did nothing about it.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I do not expect to be run over by a bus, although the possibility is definately there. Am I too trusting of the bus drivers?
I think that you cannot call this a blatant lie, because obviously nobody seriously thought that it was likely enough to warrant the sort of measures that we have now.
Did you expect it? Did you get on a plane pre-9/11 and expect to be hijacked and flown into a building?
Even if somebody mentioned the possibility, even if it was filed as a possible terrorist attack, even if they had a plan justincase, nobody was watching for it, nobody was poised, waiting for it.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Hi, my name's Alan, and I monitor safety at several television-packing plants. When I started the job in 2000, I heard a few bits of speculation that a ventilation shaft could fail at just the wrong moment, leading to a carbon monoxide buildup that could kill most of the plant workers. However, the study that produced the warning was flawed, and my advisors told me the chances were remote. I chose to focus on more plausible-sounding scenarios for accidents. In July of 2001, I heard that another factory was taking precautions against a similar scenario, but everyone I worked with thought the chances at my plants were too slim to worry about. It was best to spend our limited budget on more pressing safety concerns. In September , 2001, however, a carbon monoxide buildup killed 300 workers, causing horror nationwide.
Now it's April, 2004, and I'm explaining the measures I've been taking to prevent anything of the sort from ever happening again. An auditor from the government asks me if I made any mistakes that contributed to the tragedy. I defiantly answer that nobody had ever envisioned carbon monoxide poisoning on such a massive scale.
Regardless of whether I was right to dismiss the threat, I have just committed a federal offense.
Regardless of whether Bush was right not to take anti-hijacking measures, he has just committed a morally indefensible act.
posted
I would say that when Bush said envision, he meant expect. More of a misstatement than a blatant lie.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
I have a personal theory I call executive mindset. This is when a person gets so high up in a hierarchy that he (or she) loses touch with the real world. My f-i-l had this to a certain extent. As an example: a house he and my m-i-l lived in had a cathedral ceiling in the family room. It was at least 15 feet high, and had lights in the high part. One of the lights burned out. My m-i-l didn't do anything about it, and my f-i-l got irked. He went downstairs to the basement and brought up a lightbulb. Then came the "oh" moment when he realized he wasn't 15 feet tall and couldn't reach the lightbulb to change it.
Another example: a person at my work, in a managerial position, hates working nights, yet she works 3 evening shifts per week. She is the person who does the schedule. Why does she do this? Well, when we got a new editor, the publisher told her he had told the new editor it was okay if he only worked one night shift per week because Barbara liked to work nights. (no she doesn't, except in your world)
I think Bush has executive mindset to the nth degree. It's that willingness to overlook inconvenient facts and rearrange reality to fit your needs. Whether or not there were warnings that airplanes could fly into buildings, they have no meaning because it's inconvenient.
Do I sound bitter? Well, in the course of doing my taxes this week, I was asked if I got one of those tax rebate checks last year. The answer is no. The reason is because my family didn't make enough money to pay enough taxes to earn a rebate. You will find that a lot of lower income people - the people who really could use the money - didn't get them. I also have a friend who lost job at a computer manufacturer (and was forced to train an outsourcing replacement). But, sending jobs to other countries is good for the economy ... right. One of the funniest news photos I've seen lately is a protestor holding a sign that says, "Outsource Bush."
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:I would say that when Bush said envision, he meant expect. More of a misstatement than a blatant lie.
Brilliant. So Bush can go on national tv and make self-serving, false remarks, and those of you who know the truth assume that he really meant to tell it. I'm sure there were people watching who didn't know, as Icarus apparently does, that we had envisioned this kind of attack...and now they're sure we hadn't. But I'm sure Bush never means to mislead the ignorant. Like in the same press conference, when he said that oil revenues from Iraq were better than we expected, or when he said in 2000 that by far the bulk of his tax cut went to the bottom ten percent, or that he had no doubt Saddam had WMDs, or that we had found WMD's in Iraq, he was simply misspeaking or ignorant.
Posts: 535 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Here is another lie, but from the Vice President.
Westminster College in Missouri is a small college with a world famous international studies program. It was here that Winston Churchill coined the phrase "Iron Curtain."
So when the Vice President offered to make a "Foreign Policy Address" of signifigant import, the school was honored to have him speak.
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my bad. 
