Remembering 9/11

Commentary By Ron Beasley

While I have refered to the attacks of 9/11 as an intelligence failure that's not exactly true.  In realty the Bush/Cheney administration ignored intelligence.  This is from an intelligence briefing given to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

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We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

According to Ron Suskind George W. Bush's reaction was:

The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

The Bush/Cheney cabal was not interested - they were busy trying to justify an invasion and occupation of Iraq.  In case you forgot there is oil there.

And we can't forget that while Osama bin Laden may be dead he died a winner.  With the help of George W. Bush and his puppet master Dick Cheney he achieved most of his goals.  The United States has bankrupted itself with unwindable wars.  The country that was once the beacon of freedom has become "the show me your papers" state.  Of course the US has also become the torture state so we now have no moral authority as a nation.

It would be disrespectful of those who died on 9/11 and those who have died in the wars since then to point out these truths.