The 9/11 Commission Series, Final Part

• Intro Here
• Part 1 Here
• Part 2 Here
• Part 3 Here
• Part 4 Here

In my final post about the 9/11 Commission Report and its failure to inform the American public of the failure of the Bush administration in protecting us from 9/11, I'd like to discuss the longest (and only) Republican defense of the administration's shortcomings -- it was all Clinton's fault.  Let's see how accurate that is.

President Bush was never known to be much of a reader -- he preferred to receive intelligence reports through face-to-face meetings -- so the length of the PDBs was cut back in the Bush administration to no more than 10 pages.  President Clinton, by contrast, was a voracious reader.  He would read as many pages as were put in front of him, and his copy of the PDB would often be returned to the CIA covered with his scrawled notes; passages that interested him would be circled, with questions scribbled in black or blue ink in the margins.  The CIA would try to get the questions answered for a subsequent briefing.  Bush would usually hand back his copy of the PDB with no markings at all.

The fight against terrorism was a priority in the Clinton administration, which had to deal with the first attack on the World Trade Center, early in his first year in office.  Bill Clinton had taken al-Qaeda seriously, as seriously as any other national security threat, and the White House had done what it could to try to kill Osama bin Laden, according to Sandy Berger.  Clinton had even given what is now a disputed order to kill bin Laden, in late 1998.  It was part of a top-secret memorandum of notification, or MON, involving Afghanistan.  The CIA, according to George Tenet, never received that authorization, and in fact had been instead issued a confusing set of presidential orders that allowed for bin Laden's capture, but not his death.  Whether or not Clinton actually issued an order for the United States to kill a terrorist leader, it wasn't done, which is either his administration or the CIA's fault.  And that absolutely is a factor leading to 9/11.  But there is no doubt terrorism was a priority in his administration.

Berger explained that during the transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations, he had tried to impress upon his successor, Condoleezza Rice, how dangerous bin Laden was.  "You know, Condi, you'll be spending more time on terrorism in general -- and al-Qaeda in particular -- than anything else," he recalled telling her.  He was never sure he got his message across to Rice or the other members of the transition team, including her counterterrorism adviser, Philip Zelikow.

Well, if you read my first four parts of this story, you'll know that Berger's message did not get through.  But Clinton is also to blame for the tepid response to the attack on a U.S. Navy ship on patrol in the Persian Golf, the USS Cole, in October 2000. 

Even though it was obvious within days that al-Qaeda was responsible for bombing the destroyer, Clinton was clearly not eager to respond; a response might well have been seen as yet another "wag the dog" moment, this time intended to help Al Gore clinch an election victory the following month.  When Bush and his new team came to office three months later, they saw the the Cole attack as old news;  it had happened on Clinton's watch.

"It's astounding," commissioner John Lehman said of the decision made early in the Bush administration not to retaliate for the Cole.  "Nobody doubted it was al Qaeda," he said.  But the neoconservatives who were running the Bush administration were "just besotted" with other national security issues -- missile defense, Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia.  "They were living in another world; they had their own construction of the world, and the Cole was not part of that world.  Al-Qaeda was just not part of their threat scenario."

If there had been a response to the Cole, "I think it could well have avoided 9/11," Lehman said.  "I totally believe that.  It would have changed the calculations for Osama."

So Clinton recognized the terrorist threat but didn't do enough to stop it, either by killing bin Laden in 1998 or 1999 (it's in doubt whether the order was given and the CIA simply failed) or by responding to the USS Cole attack with an attack on the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, which didn't occur until after 9/11 (a year later).  On the other hand, Bush's entire management team, despite repeated warnings coming from the CIA, FBI, Clinton's outgoing team, and counterterrorism experts leftover from Clinton's administration, didn't even recognize the threat.  Actively ignored it.  In the case of Attorney General John Ashcroft, he belittled mentions of it.  So while both administrations definitely should accept some blame for 9/11, I think it's clear which one was actually trying to prevent it, and which one was actively trying not to.  Would the attack have happened if a couple hundred senior citizens in Florida knew how to properly mark a ballot and vote for Al Gore instead of Pat Buchanan?  Well, we can't say for sure, but I think the attack would have at least been 99.99999% less likely.

