Bush Administration’s Pre-9/11 Focus Was Missile Defense, Not Terrorism
Bush Administration’s Pre-9/11 Focus Was Missile Defense, Not Terrorism
In her interview with the New York Post, Condoleezza Rice falsely claimed that President Bush’s pre-9/11 anti-terror efforts were “at least as aggressive” as President Clinton’s. In fact, the 9-11 Commission disputes that account. While the Bush administration should have been preparing for a potential terrorist attack, it was instead focused on developing a costly missile defense system. Here are the facts:
Clarke Handed Over Plan To “Roll Back” Al Qaeda. “The terrorism briefing [in the White House Situation Room in Jan. 2001] was delivered by Richard Clarke … [S]enior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations…say that Clarke had a set of proposals to ‘roll back’ al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, ‘Response to al Qaeda: Roll back.’ Clarke’s proposals called for the ‘breakup’ of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel.” [Time, 8/4/02]
Bush Said “Most Urgent Threat” Was Ballistic Missiles. In a speech on May 1, 2001, Bush said, “Unlike the Cold War, today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.” [Bush, 5/1/01]
Bush’s Priorities Did Not Include Al Qaeda. “After his first meeting with NATO heads of state in Brussels in June 2001, Bush outlined the five top defense issues discussed with the closest U.S. allies. Missile defense was at the top of the list, followed by developing a NATO relationship with Russia, working in common purpose with Europe, increased defense spending in NATO countries, and enlarging the alliance to include former East European countries. The only reference to extremists was in Macedonia, where Bush said regional forces were seeking to subvert a new democracy.” [Washington Post, 4/1/04]
Rice Was “Focused On Matters Other Than Terrorism.” “A review of the record, from testimony and interviews, suggests that Ms. Rice…was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism [before 9/11], for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Mr. Bush. … [T]he reality is that Ms. Rice has virtually no public utterances about Al Qaeda to point to as evidence that she was as engaged in the issue as she was in Mr. Bush’s other foreign policy agendas.” [NYT, 4/5/04]
Rice Was Set To Deliver 9/11 Speech On Missile Defense. “On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address ‘the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday’ — but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals. … The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.” [Washington Post, 4/1/04]
President Bill Clinton, meanwhile, was focused on the terrorist threat. He outlined a three-pronged strategy for combating terrorism in a 1998 speech at the Naval Academy. Read it here.
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And sending a man to Mars….we’re ready when you are, Bushie!
September 26th, 2006 at 2:29 pmOK madam Secretary I will ask again, HOW MANY MEETINGS DID YOU HAVE ABOUT OBL OR AL-QAIDA PRIOR TO 9-11?
Zero? Yeah thats what we thought.
You are fooling no one turd blossom, no one that chooses to use their brain that is.
Why do Rape-Public-Cans Hate America?
September 26th, 2006 at 2:29 pmBush’s Pre-9/11 focus was laziness.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:34 pmthey will never say anything truthful except to each other about how much money they are making.
I propose that the meat puppet be strapped to his missile and be allowed to reign down upon iranikstan like major king kong. put his dog dick on a slightly larger missile due to his fat blood engorged carcass and drop him somewhere he says isn’t having a civil war and give him 24 hours to get out. sort of like survivor but the joke is, no one will be coming to get them if they fail.
when will someone arrest them?
September 26th, 2006 at 2:38 pmDon’t forget the priorities of Ashcroft’s DOJ…..
Anti-Terrorism was either not listed or was at the bottom of the list…
September 26th, 2006 at 2:40 pmAnd don’t forget Shrub’s proclamation that “the U.S. is not in the business of nation building”. Damn, does this dolt have short-term memory loss or what?
September 26th, 2006 at 2:40 pmPass the Northern Lights, shrubbie, don’t Bogart!
Well gee…..why didn’t thoes ‘missles’ shoot down the 911 hijackers?…they had plenty of time while bush read..’My Pet Goat’..
September 26th, 2006 at 2:42 pmGee, who could have possibly have guessed!?
