RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Bush Defends Hijack Warning Reaction

Bush Defends Hijack Warning Reaction

By CHRISTOPHER NEWTON
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush firmly defended himself Friday against Democratic suggestions that he ignored warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying ``I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people'' had he known of Osama bin Laden's plans.

``I want the troops here to know that I take my job as commander in chief very seriously,'' he told Air Force cadets and officers in a Rose Garden ceremony honoring their football team.

Bush's remarks reflect heightened concern at the White House over political fallout from revelations this week that he was told Aug. 6 that bin Laden wanted to hijack planes. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress have criticized Bush for not making the information public, and are questioning whether he could have done more to stop the attacks.

``Washington is unfortunately the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature,'' Bush said, carrying out a GOP strategy to accuse Democratic critics of playing politics.

In a brief interview Friday with The Associated Press, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., stood behind questions he and other lawmakers have raised.

``I don't think that anyone is second-guessing,'' he said. ``We're simply trying to ensure that this never happens again.''

As for Bush's assertion that he would have reacted strongly had he known of bin Laden's plans, Daschle said, ``I think the question is why didn't he know. If the information was made available, why was he kept in the dark? If the president of the United States doesn't have access to this kind of information, there's something wrong with the system.''

Bush's unusually defensive statement came as White House officials confirmed they had a battle plan to topple bin Laden awaiting Bush's approval in the days before the attacks.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of an anonymity, said the options memo was prepared by Bush's foreign policy team as threats of terrorism spiked. It was dated Sept. 10 and was on national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's desk for Bush's review when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck.

The action plan was made public in general terms last year, but gained importance in light of the mushrooming controversy over what Bush knew and did about threats of terrorism.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the memo recommended dismantling bin Laden's network ``through what you saw put into place frankly, rather quickly in our operations in Afghanistan.'' He said that the plan included working with the northern alliance as well as going after the organization's finances.

``The purpose was to dismantle al-Qaida,'' he said. The time frame was ``indeterminate,'' he added. Fleischer would not speculate on whether the plan could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks.

He did not say whether the memo included airstrikes and ground troops, both of which were used in Afghanistan. The U.S. official said ground troops were not a primary option in the memo, having been approved by Bush only after considerable debate after Sept. 11.

The memo, which was first reported by The New York Times in December, outlined an extensive CIA program to arm the northern alliance and other anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. official said. It included a $200 million CIA plan to arm anti-Taliban forces.

The plan was approved by Bush's team Sept. 4 and was awaiting Bush's review after a trip to Florida that began Sept. 10.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of Americans in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll conducted Thursday said the Bush administration should have disclosed its hijack-threat information before Sept. 11. But only a third said failure to do so made them feel less favorably toward the popular president.

Democrats are demanding the Aug. 6 CIA memo that mentioned the hijackings and another pre-Sept. 11 document - an FBI memo that warned headquarters that many Middle Eastern men were training at American flight schools.

``Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information? And what specific actions were taken by the White House in response?'' Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., asked.

Turning the tables, Fleischer noted Friday that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told a TV interviewer in July that panel staff members had informed her of a ``major probability'' of a terrorist attack.

``And that raises the question,'' Fleischer said, ``what did the Democrats in Congress know. And why weren't they talking to each other?''

Feinstein, responding to Fleischer's comments, said she did not have information on potential threats beyond what the administration had. ``I had a deep sense of foreboding something would happen. I was very public about that. I wasn't hiding it from anybody,'' she said in an interview.

She said the information she had was ``too vague'' to be of specific use. Feinstein said that on Sept. 10 she had talked to Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to convey her concerns and that the response was, ``We'll get back to you in six months.''

In Budapest, Hungary, first Laura Bush defended her husband.

``I know my husband. And all Americans know how he has acted in Afghanistan and in the war with terror. I think really, we need to put this in perspective and I think it's sad to prey upon the emotions of people as if there were something we could have done to stop'' the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, she said in an interview Friday.

Some Republicans have raised questions.

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, ``There was a lot of information. I believe and others believe, if it had been acted on properly we may have had a different situation on Sept. 11.''

But the administration argued there was no information about a specific threat, and Cheney cautioned Democrats to tread lightly as congressional panels investigate whether the government missed warning signs.

``They need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions that were made by some today that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9-11,'' Cheney said Thursday night. ``Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war.''

05/17/02 13:22 EDT

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

my personal stance?

hindsight rawks!

i think its pretty stupid to think that the gubment didnt do more in preperation.

think of the reverse... what would happen if bush spent millions, during the month of august, souping up a defense... he'd be criticized for wasting money!

(which more or less happened. the US was in the process, last summer, of building up a huge lot of money and a huge defense system from foreign attack, and they were taking HEAVY criticism because of it).

further more... even if bush received an email from osama (..um.. make that regular mail) stating "dear georgie... we're coming to kill you, on september 11th, via airplanes we'll hijack" .... what the fuck are we supposed to do?

wouldnt the "logical" step be to bring the whole army to washington dc? ground all flights within 50 miles of the whitehouse?

fine.

so now, for a month, the gubment would be criticised for wasting money n'effort on protecting washington.

then, the twin towers would STILL be destroyed.

so then the gubment would be criticised for "protecting themselves, and not the people."

its a lose-lose situation.

I'm not a big Bush fan by any means, but I think these attacks on him are stupid. Does anyone really think that he, personally, knew these attacks were coming and just ignored it? He relies on his advisors and the heads of these agencies to keep him informed.

I do think our various "intelligence" agencies need an ass-reaming, though. It seems clear that the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies were not communicating effectively. This has been a problem for a long time, on a variety of matters.

I do know that one change Dubya has made has been that the FBI and the CIA now give their briefings to him at THE SAME TIME, so they're actually in the same room sharing info. If they'd been doing this last summer, would anyone have connected the dots? Who knows - that's going to be one of those unanswerable questions that historians will debate forever. But someone might have.

They might as well criticize Clinton & his people for not acting when the hijackers arrived in the U.S. & started their training or why not criticize Bush Sr. for not eliminating terrorist groups while in Iraq or Reagan for not taking out all of Libya when terrorists would routinely hijack planes or Carter for his mid-east peace accord that no doubt infuriated extremist muslims & so on.No good will come of this & to me it looks more like a political move on the Democrat's part to smear the president & make him look bad for the next election.Tom Daschle is an ass.

always look on the bright side of life......

Two articles from www.guardian.co.uk
Here's the first:

Ashcroft drawn into row over September 11
Julian Borger in Washington

Tuesday May 21, 2002

The row about whether the September 11 attacks could have been averted has begun to focus on the US attorney general, who is accused of playing down the terrorist threat in the first months of the Bush administration.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington, John Ashcroft has been criticised for rounding up more than 1,000 people on suspicion of being connected to al-Qaida. Many were held for months, despite a alack of credible evidence.

He has accused his critics of undermining the fight against terrorism. But it is becoming clear that before September 11 he had little interest in counter-terrorism, and diverted resources from measures to prevent terrorism towards those aimed at more traditional targets, such as drugs and child pornography

In the late 90s the threat of a terrorist attack on US soil became a near obsession in the Clinton administration, particularly in the justice department under Janet Reno. But her successor had other ideas.

On September 10 last year, the last day of what is now seen as a bygone age of innocence, Mr Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House. It covered 68 programmes, none of them related to counter-terrorism.

He also sent a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities. Counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats.

Nevertheless, he began using a chartered private jet to travel around the country, rather than take commercial airliners as Ms Reno had done. A justice department spokesman said this was done as a result of an FBI "threat assessment" on Mr Ashcroft, but insisted that the assessment was not specifically linked to al-Qaida.

But Mr Ashcroft stopped using commercial flights in July, just as the intelligence "chatter" about a possible al-Qaida strike on US soil was getting louder.

According to yesterday's edition of Newsweek, he had a showdown on counter-terrorism with the outgoing FBI director, Louis Freeh, in the spring of last year in Quantico, Virginia, at an annual meeting of special agents.

People at the meeting said the two disagreed fundamentally on their priorities.

Mr Ashcroft's agenda comprised "basically violent crime and drugs" and when Mr Freeh began to talk about his concern about the terrorist threat facing the country, "Ashcroft didn't want to hear about it".

The justice department denied that Mr Ashcroft ignored or played down the counter-terrorist effort before September 11. It pointed out that he had told a Senate committee in May that it was his "highest priority".

It is unlikely that his critics will be able to saddle him with the blame for specific errors made by the FBI in the months before the attack.

The now famous July memorandum from an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona, voicing suspicion about Middle Eastern student pilots in US flying schools did not get past the middle management at the bureau's Washington headquarters, where it was ignored.

But even since September 11 Mr Ashcroft has been accused of putting ideology before the battle against terrorism.

While seeking to limit some of the rights of those held on suspicion of terrorist connections, he prevented the FBI investigating gun-purchase records to discover if any of them had bought a weapon.

He has continued to plough resources into the drug war, stepping up raids on Californian health centres which provide the chronically ill with medicinal marijuana.

He has argued that the battle against Colombian rebels should be considered part of the broader counter-terrorist effort.

The return of politics

At last, Americans are asking whether their government did enough to protect them on September 11

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday May 22, 2002
The Guardian

Normal service has resumed. After eight months off the air, American politics is back. Republicans are once more hurling abuse at Democrats, Democrats are slamming Republicans, while Capitol Hill and the White House have returned to their traditional posture: at loggerheads. At long last, the September 11 bubble of bipartisan consensus - in which even to question the Bush administration's war against terrorism was seen as unpatriotic - has burst.
There were times when it seemed it might last forever. The attacks on New York and Washington stirred a mood of national unity Americans had not known since Pearl Harbor. Every porch flew a flag, every politician bent his knee to a president with poll ratings off-the-charts. And few dared step out of line. "You are either with us or against us," said George W, ensuring that every critic was branded as a confrère of terrorism. It got so bad that even as heartland a figure as Dan Rather, veteran anchor of CBS News, complained to BBC Newsnight that the US had developed a near-totalitarian intolerance of dissent.

