GOP Anti-Terrorism vs Democratic Anti-Terrorism

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

It was eight years ago that we were told America was changed forever, that we would need to go to the “dark side” to fight terrorism, that we would get Osama Bin Laden “dead or alive”.  The Bush administration was correct about some of it; they did change America and they did lead us to the “dark side”.  

What they failed to do, however, was effectively deal with terrorism.

It was on February 26th, 1993, that the World Trade Center was attacked.  President Bill Clinton had been inaugurated just five weeks before the attack.  He did not take America into a war.  He did not gin up false intelligence.  He did not take his eye off of the real culprits that committed the crime.  What he did was catch those responsible and our justice system sent them to prison.  In May 1994, four out of the six bombers were convicted of the crime.  In November 1997, the other two bombers were convicted.  America did not suffer another attack on our soil for the rest of the Clinton administration.  Our justice system, and our government, worked just as it should.

It was on September 11th, 2001, that the World Trade Center was attacked again.  President George W. Bush had been in office eight and a half months.  We did go to war under President Bush, invading two countries; Afghanistan and Iraq.  In order to justify the invasion of Iraq, false intelligence was used, cherry-picked intelligence was used, intelligence that was contrary to the administration’s wishes to invade Iraq were ignored.  And, go to the “dark side”, America did under President Bush and Vice-President Cheney; we tortured prisoners, many of whom were innocent of any crime.

The person who funded the first attack on the World Trade Center, Khaled Shiakh Mohammed, was caught, and, he was tortured, being subjected to waterboarding 183 times in one month.  Osama Bin Laden remains free, however.  In fact, once we invaded Iraq, President Bush stated that he wasn’t “worried” about Bin Laden anymore.  

As ABC reports, an FBI informant has stated that the FBI missed its chance to stop 9/11 because the FBI was more concerned about sting operations than on the man who was called the ringleader Mohammed Atta.

The FBI initially declined to comment but released a statement following the ABC News report, saying: “The 9/11 investigation, the most extensive ever conducted by the FBI, has been reviewed in its totality by the 9/11 Commission, Congress and others. The claims made in the news report and the factual conclusions contained in the story are not supported by the evidence.”

The FBI did not specify which claims or conclusions it referred to.

In fact, after the attack in 1993, there was no need for a commission be formed.  Yet, in 2001, a commission that was initially objected to by the Bush administration, was formed to determine just how this attack could have been carried out, at what level there were mistakes, and just how our intelligence services could have missed the attack.

It was a fair question given the evidence already in the public record.

In July 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft began flying only on leased aircraft.  

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a “threat assessment” by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

“There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines,” an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

“I don’t do threat assessments myself and I rely on those whose responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they’ve suggested I should stay within for those purposes,” Ashcroft said.

So, by July 26th, 2001, the FBI had enough information to issue a threat assessment that caused the Attorney General to not fly on commercial aircraft, aircraft that two months later were hijacked and used to attack the World Trade Center.

Maybe that was because, as Time reports, there were already warnings being issued.

The first warning came from Phoenix, Ariz. On July 10, agent Kenneth Williams wrote a paper detailing his suspicions about some suspected Islamic radicals who had been taking flying lessons in Arizona. Williams proposed an investigation to see if al-Qaeda was using flight schools nationwide. He spoke with the voice of experience; he had been working on international terrorism cases for years. The Phoenix office, according to former FBI agent James Hauswirth, had been investigating men with possible Islamic terrorist links since 1994, though without much support from the FBI’s local bosses. Williams had started work on his probe of flight schools in early 2001 but had spent much of the next months on nonterrorist cases. Once he was back on terrorism, it took only a few weeks for alarm bells to ring. He submitted his memo to headquarters and to two FBI field offices, including New York City. In all three places it died.

So, not only did the FBI miss one chance, but, more than one, as Agent Kenneth Williams wished to investigate the individuals and flight school training.  But, FBI management didn’t support his call to investigate.

Five weeks after Williams wrote his memo, a second warning came in from another FBI field office, and once again, headquarters bungled the case. On Aug. 13, Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan ancestry, arrived at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Minnesota for simulator training on a Boeing 747. Moussaoui, who had been in the U.S. since February and had already taken flying lessons at a school in Norman, Okla., was in a hurry. John Rosengren, who was director of operations at Pan Am until February this year, says Moussaoui wanted to learn how to fly the 747 in “four or five days.” After just two days of training, Moussaoui’s flight instructor expressed concern that his student didn’t want it known that he was a Muslim. One of Pan Am’s managers had a contact in the FBI; should the manager call him? “I said, ‘No problem,'” says Rosengren. “The next day I got a call from a Minneapolis agent telling me Moussaoui had been detained at the Residence Inn in Eagan.“

So, with Moussaoui in custody, how could the FBI bungle this lead?