Junior was on the job, and that meant a lollypop for every major Republican campaign contributor and every lobbyist with deep pockets behind him or her.
Ever since St. Ronnie went on that little rampage in May of 1983 (by the way, no one seems to recall that he was just using the buzz about Return of the Jedi coming out less than two weeks after the Star Wars speech, and made these great decisions while only consulting Edward Teller, who was 154 at the time), the serious thieves knew that the really big money was in idiotic pie-in-the-sky space weapons.
So Raytheon, and Boeing, and Lockheed all went nutso and lobbied for Star Wars budgets, and they got them, and look at the result.
The criminal junta controlling the U.S. Government must be brought to the account for the crimes it has committed against both the people of the United States of America, and the world!
September 26th, 2006 at 2:47 pmClinton wiped that baby’s but and put her to bed at Fox. We need to get the film from the archives where Leezzee says, “we had no idea.” She replaced Clark, Bush’s personal pick for the job, head of NS advisors to the president and carried the memo from Clark warning the attack was imminent to the big gala Texas Bar-B-Que at Crawford but didn’t bother to read it. They mixed business with pleasure but didn’t quiet have time for NS issues, the planning of the attack on Iraq preempting.
That’s the ultimate in sagery. Bush knew Iraq was responsible for the attack before it happened and was already planning pay-back while his NS chief, “had no idea.” The three little pigs, Bush, Chaney and Halliburton are all holed up in Bush’s hours built out of straw,, men.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:48 pmBush ignored Osama before 911 and that’s why we were attcked.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:49 pmThe facts in this case stand alone – Dubya screwed up….”now watch this drive”….
September 26th, 2006 at 2:51 pmIt seems from the pattern shown above that there was a plan in place to begin funding the military/ industrial complex from the missile defense angle (who really thought there was a need for that?) at a significantly higher pace than the previous 8 years.
When the attack occurred, it only provided a different opportunity to funnel the money to the same area. They were very neatly handed a much better argument for handing money and power to the same people that they intended on doing that to anyway.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:52 pm#7 How did you do? Well, if your goal was to look like an idiot, you succeeded.
And you get extra points for defending bush without actually defending bush.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:53 pmSo Bush was in a school with kids when the hijackers hit. Your point is? He had plenty of time for what? To shoot down a jetliner? I can imagine what this twisted website would say then.
Bush shoots down civilians without proof of hijacking.
Bush shoots down plane without trying to negotiate first.
And for the conspiracy nuts on this site –
Bush planed 9/11 so he could kill someone in a plane he did not like.
ROTFL, ROTFL, ROTFL, be truthful for once. What would you have said if he shot down an airliner? Tell the truth for once!
September 26th, 2006 at 2:54 pmAt this point in time, I’d be happy to find one thing that Bush has done right??? It’s pretty pathetic to find how horrendously he’s doing his job and how deceived the american people have been by these neocons.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:55 pmBush’s Priorities Did Not Include Al Qaeda “… in June 2001.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:55 pmThe Russians had been driven out. Bush at the time was still trying to negotiate a way to get an oil pipeline through Afghanistan.
#7 Happy Guy
Just got himself a new folder on Gonzo’s big freakin’ Total Information Awareness Super Computer!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
September 26th, 2006 at 2:58 pmOf course the Chainee war machine was focused on missles, a la the previous post (#9), and Dubious George was all to happy to be convinced that the guy who tied to kill his Daddy was playing around with rockets and missles, after all, we had sold Saddam all kinds of chemical and biological weapons technology, all he needed was the delivery systems…………………
September 26th, 2006 at 3:00 pm(and the little demon that sits on the shoulder of all the Bush’s, the Saudi royalty, saying: “No, no, don’t worry about our errant little lamb Usama, we’ll keep him under control…”)
“Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about
Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are
primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal
changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes.
Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.
We want to accomplish three things:
One, we want the Americans to withdraw conventional forces from Europe.
Two, we want them to withdraw nuclear forces from Europe.
Three, we want the Americans to stop proceeding with Strategic Defense Initiative.”
