"By PHILIP SHENON

Published: April 5, 2004


ASHINGTON, April 4 — The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.

Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.

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In a joint television interview, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, indicated that their final report this summer would find that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.

They also suggested that Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, would be questioned aggressively on Thursday about why the administration had not taken more action against Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and about discrepancies between her public statements and those of Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, who has accused the administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats in 2001."

Also this:
"Mr. Kean and other members of the commission also agreed in interviews Sunday that the Bush administration's skepticism about the Clinton administration's national security policies might have led the Bush White House to pay too little attention to the threat of Al Qaeda."
From the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/politics/05PANE.html

The Seahawks might have won the Superbowl if Hasselbeck hadn't thrown that interception in overtime of the first round too. Freaking Monday Morning Quarterbacks.

The Pearl Harbor attack was probably preventable as well (in theory, anyway).

This panel can serve us well by pointing out what mistakes were made before 9/11 and what we can do to prevent future such attacks.

Unfortunately, there are those who are trying to make political hay out of this commission. Clarke can't seem to get his story straight. He says that Bush should have done something about the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11 - yet he feels that attacking Iraq was a mistake. Well, maybe he was right. But then again, what if we didn't go into Iraq and then there had been a big terrorist attack somewhere which originated in Iraq? No doubt Clarke & co. would have said Bush was too timid in not attacking Iraq.

We do know that there are(were) terrorists in Iraq and in Afghanistan. So if Bush's pre-emptive attack doctrine was wrong to apply in the case of Iraq, then it should have been judged to be wrong to apply it in Afghanistan as well.
You can't have it both ways.

Instead of Monday Morning Quarterbacking, I would like to hear what Richard Clarke thinks we should do about North Korea. Do we strike first to prevent the possibility of Kim Jong Ill selling suitcase nukes to terrorists who would blow up a city .... or not?

Is this that big surprise we heard about a day or two ago?

You have to put the blame from the top on down. (R)-(D) Just maybe there would not have been three planes.

I firmly believe, if resources had been better managed, and if one third of the FBI were not already involved in other matters, (blue dress), that the September eleventh attacks would have had far less chance for success.

The point most people are missing on this is that the mistake came from much farther down than the White House (both Clinton and Bush) the various contributors to the NIE that both presidents had been acting on mostly, if not unaimously concluded that Al-Qiada was planning to hit an overseas target. Why did they leap to this conclusion? My theory is that it was a mix of Institutional Arrogance and to much inside the box thinking (terrorists had never hit the US before so they were in the minds of intel evaluators either not capable or not interested in doing so). As much as people want to blame someone, I really hate to say it but Al-Qaida just really pulled off a technically sound op, and we need to focus on making sure they, or their successors, aren't able to repeat it or top it. We need plans to deal with Syria, North Korea, Iran, and some countries that are "allies" now we need contingency plans for sudden changes in power like Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi, Turkey, even Russia, Ukraine, and Brazil. The Counter Intelligence community needs a reminder that we pay them to be world class paranoids, so that the rest of us don't have to be. Also any serious discussion of failures on 9/11 would be done behind closed doors so that things that require security clearance to discuss, could be discussed. In most administrations even the president doesn't know what our sources and methods of intel gathering are, and can expect his tasking instructions to be followed but not know the details of how they are implemented.

Blaming just one administration for the problem is asinine. Did the Bush administration screw up yes they did they where presented with the info of a possible terrorist attack against US targets. However the Clinton administration was presented with that same information.

Clarke also needs to get his story straight as well. He is trying to push all of the blame onto Bush who was only in the office for 8 months. All of us know how it feels to take a new job and it usually takes us a few months to get in the groove that by no means excuses mistakes that where made in the Bush administration. Bush has did more to fight terrorism in his four years in office than Clinton did in 8. One of Bush's main mistake to when it came to terrorism was ticking off our allies.

Clinton's mistake was treating terrorist like regular criminals, using that method its like waiting for an attack to happen before we act against them. Thats how the terrorist involved in the first World Trade Center treated alot of good that did we had embassy bombing and the Cole and 7 year after the first attack the hit the WTC again this time destroying it.

Clarke has been involved in presidential administrations since Regan he has had plenty of time to do something about the terrorist threat. He has been involved in it longer thatn anyone else. His problem was that he was up against a giant bureaucracy and anyone who has dealt with one of those knows it is a hell of a hard time getting heard.

Apologize for the long old post. I did my best to be fair to both sides. Hope I succeded

Did a good job of being fair.

