"The Myth of Bush as Hero" ...Barbra Streisand

Posted on March 29, 2004

Finally ... finally we can talk about what’s really going on. Rather than accept the myth that 9/11 turned President Bush into a "hero" ... former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke has bravely spoken out to tell us the real story - that Bush did not treat terrorism as an urgent issue until after 9/11. And that going to war in Iraq, in addition to tragically costing us so many lives, has diverted money and resources away from where they should have been focused - on dismantling al Qaeda and strengthening our homeland security.

We now know that the Clinton Bush White House never made counterterrorism a priority leading up to September 11th. In fact, on April 30, 2001, the new administration released the government’s annual report on terrorism, with a noted change: extensive mention of bin Laden, which previous terrorism reports contained, had been left out. A Bush State Department Official reportedly told CNN at that time that the U.S. government under Clinton had made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden.

In fact, Bush never even held a cabinet level meeting devoted to terrorism until the week before the attack. While FBI agents were fielding concerns about non-citizens in flight school uninterested in learning how to land planes, and the CIA was aware that potential terrorists had entered the United States, because terrorism was not a priority in the high levels of the federal government these discussions were never elevated to a place where the information could be shared across departments, where the appropriate people would have an opportunity to connect the dots...

Here is a brief timeline (much of the information is from the Center for American Progress) (nope, no bias there - Ed) of some of the more egregious warnings of looming terrorism that Clinton ignored for eight years Bush overlooked as he spent the first eight months in office planning tax cuts for the wealthy, devising a way to invade Iraq, and taking long vacations out at his mansion in Idaho ranch in Crawford, Texas:

1) A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council specifically theorized that al Qaeda could fly airplanes into buildings - so we know that the scope of the attack was not entirely beyond anyone’s imagination.

2) In early 2001, a surge of al Qaeda activity and plans for attacks against American "interests" were noted, including by Israeli intelligence agencies.

3) Also in early 2001, the Bush administration departed from Clinton’s policy of tracking money to terrorist organizations. (Was Bush trying to protect the Saudi royal family?)

4) In July 2001, U.S. and Italian officials were warned that al Qaeda may use planes as missiles at a Genoa summit of industrialized nations.

5) On August 6, 2001, while on vacation in Crawford, the president received a one and a half page briefing advising him that al Qaeda was capable of a major strike against the U.S., and that the plot could include the hijacking of American airplanes. And then what did the president do with this important information? He went fishing - bringing new meaning to the phrase, "Gone Fishin’"!

6) In July, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines because of a "threat assessment."

7) Newsweek has reported that on September 10th, 2001, a number of Pentagon officials canceled travel plans for the next morning due to security concerns, and "that as many as 10 to 12 warnings" were issued before 9/11 - "more than two of the warnings specifically mentioned the possibility of hijackings."

8) Also on September 10th (as I posted in a statement on November 21, 2002), Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected the FBI’s request for a $58 million increase for their counterterrorism budget to pay for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators. He did that despite the fact, discovered later by a Congressional investigation, that the FBI had only one analyst monitoring al Qaeda and a severe shortage of Arabic translators.

Soon after September 11th, Condoleezza Rice said, "I don’t think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." And now Bush says, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people." Did he really say this? I heard it on the radio but I couldn’t believe my own ears. Indeed, the scope of the horror of 9/11 is beyond the realm of what even the most savvy threat assessors may have thought possible (emphasis added - Ed).

However ...

as the brief timeline above shows, THE PRESIDENT WAS REPEATEDLY WARNED that al Qaeda was planning some sort of attack, and that the attack may involve airplanes. So these are my questions:

-WHY DIDN’T OUR GOVERNMENT DO MORE TO BEEF UP SECURITY AT AIRPORTS AND ON AIRPLANES?

-WHY WEREN’T WARNINGS ISSUED TO THOSE ENTRUSTED TO PROTECT OUR FLIGHT SECURITY?

-ISN’T LEADERSHIP ABOUT ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY, ANTICIPATING THE UNFATHOMABLE, HEEDING WARNINGS AND FIRMLY ACTING UPON THEM?

-WHEN THE PRESIDENT RECEIVED A MEMO THAT HIJACKINGS OF AMERICAN PLANES MIGHT OCCUR, SHOULDN’T HE HAVE IMMEDIATELY TAKEN ACTION?

I DO BELIEVE THAT EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN THAT TRULY CARES ABOUT THIS COUNTRY, AND LEARNS THE FACTS, WOULD HAVE TO SERIOUSLY ASK THESE QUESTIONS ... AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT IN NOVEMBER!