That "New" Report

By Matt for the TIB Network:

The WMD Mailbag had a couple of emails with links to stories about the so-called new report that supposedly reveals that BUSH KNEW! about 9/11.

The problem is that this is the same old crap we've been seeing on this subject for YEARS. Here's the New York Times version of the story:

In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.
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But aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security," and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures," the commission report concluded.

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."

The report takes the F.A.A. to task for failing to pursue domestic security measures that could conceivably have altered the events of Sept. 11, 2001, like toughening airport screening procedures for weapons or expanding the use of on-flight air marshals. The report, completed last August, said officials appeared more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays, and easing airlines' financial woes than deterring a terrorist attack.

Now the real TRUTH in this story is BURIED, per NYT modus operandi:

A spokeswoman for the F.A.A., the agency that bears the brunt of the commission's criticism, said Wednesday that the agency was well aware of the threat posed by terrorists before Sept. 11 and took substantive steps to counter it, including the expanded use of explosives detection units.

"We had a lot of information about threats," said the spokeswoman, Laura J. Brown. "But we didn't have specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures."

She added: "After 9/11, the F.A..A. and the entire aviation community took bold steps to improve aviation security, such as fortifying cockpit doors on 6,000 airplanes, and those steps took hundreds of millions of dollars to implement."

The report, like previous commission documents, finds no evidence that the government had specific warning of a domestic attack and says that the aviation industry considered the hijacking threat to be more worrisome overseas.

[Emphasis added.]

No actionable intelligence from which to thwart the attack. Sound familiar? It should because that's what we had...or more accurately, didn't have...

The other version of this story, sent in by correspondent, is from the Herald Sun (note there was no link to the actual story in the email and the story was gone from the front page of the Herald Sun website):

EIGHT months before the September 11 attacks the White House's then counterterrorism adviser urged then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to hold a high-level meeting on the al-Qaeda network, according to a memo made public today.

"We urgently need such a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network," then White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke wrote in the January 25, 2001 memo.

Mr Clarke, who left the White House in 2003, made headlines in the heat of the US presidential campaign last year when he accused the Bush White House of having ignored al-Qaeda's threats before September 11.

Mr Clarke testified before inquiry panels and in a book that Rice, his boss at the time, had been warned of the threat. Rice is now US Secretary of State.

However, Ms Rice wrote in a March 22, 2004 column in The Washington Post that "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration".

Ahh...Mr. Clarke again...I read his book so I ain't impressed.

This is an attack on Condi Rice. Condi was correct, no THREAT was turned over to the new administration. Remember this is February of 2001 (EIGHT months before 9/11), inauguration was in late January of 2001...it is highly unlikely that there was credible threat information available to the new Bush administration that wasn't available to the outgoing Clinton administration just weeks before.

Face it, liberal media, you lost the election. Get over it.

Mark's Remarks

So, according to this same logic, we should be calling FDR the butcher of Hawaii, because Naval intelligence and other services told of possible impending attacks by the Japanese on any of the thousands of islands in the Pacific, or the Alleutians, and he still allowed it to happen! I demand an investigation! Big Polio! Big Weapons! Lie after lie after lie....

We can go on and on with these infantile and quite frankly intellectually limited arguments based on titles of documents rather than full context of documents....Face it, seriously--the Left allowed the threat to gather and put on a happy face until 9/11....then, they decided WE were at fault for being blown up, and that anyone who seeks to end the threat will bring an end to the world....I heard this song and dance before--it was the 1980s--the Left was wrong then and they are wrong now....

Islamofascism Delenda Est!