Also just on a side note, regardless of which party replaces which, the transition period between administrations creates a natural window of vulnerability for our country that our enemies have learned to exploit

The problem is the current social philosophy of The Blame Game, which states that any wrong can be righted if the right person is found to blame. This is whiy parents sue colleges when their stupid kid ODs on booze, and why small business live in fear that someone wearing clogs might slip and fall on the ice outside. Bottom line: YOU ARE'T STUPID: YOU JUST HAVENT FIGURED OUT WHO TO BLAME YET. There must be someone. What?? you stuck your head in the grill filled with lighter fluid and burnt your eyebrows off? No, your not stupid, must be the company who made the lighter fluid, shit, they didn't place a warning about itiots on the label, BLAME THEM.

This, unfortunately is how it is in society today. We're not happy until we can rest assured there is someone else to blame. Nobody has to feel stupid now. In a politically correct society, there are no stupid people. Your best bet to help improve society is to avoid playing the Blame Game

Clarke has been in gov for long time. But it is up to the National Security Advisers and the president to do something about it. He told them what he thought. They had the info, what they did with it was up to them.

Hawk, you are right in that the NSA and the Prez have authority & responsibility to act on terrorist threats.

But I would still like to hear what Mr. Clarke thinks we should do about N. Korea, especially since I will be doing an assignment in S. Korea soon.

Oh here we go.

It was preventable! WE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN PRE-EMPTIVE ACTION!

ooooh yeeaaah right. Go right ahead, nobody will complain.

note: given that the middle east is teeming with terrorist the only way to prevent any future attacks it basically kill them all or get them running their own little democracies, as wrong or right as that may be. Bush blew up Iraq for this reason. I think it was blatantly obvious that the key is blowing up the middle of the mid-east and planting a big fat democracy right there. That's why I don't care about the fact that he lied. People would have bitched either way, just one way stopped them. I hate Bush as much as the next person, it's just that the war has nothing to do with it.

Had they prevented one, the door is still open for more. How do you stop the threat completely? Preventable.. yeah.. in another galaxy without morons.

That's what I think about the new "9/11 was preventable" hot topic.

long day at class. I apologize for my fragmented sentences, inability to make sense, etc. I'll come back later!

Preventable most likely not. Who's to say. Maybe not as bad as it was. As for S. Korea N. Korea isn't going to do anything to start a war right now. When that hawk comes in, watch out it's cold.

Sherm has a point, religious zealots are the source of all terrorism. You can wipe them out, but you cannot instill a democracy in that culture. The people there don't understand the very concept of democracy let alone human decency and dignity. They understand only what they have lived for the past millenia: tribalism, feudalism, and war. Handing them a democracy is like handing a gorilla a pocket calculator. They don't know what to do with it.

The more un-educated a society is, the more religious they will be, the more religious they are, the more fanatic they become.

hawk, I agree that N. Korea is not likely to start a war anytime soon. They can hardly afford it.

But IF they do have nukes (and that is IF), there is a real possibility that they may sell one or more to a terrorist group. I'm not saying that we should do a pre-emptive strike on N. Korea (risks a war with China, for one thing). But I would really like to hear these monday morning quarterbacks like Clarke give a recommendation on what he thinks Bush (or the next Prez) should do about N. Korea.

"The more un-educated a society is, the more religious they will be, the more religious they are, the more fanatic they become."

The Ten Commandments displayed in court rooms, God mentioned in the pledge and written on money, a fundamentalist christian president and gay rights usurped on the basis of religion.

So what does that make us? More people have been killed in the name of Christianity than any other religion on the face of the earth, now or ever.

Whether the sept 11th attacks were preventable or not is not truly the issue. The issue is if everything was done to prevent them. If so and they occurred then there's nobody to blame on either administration. I honestly believe that the planning involved in hijacking 3 separate planes from 2 different airports requires not just planning but timing and determination. This was, in fact, a huge planning success and there is probably nothing that we could have done to prevent them.

On the same token is the fact that it is virtually impossible to stop somebody from doing something that they truly believe in and have the disciple to properly plan out. Short of removing all of our civil rights, there is nothing that the Homeland Security office can do to prevent terrorist attacks. We are no safer now than we were before Sept 11th. The only people we are going to catch are the undicispled, spur of the moment terrorists, something that Al Qaida is not.

