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Monday, September 11, 2006

The lessons of September 11
by John in DC - 9/11/2006 01:31:00 PM


The Constitution only applies when the going gets easy.

War is the answer, even when you forget the question.

The truth is for sissies.

America has never faced an enemy as dangerous and as intent on killing us as King George, the Civil War, World War I, the Germans, the Japanese, a nuclear Soviet Union Al Qaeda.

The real September 11 story was badly in need of editing.

Just because they say it makes it so.

We have always been at war with Oceania.

A fool is born every election day.

Due process is for the innocent.

Patriotism means never having to say you're sorry.

It's all Sandy Berger's fault.

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Originally posted by Dude

Luke T said:

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Dude, how exactly do you know your email message was from the Democratic Party?

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Well, gee, I dunno. Maybe because I get emails from them all the time, and this one came from the same email addy and IP as they rest of them come from?

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Impressions vary as to who actually decided not to proceed with the operation. Clarke told us that the CSG saw the plan as flawed. He was said to have described it to a colleague on the NSC staff as "half-assed" and predicted that the principals would not approve it. "Jeff" thought the decision had been made at the cabinet level. Pavitt thought that it was Berger's doing, though perhaps on Tenet's advice. Tenet told us that given the recommendation of his chief operations officers, he alone had decided to "turn off" the operation. He had simply informed Berger, who had not pushed back. Berger's recollection was similar. He said the plan was never presented to the White House for a decision.
The CIA's senior managment clearly did not think the plan would work. Tenet's deputy director of operations wrote to Berger a few weeks later that the CIA assessed the tribals' ability to capture Bin Ladin and deliver him to U.S. officials as low. But working-level CIA officers were disappointed. Before it was canceled, Schroen described it as the "best plan we are going to come up with to capture [Bin Ladin] while he is in Afghanistan and bring him to justice." No capture plan before 9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail and preparation.

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Discussion of this memorandum brought to the surface an unease about paramilitary covert action that had become ingrained, at least among some CIA senior managers. James Pravitt, the assistant head of the Directorate of Operations, expressed concern that people might get killed; it appears he thought the operation had at least a slight flavor of a plan for an assassination. Moreover, he calculated that it would cost several million dollars. He was not prepared to take that money "out of hide," and he did not want to go to all the necessary congressional committees to get special money.

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On May 29, "Jeff" informed "Mike" that the has just met with Tenet, Pavitt, and the chief of Directorate's Near Eastern Division. The decision was made not to go ahead with the operation. "Mike" cable the field that he had been directed to "stand down on the operation for the time being." He had been told, he wrote, that cabinet-level officials thought the risk of civilian casualties - "collateral damage" - was too high.

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Clarke remembered sitting next to Tenet in a White House meeting, asking Tenet, "You thinking what I'm thinking?" and his nodding "yes." The principals quickly reached a consensus on attacking the gathering. The strike's purpose was to kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants.

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Originally posted by beskeptigal
What besides your quibble over which source leaked the phone monitoring story are you claiming is false, Luke? BTW, welcome to TSFN. Because the main issue with the film, the timing, the unethical use of a partisan screen version of a movie just before an election remain critical and valid points.

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You might want to take a look at why they are sending you blatantly wrong information.

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Question: Is everyone taking the 9/11 Commission Report as gospel

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Originally posted by Original_Intent

Question: Is everyone taking the 9/11 Commission Report as gospel, knowing that anyone that testified that could get away with it most likely lied to cover their asses? Lying and deciet is nothing new for either administration. I wonder what Berger scurried off with?

Peace
Joe

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Originally posted by beskeptigal

Luke,
Happy to debate you here. Doubt you will actually look at the evidence though, given what you have already posted.

I have been paying close attention to all this stuff for years and Al Franken does a very good job of presenting facts that can be easily checked. Obviously you are used to the propaganda from the right wing evangelicals who seem to think gays and abortions are more sinful than, "Thou shalt not bear false witness", and killing Iraqi children with bombs is acceptible collateral damage because we claim didn't aim at them.

Seems every 9/11 Commissioner so far has stated unequivocally that the movie misrepresented the facts. According to the Commissioners, Clinton OKed everything the CIA asked for and any hesitation was on Tenet's part. But in Mr. Medal of Freedom from Bush's defense, the one particular event where Tenet declined to send the cruise missile was when there was not sufficient proof Bin Laden was in the building in question and innocent people definitely were.

I find nothing in your post that trumps the conclusion of the Commissioners themselves.

Had you caught any of Ted Koppel's interviews after the movie you would have heard repeatedly from expert after expert, "we don't protect our democracy and Constitution by setting its principles aside", and there is nothing greater about today's threats than those of the cold war when thousands of nuclear armed missiles which were capable of reaching us and were aimed at our shores was the threat de jour.

Those people who can look objectively at the evidence of the Clinton years see an incredibly intelligent leader who was relentlessly attacked by hypocritical adulterers like Gingrich, at tax payer expense, with no public support as evidenced by Clinton's overwhelming re-election victory, who despite all that, managed to make, by far, better decisions than Bush and his neocon retards.

Those retards, I remind you, mistakenly bet the farm on Iraq, went in after lying to the American public since after all it was their wet dream before even taking office, screwed up even if they had had a chance of success, which I doubt they had anyway. So after Bin laden was defeated in Afghanistan, and world opinion was against Al Qaeda, Bush screwed up so badly he allowed the defeated Al Qaeda to regroup, rebuild, and gain thousands of more jihadists witnessing that baby bombing in Iraq I mentioned earlier.

John Dean from Nixon's cabinet calls this bunch worse than Watergate. Why? Because he said even Nixon wouldn't have openly advocated torture. Torture was not a Christan value last time I read the New Testament. It is reserved for God to dole out in Hell. I can't seem to find the quote from Jesus that says blowing babies and children apart is OK as long as you claim it was collateral damage, even if as Bush admits, Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack.

You are a Christian aren't you, Luke? The remaining 30% of Bush supporters who refuse to open their eyes to reality are pretty much the Evangelical folks. Misled by their power seeking leaders into hatred for gays as if it were the worst sin in the Bible when God didn't even rank it high enough to put it in the Ten Commandments, and preferring to fight for abortion law instead of working to actually decrease abortions by improving the education and economic status of the poor which actually decreases the number of abortions.

I recommend a course in media literacy for you, Luke. Learn to recognize when you are being sold a bill of goods rather than marching in step with the rest of the cannon fodder. You might be surprised to find out how extensive the Karl Rove Talking Points propaganda machine actually reaches.

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Originally posted by Dude

Luke T said:

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You might want to take a look at why they are sending you blatantly wrong information.

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Well, since you seem to know the answer, why don't you illuminate me as to their motivations?

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As for "blatantly wrong information", I have seen half a dozen 9/11 commissioners on TV the last few days (dem and republican) saying this broadcast is fictional and only very loosely related to the 9/11 report.

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I'd also like to note the recent PR campaign from this administration, over the last few weeks, to try and stir up some of that 9/12 outrage.

They paid one of their own to create this hatchet job and blame Clinton for 9/11, in the beginning of fall election season, to try and rally support for republican candidates.

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Tom McMahon, Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, today called an upcoming ABC documentary "a despicable, irresponsible fraud." He's right. McMahon writes:

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