Politics and Religion

And every intelligence agency in the world (to use your grossly inaccurate hyperbole) was also
marikod 1 Reviews 244 reads
posted

warning the US of possible terror attacks that had nothing to do with airplanes.
         
        I’d guess the general warnings far exceeded the specific warnings of using airplanes to target the WTC.  

       But let’s take your example and see if it makes any sense. There are 30,000 commercial flights each day. That is 30,000 marshals needed each day- you would need an agency of probably 90,000 trained marshals to fill this need.  

       Would an air marshal have stopped 9/11? I doubt it- there were 4 or 5 hijackers on every plane. The primary job of a marshal is the watch the cockpit door- as soon as he saw someone trying to get in he would have exposed himself and would have been vulnerable to the other hijackers. So you double the marshals on every plane? Still no guarantee of success.

       Sure, the marshal would be armed but fire a bullet in a jet that knocks out a window, hits a fuel tank, or hits wiring and you have big, maybe fatal problems. So they can't open fire like in the movies. They have to be crack shots.

       Even post 9/11 we made no attempt to do this bc it was obviously impractical. Today there are marshals on only a small number of flights. So your idea is impractical – the only viable way to deter hijackers is to stop them from getting on the plane as we try to do today.

        But if I am right that the general warnings far exceeded the specific ones, how do you make the judgment of protecting airplanes but not other soft targets? A few suicide bombers in a football stadium would kill as many as died on 9/11. A break in at a nuclear plant? Got to  increase security there. The Capitol, the White House?

       So its easy to blame Bush and Condi with the benefit of hindsight. But  if I ask you to propose a program that would have prevented it and that Congress would fund in the absence of an attack, you can’t do it. The sequester has cut Homeland /security's budget along with everyone else even post 9/11. No way Congress would EVER fund what you are proposing.

 

 

 

 
 
Posted By: Laffy
was telling Bush a major attack involving planes was coming at any time.  
   
 It wasn't just "hundreds of regular threats they always get."  
   
 The public wouldn't have said squat if he had put extra air marshals on planes.   And seeing as we spend hundreds of billions on defense, that could have been rolled into the budget and the "millions" wouldn't have been noticed.  
   
 We spend that on donuts for staffers.  
   
 It's also a FACT they lied about "not knowing planes could be used as missiles" AND they lied about those terror alerts you mentioned.  
   
 So, "to be fair", they should have countless investigations on those lies as well.

No, not Susan Rice, who the Republican's and FOX News went after. Condoleezza Rice?

For Ed, followme, and nuguy, this is why I can't take the Republican's and your moral outrage over Benghazi "seriously!"   ;)

is that I’d guess our homeland security agencies received hundreds, if not thousands, of threats of terrorist actions that never occurred.  Pointing out specific info that the bad guys were considering flying planes into the World Trade Center prior to 9/11, as your article does, seems damning on the surface until you consider that there were hundreds of other threats prior to 9/11 as well. How were Bush and Condi suppose to identify which threat was real?

       Would you have really have advocated our post 9/11 level of airport security based on the info in your article? That cost millions of dollars. Would the public have stood for it? If so, how long?

       Remember our color coded threat level system? There was always some threat that activated some level of warning but after a while the public pretty much ignored the threat levels. We’ve retired that system now but the threats still come in.  Rarely do we get the kind of specific intel that allows us to catch the bad guy before he gets on the plane. Even the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber got past airport security. There is really not much you can do when you get this kind of intel other than give warnings which are not particularly helpful.

       So I’d stick to blaming Bush and friends for Iraq, invading Afghanistan, and torturing where they genuinely deserve to be held accountable.  Blaming them for 9/11 is a little ridiculous

what's good for the goose is what's good for the gander. Condoleezza Rice lied, and that's what the Repubs. are going after Hillary for. I'm calling them out for their self-righteous baloney.

And this:

"consider that there were hundreds of other threats prior to 9/11 as well. How were Bush and Condi suppose to identify which threat was real?"

You don't think the same thing applied to all our embassies and diplomatic outposts?

-- Modified on 10/26/2015 4:31:16 PM

than your post.  Certainly, when Mr. Bush said "we don't torture," we have probably the most egregious lie by a US president since I don't know when.  And he was never called to account for that.

      Hillary's "lie" if there was one - was it the videotape or terrorists - was certainly trivial compared to this. As she pointed out in her first hearing, what difference does it make?  

    And you are right- there are endless threats against our embassies and deciding how to allocate resources is no more than an educated guess.

There’s no doubt that if just one person, let alone several, in the GWB administration had done more to follow-up on certain intelligence, 9/11 might have been foiled. There are two specific types of mistakes being made in this thread. The first mistake is that of the several non-specific or generalized threat assessments the intelligence community had gathered there is no evidence that Rice actually read the assessments. Lack of due diligence? Sure seems like it, but I don’t see a  lie and neither did  the 9/11 commission. Her “big lie” that is the foundation of the second mistake being made here came about from her press conference on May 16, 2002 where she did make the statement “I don't think that anybody could have predicted. . . ”.  This statement clearly came after she had been briefed about all the previous, yet as you point out, non-actionable warnings about planes as weapons. When she was challenged or reminded of this she quickly revised her statement that she had meant to say that she couldn’t have imagined or predicted rather than nobody else could have. This got almost no reporting. The actionable aspects of the reports of course continues to be controversial.

The point is that when presented with her error she corrected the record and unlike Clinton and the Obama admin did not continue to tout what was known to be untrue. Rice’s earlier statements (during the 9/11 commission) regarding not earlier knowing of the specifics of the planes as weapons was corroborated by her staff. I’m sure some believe they were simply covering for her but still no out-right lies claimed.  

And of course I’ve never claimed pre-Beghazi gross negligence on the part of Clinton but being blamed for things I’ve never done is par for the course by some around here. As long as it’s being discussed though; one thing not mentioned above regarding all the things that an administrator (Clinton or Rice) can’t do because they don’t know specifics is the fact that the official U.S. presence in Libya requested the State Department for increased security on multiple occasions but were always denied. Nothing non-actionable about that. Maybe they thought it was unwarranted but I don’t recall that being given as a reason, maybe so. The one reason that fits right along with the scenario of terrorism in Bengahzi being no problem would lead people to conclude that more security is not needed if as they claim, terrorism’s not an issue. Could be a big coincidence I guess, i.e the lie about no terrorism and the denied request for more security. BTW, can anyone point to increased air security that was asked of the GWB administration, pre 9/11 that was denied? There might have been some.

p.s mari, Air Marshals use specially designed, extra low velocity rounds that are very frangible.  Enough stopping power but will not penetrate vital structures of an aircraft

...capabilities with her infamous statement of 9/8/2002  designed to terrorize Americans: "...but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."  She should be getting harsh interrogation in Gitmo until she confesses she was part of a conspiracy w/Dubya & Cheney to justify going to war with Iraq.

OTOH, she deserves a lot of credit for overcoming terrible odds to become successful.  By all rights, with a name like 'Condoleezza,' she should be in the welfare line right behind "Shaniqua."  And why 'Condoleezza have two "Z's?

nuguy46207 reads

didn't Clinton refuse to take a clear shot at bin laden?  (he was too busy honing his golf game??) didn't all the hijackers enter the country under Clinton's watch? all their planning and training done while Bill was looking for pu***? Only lightweight thinkers could come ignore Clinton's major role in 9/11.

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