The question that I would like to see answered, that has not been asked here is what is Bush going to do about Saudi Arabia? Everybody is going on about N. Korea but the Sept. 11th attacks were planned and perpetrated by Saudi's. The funds were controlled by Saudi's and nothing has been done about any of that. Everybody knew that Bin Laden was a Saudi exile but nobody, especially Saudi Arabia, took steps to cut off his financial ties. Our allies did nothing to curtail his actions but we have also let them off the hook.

"The Ten Commandments displayed in court rooms, God mentioned in the pledge and written on money, a fundamentalist christian president and gay rights usurped on the basis of religion."

They're all non-issues except our president on the gay rights issue. But hey, look at how educated he is.

You're both right, guys. The more uneducated a society is, the more religious they are likely to become. It is also true that our culture is a christian one, the fundamental values of which have no doubt been the cause of many wars.

But to call our culture "religious" is quite a stretch. We are as apathetic as they come as far as religion. I'm sure a "poll" would say that 80% of American's are christian, but how many REALLY are (i.e. - truely believe, and currently practicing). So I have to refute your first point - our culture is NOT religious.

God in the pledge, on money, etc. are all relics of the past (relics that should stay out of respect, and no I'm not a christian). Bush has a lot of people to back him on his gay rights thing. Mostly he has enough rich white fascist politicians that agree with him. Certain sects of our society are still full of religous bigotry (i.e. the sect that somehow ended up ruling over us), but on the whole - the US is not a religious place.

Unwanted pregnancies are preventable too but they still happen. Every bad event throughout history COULD have been prevented. All it takes is 20/20 hindsight to see how. All we can do is hope to learn from the mistakes made.

no no, we have to blame somebody so fox and cnn's ratings don't drop.

High-Ranking BUSH Officials Admit 9/11 Could've Been Prevented.

Read this link and think.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/911-preventable.htm

More information than you ever wanted to know about the events preceeding, on and since September 11, 2001, can be found at:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

Those quotes aren't really meaningful.

I agree with the majority here. It doesn't matter whose fault it is (if anyone's). I also agree with Sherm that the world is better off if any democratic activity takes place in that region.

My only personal issue is whether or not we were lied to when we went to war, which the topic of the article has successfully removed from the front page of the major media.

To suggest that the end justifies the means invites anarchy.

Who's to blame? The military industrial complex. Let's face it, if we weren't occupying the middle east at all (which goes back to before the first Gulf War), then no terrorist would care. What's that JEALOUSY excuse people have used? I can't believe anyone would buy that. In the history of terrorist organizations, they have fought against occupation and the imposition of government or religious beliefs upon them. How do we stop terrorism? Get out of their land and leave them alone, then they wouldn't attack us.

We supported Bin Laden in ousting Russian forces from Afghanistan. Obviously we knew the guy felt strongly about foreign occupation of the middle east. Infact, being a muslim extremist, he believes it's a holy land for muslims. So what do we do, we live in fear that at any moment there could be a terrorist attack, we watch the terror level rise and fall (knowing that when it hits red, marshall law is enacted, but that's ok because we're protected), we send troops over seas to fight and die.

And for what? So we can still rape middle eastern natrual resources. When we wouldn't even be targets of islamic terror if we'd just keep our asses out of there to begin with.

"Who's to blame? The military industrial complex. Let's face it, if we weren't occupying the middle east at all (which goes back to before the first Gulf War), then no terrorist would care."

Wrong. Terrorists have wanted to severely harm American interests since Israel's inception.

note: creating Israel essentially created terrorism, so they have always had an interest in hurting Israel and America. Israel is still their #1 enemy to the best of my knowledge. America is #2, then Britain I think. They can't beat Israel, or even stand a chance, in traditional warfare, so they attack and avoid the military all together. Just walk on a bus and boom. But the creation of Israel was basically the creation of terrorism to the best of my knowledge. It may have some roots before that, I am not sure. Do we have any historians among us?

"Get out of their land and leave them alone, then they wouldn't attack us."

That'd be nice, but we can't just put the Jews on a train and ship them all away. They probably wouldn't be too fond of your idea to move them elsewhere.

Who should we blame? I dunno, maybe the TERRORISTS?

They only did it...after all

Doesn't mean I advocate locking people up for no reason. But if we're trying to figure out who's to blame for 9/11, we may as well look at the people who did it

Sherminator, I believe Terrorism predates Israel by many a long time actually. Anarchists set bombs in the US, Europe, and Russia in the 19th century. The Bolsheviks used Terror Tactics during the Russian Revolution. Much of Ghengis Khan's Tactics could be described as terrorism as well.