There's also a 100% chance that we wouldn't be in Iraq right now if Gore had been president.  Not only was the fact that there was no link between Iraq and al Qaeda definitively proved beyond any shadow of a doubt (outside of Sean Hannity's feeble brain) by the investigation, but a definitive link between al Qaeda and IRAN was proven.  Unfortunately, this information was almost entirely left out of the 9/11 Report because the commission ran out of time after discovering a boatload of information from the NSA that only became available at the last minute and couldn't be fully analyzed. 

According to the files, at least 8 of the 14 young Saudi men who were "muscle" hijackers on the 9/11 flights traveled through Iran between October 2000 and February 2001, when the plot was well advanced.  In November, three of the young Saudis flew together from Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then on to Iran;  the NSA files showed that an associate of a prominent Hezbollah official was on the same flight and that other senior Hezbollah figures were closely monitoring the travels of the three young Saudis.  If these connections between the 9/11 terrorists and Iran and Tehran's allies in Hezbollah were all a coincidence, it was a remarkable one.

"There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and some of these were future 9/11 hijackers," investigator and veteran CIA analyst Doug MacEachin wrote.  "We believe this topic requires future investigation by the U.S. government."

They didn't have time to investigate further, due to the constraints on the Commission's Report date, due to the law instituted by Congress to create it.  The book doesn't reveal whether or not the Bush administration looked further into the NSA archives to learn more about the Iran-al Qaeda connection.  I'm sure they did.  I mean, it's not like they had ignored that information before launching an invasion into Iran's neighbor and sworn enemy and getting embroiled in a 5-year-old war that has drained our treasury, depleted our army, strengthened al Qaeda both in Afghanistan and in Iran, and - oh yeah, made Iran the most powerful nation in the region and one that has a new ally in the Shiite government now in control in Iraq.  Job well done, President Bush.  Job well done, indeed.  OF course, if McCain wins election this fall, you can be pretty sure that this information is used when we launch an invasion of Iran.  Hey, even Hillary is talking about shooting some nuclear weapons into Iran if they launch any attack on Israel. 

So maybe Bush and Clinton aren't that different.  They both failed to protect us from 9/11 (one much, much worse than the other, but they are both culpable).  And they both fail to see what a disaster the Iraq war decision was (Hillary voted for it, I assume her husband was also in favor) and what staying there will continue to be.  If only there were some relative outsider running for president, a guy without Washington ties or corporate ties who spoke out against the war when 80% of the country was for it and who says he'll pull the troops out as soon as he takes office.  I mean, if a guy like that were running, as a voice of -- I don't know -- "change" in the horribly flawed direction this country has taken, someone who might stand up to the oil companies and the defense contractors and the neo-con freaks.  I mean, someone like that would win in a landslide, right?  Even if he were black.  I mean, maybe even BECAUSE he was black.  Because having a succession of rich, privileged, special-interest beholden white guys running the country isn't exactly working.  And having 28 years of a Bush or Clinton in the White House isn't really making us a richer or safer country... I mean a guy not a part of that -- with such a clean background that the only "scandals" that anyone can come up with about him are related to things people he knows said, and his fucking bowling score -- I mean that guy would just cruise to victory, right?  No one in their right mind would even consider voting for a 73-year-old Republican who not only believes we were right to go into Iraq but that we should stay there a hundred years and who not only agrees with Bush on every single issue of any importance but actually embraces his endorsement.  Right?  And no one would consider voting for the wife of President Clinton.  Right?  Please tell me I'm right.  I'll probably have to stop blogging about politics if I'm wrong.  It's just too damn depressing otherwise.

Comments

[Gary G. Swenchonis]

I think that both Clinton and Bush are to blame for the present state of war that we are in. Clinton did everything thing he could to ignore the terrorist attacks during his admin. And then Bush just hoped that Bin Laden would go just go away. The USS Cole attack was a blunder for both of them. So much could have been done, and learned after the Cole attack. But nothing was. 9/11 was due to our so called leaders incompetency. yet none of them have been held accountable, and never will.

[Dirk]

www.TrueWorldHistory.info

[LegFuJohnson]

You'll stop blogging about politics?

Straight Talk, Baby!

McCain/Aiken in 08

And that's the bottom line, cause Johnny Mac says so!

[John McCain]

"I served six years in the military," Barack Obama's longtime pastor said. "Does that make me patriotic? How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?"