Reaction to Rice's Testimony

You would not be able to treat Her like a Lawyer could in Court of Law.
She does not have to answer to Congress,She showed up at the proceedings of her (and the White House) own will.She was not a Defendant nor Witness.
She answered the questions as She liked and there is nothing You could legally do about it.(and it better stays that way if We want to uphold the separation of Executive and Legislative Branches)
As a Lawyer,You should respect that.

 

Whart: You are absolutely right,
But blaming or implying blame on the current administration is oh,so sexy for the libs.(and shielding the "legacy" of the previous one at the same time while discrediting Bush in the eyes of the Great Unwashed)

 

Seperation??

The commission for 911 is made up of ex Governers, ex congressmen, ex ...etc. They are paid by the US tax payers and have no direct ties to the legislature branch.

Bob

 

From the commission website: "The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002, is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The Commission is also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks"

It is a commission established by law by the Republican controlled 107th Congress, approved by GWB. It is not a congressional committee. It does have subpoena power, and failure to comply can be subject to Grand Jury investigation and indictment. (Section 605 of Public Law 107-306 establishing the commission)

It also was empowered to examine classified documents, with "new requirements for the executive branch to disclose documents" (GWB's Statement signing this into law.)

So, the commisison has teeth, is bi-partisan, independent, established by a Republican Congress and President. No separation issues, and it has to have subpoena power to function.

GWB was claiming executive privledge in holding out Ms. Rice's testimony.

Maybe Art's right, a good lawyer would have painted her into a corner and asked sharper questions, but, she's no dummy either.

Avoiding answering anything that would get the boss in trouble is something she does very well.

 

What about the memo from the MN field office FBI agent warning of Middle Easterners wanting to learn how to fly planes without showing any interest in landings or takeoffs. Said memo also included speculation about their intent.

The other troubling thing is how broken the existing systems were. Visa applications were approved without proper investigation. Had the guidelines for visa approval been followed, several of the hijackers would not have made it into the US. Immigration laws were broken without anyone doing anything about them. INS also did not inform the FBI that two of the men they were hunting for were already in the country. When they did inform them, 7 days before Sept. 11, the FBI dragged its feet and did not put out a national APB. That would have prevented them from boarding the planes. Mohd. Atta, the supposed ringleader, also set off some alarms in travels to Prague and Spain, but these were not investigated either. Hopefully such opportunities will not be missed in the future.

Lastly, why do some of you insist on making this into a liberal vs. conservative or Democrat vs. Republican issue? I am sure both parties are on the same side when it comes to the war on terror. Yet someone will post something, and some idiot will always shoot back with something along those lines. Isn't it a matter of whoever was tasked with looking after the matter at the time? As an outsider, it seems to me Clinton did more than Bush until after 9/11. But there were missed opportunities in both administrations. One of them is still in the White House, more focused on the mess in Iraq than the deadly menace in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Yemen/Saudi/Indonesea/Philippines/worldwide.

 

Lastly, why do some of you insist on making this into a liberal vs. conservative or Democrat vs. Republican issue? I am sure both parties are on the same side when it comes to the war on terror. Yet someone will post something, and some idiot will always shoot back with something along those lines. Isn't it a matter of whoever was tasked with looking after the matter at the time? As an outsider, it seems to me Clinton did more than Bush until after 9/11. But there were missed opportunities in both administrations. One of them is still in the White House, more focused on the mess in Iraq than the deadly menace in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Yemen/Saudi/Indonesea/Philippines/worldwide.

I am sure both parties are on the same side when it comes to the war on terror.

What *were* you thinking when you wrote that? I really can't see far enough past the incredible rhetoric of the one party tring to blame literally everything bad in the entire world right on GWB...

We are not on the same side/point of view on anything.

AS for Iraq, we are correct to stay focused on there, and we will stay focused on Iraq until win or loss.

BYW, like me my son is also an airman, and he is over there right now.

As for the continued mess in Government, we could start by sending all the lawyers to Iraq....

 

Would anyone who feels that identifying and apprehending the 19 highjackers on 9/11 was an obvious but bungled task please indicate now for everyone how to identify who among the 10 million plus illegal immigrants now in the U.S. will attempt the next attack, along with where and when they will do it?

I can appreciate that we individual citizens don't have the specific knowledge to do that, so just lay out the laws and surveillance measures that the FBI and other counter-terrorist organizations should use to accomplish that.

I'm not saying that our government agencies can't be made to work more efficiently or with less regard to their own turf battles, just that predicting the future is a lot harder than Monday morning quarterbacking.

John

 

John, maybe the Bush Administration should have a look at how other countries handle terrorism, plenty have been fighting it for a lot longer than the US and have succeeded (if such a term could be used) in preventing large scale attacks. I couldn't believe that one of the findings from post Sept 11 was the lack of Arab speaking operatives in the CIA, how can such obvious mistakes be made? The war on terror for the US started in '83 in Lebanon, it's been 21 years now.

 

OH JEZUS!!!! I was just purusing the boards and thought this thread was another "i hate gaudy looking imports thread"......LOL. SNL did a funny spoof last night. Janet Jackson was host and played Condi.

