Posted on 08/17/2005 11:42:03 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The latest evidence in today's New York Times of incompetence by the Clinton Administration vis-à-vis terrorism should not come as a surprise. Nor does it significantly alter the theory that it is extremely unlikely any commander in chief would have behaved differently were they in Clinton's place and faced with the same information (although the steady trickle of news like today makes this contention increasingly difficult to defend). The reason is that one of the fundamental failings of democracies is that pre-emptive military action, no matter the scope or scale, is incredibly difficult. Simply reference how difficult it was to garner support to remove a dictator such as Hussein or Clinton's efforts to remove Milosivec (without Congressional or U.N. approval). Granted non-military options might have been available, such as more precise missile strikes or accepting Sudan's offer to turn over Bin Laden, but the fact remains any pre-emptive (military) action against an alleged threat is difficult, if not impossible.
But today's Times article does make clearer that the much celebrated 9-11 Commission was a complete waste of time and money. In effect, it was a classic whitewash. The report contains little that anyone who independently researched the events surrounding September 11th did not already know. And in fact, the Commission ignored numerous bits of information that the general public did know. The most notable one being that Czech officials to this day contend that Mohammad Atta was in Prague and met with an Iraqi official shortly before September 11th. The 9-11 Commission casually dismissed this assertion on the premise it did not fit their precious and pre-conceived "Atta timeline." With the recent revelation of information obtained prior to September 11th by "Able Danger," we have all seen how accurate that timeline was and just as importantly, the thought process of the self-serving members of the Commission during their investigation.
bttt
Blinks and winkson Able Danger
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Excerpted
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If you want to know everything wrong with the September 11 Commission in a single soundbite, consider what its official spokesman, Al Felzenberg, said last Wednesday: "There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had."
In fairness to Mr. Felzenberg, he was having a bad week, and a hard time staying on top of the commission's ever-shifting version of events. A few days earlier it had emerged that a group from Special Operations Command claimed to have fingered Mohamed Atta -- the guy who ploughed Flight 11 into the first World Trade Center tower -- well more than a year before September 11, 2001. Or as the Associated Press puts it: "A classified military intelligence unit called 'Able Danger' identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in New York City."
When the story broke, the commissioners denied they knew anything about "Able Danger." Then they remembered they had known about it but had concluded it was no big deal and "decided not to include that in its final report."
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If it was, I didn't see it. Thanks for the snip. :-)
Now that's one hell of a presumption.
His legacy will hang around his neck like a stinking Albatross for the rest of eternity..
It appears we had a number of ill equipped assholes in positions of trust and power - for which they were unwilling or incompetent to perform..
Semper Fi
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