Thursday, May 18, 2006

CASE IN POINT Part 4/MILLER KNEW, DID BUSH?




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Accorrding to Alternet, In 2001, an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller that Al Qaida was planning a major attack on the United States. But the story never made it into the paper. Lets Talk.

The Institute for Homeland Security was formed in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, in October 1999.

the US Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Senators Gary Hart (D), and Warren Rudman (R) is issued on January 31, 2001.

The bipartisan report was put together in 1998 by then-President Bill Clinton and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The report has 50 recommendations on how to combat terrorism in the US, but all of them are ignored by the Bush Administration.

Instead, the White House announces in May that it will have Vice President Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism, despite the fact that this commission had just studied the issue for 2 1/2 years. According to Senator Hart, Congress was taking the commission's suggestions seriously, but then, "Frankly, the White House shut it down... The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president'... And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day." Interestingly, both this commission and the Bush Administration were already assuming a new cabinet level National Homeland Security Agency would be enacted eventually even as the general public remained unaware of the term and the concept.

But in May, Bush announced his plan almost as if the Hart-Rudman Commission never existed, as if it hadn't spent millions of dollars, "consulting with experts, visiting 25 countries worldwide."

In all fairness, Bush had this right to do as he saw fit to run this country, but why disregard everything that had been going on for the past 2 and 1/2 years?

Why didn't some one inform Bush about the planned attacks as they did reporter, Judith Miller?

CBS News reports on July 26, 2001 that Attorney General Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment, but "neither the FBI nor the Justice Department ... would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it."

Russian President Putin warned the US in August 2001, that suicide pilots are training for attacks on US targets. The head of Russian intelligence also later states, "We had clearly warned them" on several occasions, but they "did not pay the necessary attention."

Remember Britain warned US to expect September 11 al-Qaeda hijackings.

President Bush spent most of August 2001 at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, nearly setting a record for the longest presidential vacation. While it is billed a "working vacation," ABC reports Bush is doing "nothing much" aside from his regular daily intelligence briefings One such unusually long briefing at the start of his trip is a warning that bin Laden is planning to attack in the US, but Bush spends the rest of that day fishing. By the end of his trip, Bush has spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route.

What's wrong with this picture America? What say you?

1 comment:

o said...

Yet conservative bloggers always scream that Clinton did nothing to protect this country and that Bush has worked tirelessly undoing the previous administration's inactions.