No longer. Now the politicians are back slinging mud, and the previously tranquillised media-hounds have got the scent of the hunt back into their nostrils. What electric charge has made the dormant body of US politics twitch back to life? Most assumed it would take a new, separate crisis - an economic collapse, mass unemployment or a personal scandal - to break the spell.

But that's not how it turned out. Instead it is September 11 itself which has put conflict back into US politics. Specifically, the charge that President Bush and his staff were warned that a terrorist atrocity was being hatched - and did nothing.

The evidence is a battery of FBI memos and intelligence briefings - more coming out all the time - which seemed to anticipate with uncanny prescience the attacks of 9/11. In July 2001, a sharp-eyed FBI agent in Arizona noticed that a large number of suspects he'd been watching had taken up a new hobby: flying lessons. More worrying, they were asking their teachers lots of questions about airline security. His memo never got beyond middle-management. At the same time, America's "terrorism czar" was warning FBI and aviation officials that "something really spectacular" was in the works. On August 6, President Bush himself, receiving his daily briefing at his Texan ranch, was told there was a threat of al-Qaida hijacking planes within the US. Nothing happened.

With all this released into the atmosphere, the traditional features of political combat have materialised. The press are baying: even the right-leaning New York Post splashed last week with the banner headline: Bush Knew. The Democrats are in full blood, demanding an independent commission of inquiry into that time-honoured question of Washington scandal, "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

How serious a scandal is brewing here? The current evidence is not enough to bring down a president. The White House can dismiss the intelligence warnings, insisting they were not specific enough; that they may look eerily accurate now, with hindsight, but that at the time they were too vague to stand out from the mass of TMI - Too Much Information - US intelligence agencies receive every day of the week.

The chain of command protects the president in cases like this: the Arizona memo never reached his desk. (Even the head of the FBI did not see it until after September 11.) Besides, there is a more basic factor at work: voters' gut instinct says that, if the president could have done anything to prevent the September tragedy, he would have. More deeply, people have a fatalistic feeling about that day. Bobbi Rosner, who lost her daughter Sheryl on 9/11, wrote to the New York Times yesterday, with astonishing stoicism: "Could it have been prevented? Probably not... Mistakes happen, after all."

So Dubya need not fear for his job just yet. Indeed, the smart Washington money says that Democrats have overplayed their hand in this, their first attack on Bush's conduct of the war against terror. They left themselves vulnerable to a Republican counter-attack, in which the White House raked through individual Democrats' voting records to expose them as soft on terrorism in the past. Some of those Democrats have now backed off, fearful of that perennial weak spot: the charge that they are insufficiently patriotic.

Still, the sheer ferocity of the Republican counter-blast has been revealing. It proves that the administration knows the value of the protective shield the war on terror has thrown over them. They know it also covers Republicans in Congress - up for re-election in November - and they do not want to see anything dent it. Osama bin Laden has re-established the old cold war standard of president as protector, and that standard served the Republican party well for decades. That's why any suggestion that Bush failed to protect the American people had to be crushed instantly: witness the full-dress defence from the White House, including last week's highly-unusual intervention from the first lady, Laura Bush: "I know my husband..."

The administration is right to want to kill this issue; it can only spell trouble for them. Even if it does not touch Bush personally, it damages his senior lieutenants. The vice president, Dick Cheney, sat on a counter-terrorism bill passed to him in July. The attorney general, John Ashcroft, refused a demand for more FBI anti-terrorism agents. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, did not deploy a Predator drone aircraft which the Clinton administration had used to track Bin Laden. The national security adviser, Condi Rice, was warned in January 2001 by her Clintonite predecessor that she would spend more time on al-Qaida than any other issue. She launched a review, but let it languish in bureaucratic limbo.

It also hurts the Bush team's ideology. To govern is to choose, says the old saw, and the Bushies chose to make a priority of everything but domestic terrorism. Ashcroft was more concerned with drugs and violent crime; Rumsfeld was obsessed with national missile defence; Rice and Cheney were more worried by Saddam than al-Qaida.

So this current spat may not be Watergate but it could have some powerful effects. First, it should trigger that inquiry which, in turn, might bring a much-needed shake-up of US intelligence - including cooperation between, maybe even an eventual merger of, the FBI and CIA, and a radical improvement of both.

Second, it has given Democrats a glimpse of how they can take on this phenomenally popular president and his party. Their previous attacks on domestic policy made no impact; they now know the only way to get through is by denting that 9/11 protective shield. They will be helped by a press pack now on the paper trail, hunting for a smoking gun. The return of politics and dissent is about to make life uncomfortable for the Bushies - but much healthier for America.

``I want the troops here to know that I take my job as commander in chief very seriously,'' he told Air Force cadets and officers in a Rose Garden ceremony honoring their football team.

I found that statement ironic.....

Pariah broke g-pro