 

Undoubtedly they should, just like a world class company looks at best practices to improve its competitive postion. But what countries that are targets of terrorism do you think have succeeded in preventing attacks? Colombia? Spain? Israel? England? Northern Ireland? Phillippines? Italy? What methods have they used?

The only one that I can think of that was reasonably successful against terrorism was in Peru against the Sendero Luminoso (the Shining Path Marxist revolutionary group quelched by Fujimori, who then resigned in disgrace over his dictatorial style and his inability to bring true freedoms to his people). Even today, more than 10 years later, there are still occasional outbreaks. And that was largely an indigenous revolutionary group within the borders of the country, not nearly as well funded or supported by certain other governments as OBL is.

Other than that, I can't really think of a country that has been a target of terrorism on a scale of AQ that has succeeded in eliminating the threat.

I do believe that better intelligence is one way in which we can protect ourselves. Another is to hunt down terrorist groups and kill them at their source, before they become too large, dispersed and powerful. This is a war, with consequences for losing as dire as for any conventional war in the past, only our enemy now operates without sovereignty or borders. The world has changed since the Soviet threat, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will no longer have the nicety of breakdowns in diplomatic relations, declarations of war or sovereign armies marching into other countries. The development of weapons, such as suitcase bombs, that can be deployed by small groups but that can cause enormous killing, is another change from the threats of the past.

The terrorist threat has been growing stronger, particularly in the past 10-15 years, and has become bolder because of a failure to recognize the danger, until the inconceivable on 9/11 demonstrated how powerful the terrorist threat has become.

But I am not an expert on terrorism by any means, so could use some education.

John

 

Remmember Japan???

 

One thing I don't under stand is why Jamie Gorelick is on the commission and not testifying. She was the Deputy Attorney General for the Clinton Administration from 1994 to 1997. In 1995 she wrote a memorandum "Instructions for Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations," which imposed a "draconian" wall between counterintelligence and criminal investigations. This wall made it so the FBI couldn't get a warrant to search Zacarias Moussaoui's computer. He had been arrested and questioned when he was at flying school because he barely new how to fly and was asking about piloting Jumbo Jets prior to 9/11. If this wall was not there the FBI could have gotten a warrant for his laptop and 9/11 may not have ever happened! Again why is she one the commission and not testifying? She bares more responsibility than anyone else for 9/11 in both the Clinton and Bush administrations!

 

Here is the email that he sent to the flight school. This was then sent to the FBI where they where told they COULD NOT GET A WARRANT!
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September 11, 2001 (J): Zacarias Moussaoui watches the 9/11 attack on TV inside a prison, where he is being held on immigration charges. He cheers the attacks. [BBC, 12/12/01] Within an hour of the attacks, the Minnesota FBI uses a memo written to FBI headquarters shortly after Moussaoui's arrest to ask permission from a judge for the search warrant they have been desperately seeking. Even after the attacks, FBI headquarters is still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer, characterizing the WTC attacks as a mere coincidence with suspicions about Moussaoui (the person still trying to block the search is later promoted). [Time, 5/21/02] However, a federal judge approves the warrant that afternoon. [New Yorker, 9/30/02] Minnesota FBI agent Coleen Rowley notes that this very memo was previously deemed insufficient by FBI headquarters to get a search warrant, and the fact that they are immediately granted one when finally allowed to ask shows "the missing piece of probable cause was only the [FBI headquarters'] failure to appreciate that such an event could occur." [Time, 5/21/02] The search uncovers information suggesting Moussaoui may have been planning an attack using crop dusters, but it doesn't turn up any direct connection to the 9/11 hijackers. However, they find some German telephone numbers and the name "Ahad Sabet." The numbers allow them to determine the name is an alias for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Atta's former roommate, and they find he wired Moussaoui money. They also find a document connecting Moussaoui with the Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, a lead that could have led to hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi (see September-October 2000). [New Yorker, 9/30/02, MSNBC, 12/11/01] Rowley later suggests that if they would had received the search warrant sooner, "There is at least some chance that ... may have limited the Sept. 11th attacks and resulting loss of life." [Time, 5/27/02]

 

Nonsense.

Now, if you put the administration at the time of the !st bombing at the World Trade Center incident in there, it makes more sense.

Especially after Somalia
And the embassy bombings in Africa.
And the open military attack on The Cole.
And the outright no reason bombing of the Serbian people, who have never hurt the US in any way.

And an FBI & Department of Justice led by morons like Reno.
And Waco
And Ruby Ridge.
And the assault by machine gun armed agents to snatch a little boy and hand deliver him to Cuba.

But when you couple that with an administration with a different agenda, you do get all those actions which led to 9/11...

 

How can you blame Bush for not being able to correct 8 years of Clinton Administration failures in 8 months?!!!

Sorry you can't spin this one. If this very Liberal memorandum (right to privacy) had never been written the FBI wouldn’t have had there hands tied.

 

Japan had self rule, a homogenious population, and a Parlamentary government by the 1920's. While they still had an emperor, but his power had been greatly weakened. In the 30's, the military ran the country, which is what led to the aggression in WWII. We displaced the military rule, and re-instated a revised democratic government after WWII.

Iraq is a multicultural country with a military dictator.

There really isn't a parallel here between Iraq and Japan following WWII.

We also defeated the Japanese in WWII, we have not done that in Iraq, at least not yet.