Al Qaeda 'game plan' on Bush's desk Sept. 9- NBC

Reuters | May 16, 2002

[HAL9000]

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - Only two days before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, President George W. Bush was given a "detailed war plan" to dismantle Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, NBC News reported on Thursday.

Citing "U.S. and foreign sources," NBC said Bush was given a national security presidential directive to sign that aimed to use means ranging from diplomacy to military power against the network that the United States blames for the Sept. 11 attacks.

NBC said the plan was "pretty much" the same the Bush administration followed after the attacks, and included asking other countries to cooperate and share intelligence, disruption of al Qaeda cells using covert actions and the freezing of al Qaeda bank accounts and stopping its money laundering operations.

While the directive was on Bush's desk on Sept. 9, the NBC report said he did not have a chance to sign it before four passenger planes were hijacked and slammed into U.S. landmarks, killing about 3,000 people.

The NBC report follows insistent questions from lawmakers as to whether the administration missed potential warnings of the attacks.

The White House said on Wednesday that Bush received information in August that bin Laden's group was seeking to hijack U.S. planes. The White House has said it received no specific information that would have revealed the attackers' plans.

[buffyt]

...and Madeline AllDUNG warned us for years that bin Laden was dangerous and we needed to do something about that -- what did Clinton know and when did HE know it?????

[ClancyJ]

There you go Democrats - shot yourself in the foot. Instead of showing that Bush was unqualified for the job or did nothing to prevent 9/11 - you brought about the discovery that Bush was way ahead of the game and had indeed taken action on the threats. After years of Clinton not being bothered - we have a president that watches out for our safety.

Wonder how you intend to "spin" this fact Daschle and Gephardt?

[dts32041]

Billy Mitchell had a plan for taking out pearl harbor in 23, Guess what the japanese used in in 41.

There are people in this world whose sole job is think up ways to do things and how to keep other people from doing them.

So a plan orange was put on the current occupant of the white house's desk, nothing new or unusual about that.

[jwalsh07]

If they had any, I would say that the rats have just stepped on their Johnsons.

[jwalsh07]

This leak has to be from the White House. They were already acting against Al Quaeda before 9/11 in stark contrast to the former President and his apparatchiks who allowed American soldiers and civilians to become the shooting gallery for every terrorist with a gun or a bomb.

[NJJ]

On September 10th, we were returning from a London to New York cruise with our ship docking in Manhattan's west side. We were about and hour late getting off the ship because immigration had changed their procedures and cleared everyone "on the ship" instead of "on the docks". There were many comments on the unusual security in effect. From there we got on a bus to the Newark airport. Things were slow there also, every flight having been slipped by at least an hour. We observed and commented on "something is going on" because of all the mixed official, government and airport personel shuffeling gates and boarding activity in general. We were finally about 3 1/2 hours late getting out of the airport and were one of the last planes out.

My wife sat next to some athletes coming out to a west coast event. They said, a few of them had missed the flight and would be flying out the next morning. As I understand it, they would have been on one of the planes that went down.

No one has talked to this point, but I believe we were in fact on a heightened state of alert but just didn't catch any of the 19. To investigate this now may be a good idea but I think we will all be better off by not hearing the results. I can trust this administration to do the right thing.

[Atlas Sneezed]

What policy should have been in place, and when should it have been implemented? (Let the Klinton supporters answer this one very carefully.)

[nutmeg]

FYI

[TaxPayer2000]

NOW HEAR THIS!!!!

We are all going to die eventually, one day in the future

now that we all know, what are we going to do about it?

[txhurl]

I think it's safe to say Kerry is toast and not even Her Thighness wants to jump into this mess.

Thank God. I've been more or less sick for about two months now, every day.