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To: Theodore R.
"Also, President Bush vehemently denied receiving advanced warnings concerning an impending attack by militant Muslims using airliners as weapons. We now know he did."

I would like to see the source for this comment. Chuck? Anyone?


12 posted on 07/14/2003 3:30:54 PM PDT by Bahbah
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To: Bahbah
There were "non-specific" warnings that Al-Qaeda could be looking to hijack airliners (big surprise there), which made no mention of them being used as suicide missiles...which is a blatant lie by this Baldwin character. One of the reports I found said this:

Associated Press ^ | Published: May 16, 2002 | By Ron Fournier The Associated Press

"U.S. intelligence told President Bush a month before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, prompting the administration to issue a private alert to law enforcement agencies, the White House revealed as Congress studies whether the government failed to heed warning signs.

But officials said the president and U.S. intelligence did not know that suicide hijackers were plotting to use planes as missiles, as they did against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "There has been long-standing "speculation", shared with the president, about the potential of hijackings in the traditional sense," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Thursday night. "We had general threats involving Osama bin Laden around the world and including in the United States."

He said the administration, acting on the information received in early August, notified the "appropriate agencies" that hijackings "in the traditional sense" were possible. The warning was never made public, he said."

What I would like to know is why liberals expected Bush to do something before 9/11 based on non-specific, "speculative" information while at the same time they attack Bush for doing just that with regards to Saddam? We have much more than speculation when it comes to Saddam and yet they are throwing a fit because Bush is doing something. The only possible thing the administration could've done to prevent 9/11 was to either ground all flights (and we didn't have a date that this would occur) or engaged in a serious, thorough policy of racial profiling to meet this threat. And guess what...box cutters weren't even illegal on flights at that time. In any case, I doubt that America...and espeically liberal's would've allowed this to happen since even since 9/11 they have resisted these very policies (racial profiling). Clinton had the same report sitting on his desk from 1998...and had Gore in charge of the airline security task force, which made no changes to security because the airlines objected (re: Linda Daschle's lobbying efforts).
28 posted on 07/14/2003 4:01:17 PM PDT by cwb
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