Whatever Moussaoui’s true tale may be, the Minnesota field office was convinced he was worth checking out. Agents spent much of the next two weeks in an increasingly frantic-and ultimately fruitless- effort to persuade FBI headquarters to authorize a national-security warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer. From Washington, requests were sent to authorities in Paris for background details on the suspect. Like most things having to do with Moussaoui, the contents of the dossier sent over from Paris are in dispute. One senior French law-enforcement source told Time the Americans were given “everything they needed” to understand that Moussaoui was associated with Islamic terrorist groups. “Even a neophyte,” says this source, “working in some remote corner of Florida, would have understood the threat based on what was sent.” But several officials in FBI headquarters say that before Sept. 11 the French sent only a three-page document, which portrayed Moussaoui as a radical but was too sketchy to justify a search warrant for his computer.

The Department of Justice Inspector General report, a public document in the public record, states:

On May 21, 2002, Coleen Rowley, the Chief Division Counsel in the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office, wrote a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller in which she raised concerns about how the FBI had handled certain information in its possession before the attacks. Among other things, Rowley discussed the FBI’s investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who had been arrested in Minneapolis on August 16, 2001. The Minneapolis FBI Field Office had received a telephone call from a representative of a flight school reporting suspicions about Moussaoui, who was taking flying lessons at the school near Minneapolis.  Acting on this information, FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents in Minneapolis investigated Moussaoui for possible connections to terrorism and discovered that he was in violation of his immigration status.  As a result, on August 16, 2001, Moussaoui was taken into custody on immigration charges.

The IG report documents numerous instances where the FBI was aware of the plan to use aircraft as weapons going all the way back to 1995 when the Manila government, after raiding an Al-Qaeda cell, found plans to use airplanes as weapons and notified the FBI.  The IG report, in its entirety, reads like a bad “who-dunit” nightmare comedy where incompetence rules every decision.

The incompetence of the management at the FBI in missing lead after lead, was, in my opinion if not the Inspector General’s, the root cause of it not identifying the 9/11 plot earlier.  After 9/11, the response by the Bush administration was simply criminal.

As was shown by the 1994 and 1997 trials, our justice system and prison system was quite capable of dealing with terrorists.  Yet, President Bush relied on secret CIA “black sites”, prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and opened Guantanamo prison, all so that they could operate outside of the American justice system.

As was shown by the capture of the terrorists after the 1993 bombing, America did not need to go to war with two countries in order to capture those responsible.  Yet, President Bush relied on military might instead of proven law enforcement techniques, and in doing so, incarcerated thousands of innocent people in order to catch a few who were guilty.

As was shown by previous interrogations, America did not need to torture prisoners in order to gain valuable, actionable intelligence.  Yet, President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney specifically, and knowingly, allowed torture to be used.

As was shown by the previous administration, America did not need to have thousands of soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded or maimed, in order to deal with terrorism.  Yet, President Bush did just that; killed thousands of our soldiers and wounded tens of thousands more.

As was shown by the previous administration, America did not need to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of which were innocent civilians.  Yet, President Bush did just that.

That these actions were entered into knowingly is not debatable.  That these actions constituted crimes, internationally and federally, is not debatable.  Only that there is no political will on the part of President Obama and Attorney General Holder to prosecute those who authorized and committed these crimes.

The truth of the matter is clear; the GOP approach to terrorism was a disaster of monumental scope.  

This is September 12th, eight years after the attack on the World Trade Center.  

Indeed, our country has been changed; it now debates whether our country should torture.  We, as a nation, find ourselves calling for prosecutions while our calls fall on deaf ears in our government.  Instead of restoring the rule of law, President Obama and Attorney General Holder wish to sweep the rule of law under the proverbial rug.  And, millions of families around the world are worse for how America changed after 9/11.

President Bush, wishing to be seen as a “war president”, did indeed unleash the dogs of war after 9/11.  He also unleashed the worst of what America is for all the world to witness.  

He did not, however, deal with terrorism; he amplified it.  He may have caught a few, actual terrorists, but in doing so, he created thousands more to replace them.  He has not kept America safe since 9/11, only insured that we will be attacked again in the future, just as we were attacked after the 1993 bombing.

The legacy of President George W. Bush is, and forever will be, one of a torturer, a liar, and a man that brought the worst out in our nation.