NIGHTLINE (072403) "Who's to Blame for 9-11?

[Octafish]

TURN ON ABC-TV!

[Terwilliger]

1. why do I think they'll find an explanation other than the obvious

[Octafish]

2. You’re right, Terwilliger. So was John O’Neill.

The FBI was not focused on “Domestic thread” from terrorists. Hmm. Isn’t that what John O’Neill was saying?

The show opened with news of the newly printed and sanitized 9-11 report.

Eleanor Hill, chief of staff of the special House-Senate investigation, said had the: 1. info been shared, 2. an adequate investigation started, and 3. a better analysis been made of the data, yes the terror attacks could have been averted.

Nancy Pelosi indicated the terrorists were not “loners,” but were people who were part of regular community until they were called upon. She wondered what can be done to identify, let alone stop, them in the future.

Ex-FBI Jack Cloonan said the San Diego case is key. The two Saudi nationals were suspected terrorists and recognized by the CIA overseas. The CIA failed to notify the FBI until late summer and by then they couldn’t find hide or hair of them.

Ex-NSC??? Staffer Richard Clarke said someone should have connected the dots. If they had, 9-11 would've been stopped. Clarke served in the Bush 1 and Clinton administrations and said the info should have been shared. The government knew about Osama bin Laden since 1998 and had ample opportunity to “do something at the source” but failed to do so. Why?

ABC said the 9-11 report did not mention Saudi Arabia’s connection to all this. The report did spell out how the FBI, CIA and NSA did not do a good job of sharing info. There was mishandling and manipulation of intelligence.

Gee. This all sounds like a broken record. The government’s blamed the CIA and FBI for failing to share crucial intel for DECADES. It is the same thing the government said after the Beirut embassy bombing in 1983 and then the Marine barracks bombing a few months later and after just about every terrorist event, international setback, and Constitutional scandal since then, up to and including 9-11.

FBI Agent John O’Neill said it, too. And he was assigned to busting bin Laden, until Louis Freeh took him off the case. — Octafish

[blm]

3. When Clinton was in, he had weekly meetings

between the NSC and CIA terrorism task force. Clarke and Kerrick headed that, working with O'Neill, but, all eventually left because of Bush's indifference, first Kerrick, then O'Neill and finally Clarke.

[Octafish]

6. Thanks for tracking the Intel Pros' resignations.

blm has done yeoman's service in tracking the resignation of top White House counter-terrorism advisors from the Bush badministration. Going from memory, three top experts — all flag ranking active-duty military — have left, fed up with the lack of, umm, effort on the part of Bush. Have they testified before the "independent" 9-11 commission?

Going baaack a way: The Washinton Post reported the following observation from Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, a top National Security Council staffer who stayed with Bush through May:

He noticed a difference on terrorism. Clinton's Cabinet advisers, burning with the urgency of their losses to bin Laden in the African embassy bombings in 1998 and the Cole attack in 2000, had met "nearly weekly" to direct the fight, Kerrick said. Among Bush's first-line advisers, "candidly speaking, I didn't detect" that kind of focus, he said.
— Washinton Post, 19 January 2002

Notably, the Bush Administration also flatly declined to heed the policy recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report on terrorism, which was released in early 2001. Not much press on that, either.

[Pastiche423]

7. "The government’s blamed

the CIA and FBI for failing to share crucial intel for DECADES."

Hey, a built in excuse which they used to their advantage! Using things to their advantage is their M.O.!

But in this situation, members of the FBI have been thwarted and some have spoken out. We all know that John P. O'Neill left the FBI (his dream job since he was a young lad) in disgust because certain officials made his job impossible. He was told in no uncertain terms to back off the bin Laden investigation.

I felt Nightline did a great job (w/the exception of that white haired guy that wouldn't look at the camera) of putting skepticism of the 9/11 report out there. They spoke of the missing Saudi relations, the August 6 memo, and the pages and pages that were redacted.

I truly believe that trying to put the blame on the ABC agencies will not work this time.

[gratuitous]

4. Without a discussion of the Saudi role

This is like investigating the Titanic going down without mentioning icebergs.

[Octafish]

5. Huge meme ya got there, gratuitous!

Not all Saudis with money and power were involved with the events of 9-11. Just the ones with business and political ties to the Bush Organized Crime Family.


The Bush-Saudi Connection

By Michelle Mairesse

Ancestral Voices

In 1920, under a League of Nations mandate, officials from France and Great Britain carved up vast tracts of warlord-dominated territories in Arabia into what they imagined would be nation states devoid of the complex historical, cultural, and tribal realities of the Mideast.

Instead of establishing European-style nation states, the strongest warlords quickly entrenched themselves with the aid of standing armies and spy networks. In much of the Mideast, fealty is often accorded to tribal overlords and the Islamic sects they favor rather than to the territory and people within the boundaries of the nation state. Jonathan Rabin succinctly defines the reality, past and present, of the desert sheikdoms: "The systems of government that have evolved in Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are paranoid family dictatorships with ancestral roots in a single city or village." (1)

Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden make their appeals to the nation or community of believers, not to any particular nation state, although the rich and powerful among the Muslims have founded Western-style businesses and formed corporations both inside and outside the boundaries of their native countries. Because Osama himself is a scion of a rich Saudi family with wide-ranging business interests throughout the world, the split Saudi personality is most evident in him and the bin Laden clan. Osama, who calls America "The Great Satan," has done business with the infidel Americans whenever it suited him.

Throughout the eighties, when the United States assisted the Saudis in a giant military buildup of airfields, ports, and bases throughout the kingdom, many of the contracts were awarded to the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group, founded by Osama bin Laden’s father.

CONTINUED TO THE MAX...

http://www.hermes-press.com/BushSaud.htm

[9215]

8. You nailed it

:bounce: