9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable

CBS ^ | 17 December 2003

[sinkspur]

BTW you don't think it was preventable?

Hindsight is 20/20. Going back and trying to pin blame on the Bush administration, when Clinton had EIGHT YEARS to fend off terrorists is clearly a hit job by Kean (he's miffed that he's not getting the morning briefings).

And Kean is releasing his "opinion" before the investigation is complete?

This is an engineered slam.

[Peach]

9/11 Chair says attacks were preventable. A ping for your reading displeasure.

[FairOpinion]

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

===

Starting with Bill Clinton. If he had taken Bin Laden, when Sudan offered OBL, 9-11 would never have happened.

Then we can go on, that if we never let a single Muslim into the US, the attack could also have been prevented.

Short of that, anything they say is all 20/20 hindsight.

[Gabz]

Kean is an elitist RINO,

'nuff said.

[StriperSniper]

He wasn't even able to appoint a new FBI Director until ONE WEEK before 911 because of the election delay.

A point that will be often if not always missed by the leftstream media when reporting this story.

[freekitty]

i don't believe this.

[PISANO]

Everything is "preventable

Great point! I maintained right after 911 that EVEN if GW (or any POTUS) got word that terrorists were training to FLY 747's to use as a missle against some target in the USA, what could he have done? Stop ALL AIR TRAFFIC for a day? A week? A month? Panic the country and every airline passenger? This country would have been in CHAOS!!!

I sure hope this KEAN dude is NOT trying to get his 15 minutes at the expense of our President!

[PogySailor]

Could've, should've....

Sure. But were we ABLE to? How?

The things we would have had to do to prevent the attacks provoke howls from the left (as well as some on the right) AFTER 9/11. Can you just imagine if the FBI started rounding up flight school students from ME countries on slim evidence available at the time?

[CyberAnt]

"why various government agencies didn't connect the dots"

Clinton didn't allow the FBI and the CIA to talk to each other. I don't think it was initiated by Clinton, but he didn't do anything to try to get them to work together.

According to Dick Morris, in 8 years, Clinton never met with his CIA chief .. not one time. Morris also said that Clinton had absolutely NO INTEREST in going after the terrorists.

I believe I read or heard that Bush had his people already poised for a "war on terror", because of all the attacks upon Americans. Some people said it was an attack plan for Iraq, but I don't know that to be true.

But .. if Kean starts pointing fingers at Bush I will be very, very upset. And .. I will presume Kean has been had by someone from the democrat side of the isle .. namely Hillary.

[chiller]

Thank you for making your point. Yes, the attack could have been prevented if dots had been connected, if agencies could talk to each other. I'm not sure Kean is specifically blaming the new admin. Plenty of blame, plenty of bad decisions to go around. In that sense, 9-1-1 did not have to happen.

But don't blame a guy who just stepped into office to clean up years of malfeasance from everyone that preceded him. Bush will fix it if you let him.

[tbpiper]

GW after 7.5 months in office is responsible

If memory serves, seems like GW was having on hell of a time getting his administration up an running. How can you connect the dots when somebody keeps hiding the damn pencils? Who would you think is to blame for 7.5 months of inefficiency? (rhetorical question)

[sinkspur]

If so, then the type of country you would like to live in would be some form of authoritarian tyranny, not this one.

If the FBI had trailed 19 Arabs and done whatever investigations were necessary to find out what they were up to, the libs and press--and likely this fool Kean--would have screamed to high heaven.

We weren't vigilant.

THAT'S what caused 9/11, yet we still have liberals and right-wing crazies moaning about the Patriot Act because a potential terrorist might suffer an inconvenience or two.

Dumb.

[republicanwizard]

Governor,

The President asked you to join his Administration. You wanted to stay on as head of your third-rate academic institution in Madison New Jersey.

So, you had your chance and blew it. Now go put a cardigan, waffle, and get lost.

[Alas Babylon!]

OK, just for the sake of argument, here, Gov Kean, let's say we entertained the idea that hijackers might attempt to fly planes into our buildings. What should we have done about it?

Ground all commercial air travel? People would have had a fit, and the dems would have called for impeachment.

Or, we could have created a Homeland Security department, federalized airport screeners, confiscated all jack-knives, scissors, box cutters, anything sharp or dangerous, and thrown them away at the gate. But hindsight isn't foresight, and once again, without the cause that 9/11 gave us, the screams of violated civil rights would have been horrendous.

Ok, how about returning all alien Muslims back to their countries of origin? Shoot, we can't even do that now without a outcry from the Left.

Of course we could have just popped Osama or taken him from Sudan when they offered in 1994. Nah...

[Argus]

Terrorist using hijacked planes as flying bombs targeting DC featured in a Tom Clancy novel and the movie EXECUTIVE DECISION, both well before 9/11. The tactic was so obvious it was a plot point in at least two thrillers. The reason Clinton never paid any attention to the danger was that Dick Morris' polls indicated the public didn't care. The reason Bush didn't was that he was hamstrung by a Democrat-controlled legislature and media that wouldn't even allow him to confirm his cabinet nominees.

[Bosco]

Kean is an elitist RINO, anyway and I would believe him if he wrote me a check..

First thought I had about Keane, too. RINO.

Or, as we in the College Republicans used to call them - "Country Clubbers".

[cwb]

Bingo! And this is one of the most important points. And if Clinton/Gore supposedly knew about this imminent threat, why did Gore prolong and drag out the election debacle that prevented Bush from putting his administration together and tackling this problem.

These Democrats obstructed the president from putting together his cabinet in a timely fashion, including those very agencies responsible for this country's security...from the FBI appointment you mentioned to even the confirmation of the Attorney General, who was run through ringer and defamed for political purposes. Even the very Judicial system, that Democrats insist try these terrorists, is overloaded...but they still continue to obstruct Bush's appointments.

[McCloud-Strife]

NEWS FLASH
Pearl Harbor was preventable. If only people had put all the clues together and add up 2 and 2. Also, World War I, The Civil War, The French Revolution, The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Crusifixtion of Christ might well have been prevented as well. If only..
such tripe

[RightWhale]

Of course WTC911 was preventable. But we weren't at war, and that is why it was a cowardly act.

[PISANO]

we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility

There are at least 5000 different scenarios that are POSSIBLE!! Not the least of which is the Stargate ALIEN attack scenario by the Egyptians of 2000 years ago!