Mikhail Gorbachev
September 26th, 2006 at 3:04 pmsecret speech to Soviet Politburo, November 1987
I remember it very well because i am a former soldier who knew who Bin Laden was and I wondered by they weren’t focused on caughting him. I as recall Richard Clark saying that they disregarded him when he tried to warn them of the danger Bin Laden posed to the U.S. Also former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal said that Bush was focused on getting Sadam Hussein from the very beginning of his adminstration. The sad part of all of this is that the administration has tried to blame everyone from Bill Clinton to the Democrats in Congress to avoid responsibility for 9-11.
The American people still haven’t held this adminstration responsible for what happened (9-11) on their watch. When I was a soldier and something when wrong at my post, I couldn’t blame the soldier who as guarding it before I got there. I was taught to take responsiblity for my post and to stand my post until properly relieved. Mr. Bush was looking in the other direction when the terrorist where planning 9-11 and he doesn’t want to admit it. They (Republicans) try to hide the fact that the FBI had captured Missouqi, the CIA knew the terrorist where in the Country, and the a Military Intelligence unit was also tracking the terrorist. The use the excuse that the CIA and FBI couldn’t talk to each other as an excuse, but that isn’t true. Remember Aldredge Ayms, and the Walkers (father and son) spys, well in both cases the FBI and CIA worked together to catch them.
Since they are in the business of casting blame, let me cast some on my own. When President Clinton went after Bin Laden the Republicans accused him of waging the Dog to divert attention of the Monica affair. Also they controlled Congress for years before 9-11 and did nothing but try to impeach Clinton. When Clark tried to warn the new adminstration they rebuffed him by having him report to some low level staffer rather than to the President as he’d done since the Reagan adminstration. You can’t fight terrorism if you are jealous of a so called “left over” from the Clinton adminstration, meaning “Clark”. What the fools didn’t realize is that the information the was trying to give them was vital of our national security.
They let a petty thing like jealousy lead to terrorist flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Think what would have happened had they listen to Clark instead of demoting him. You can’t connect the dots if you put the dots away in a drawer never to be heard from until after 9-11. They also tried to silence Clark after 9-11 because they knew he tried to brief the President and was pushed away because he didn’t rise to the level to talk to the President.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:07 pmso when bush says that “9/11 changed everything” he is really referring to himself and his regime.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:17 pm.
Condi’s deceptions are just getting sloppier and sloppier: she told the Post that Clarke quit when he didn’t get the top homeland security spot, implying he left early without sharing his valuable knowledge. But of course his departure was well after 9/11, following a summer of running around with his “hair on fire.”
And don’t forget Cheney’s terrorism task force (first meeting — September?), and Condi’s own prepared speech (planned for 9/11, never delivered) in which she laid out their priorities, which didn’t exactly include Osama at the top of the list…
About time this topic stopped being off-limits for general discussion. Bless Clinton, and Olbermann last night; time to follow their lead. Condi’s command performance at the NYP shows they’re on the mat — we can’t let’em up.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:17 pm#15……..
September 26th, 2006 at 3:18 pmI will restate:
Dubious George is not in controll of, nor does he decide, anything.
Dick Cheney doesn’t even controll anything, though I believe he makes many of the actual decisions.
Karl Rove has considerable controll, though even he is doing the bidding of the corporate and military masters he serves.
We all have watched (or at least have had the choice to) Dubious as he sits in a school classroom, in vacuous denial, on the morning of September 11th, 2001.
He is doing exactly what he was instucted to do by his handlers: “Should anything disastrous happen, just sit tight, Georgie, till we get a handle on the situation…just leave these things up to uncle Dick…”
[Intentional misspelling of the word Con-Troll]
Oh, I see you’re still compiling your list; keep it going.
“They let a petty thing like jealousy lead to terrorist flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. ” — You nailed, it Unknown Dem. How deeply awful these people are; there’s surely a circle in hell being prepped for them.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:22 pmWhat matters more, what Bush did, or what Bush says he did? Our political culture is more concerned with the latter than the former.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:22 pmThis is like Orwell’s memory hole. I can remember reading on right wing sites that missile defence was the only thing that counted. Then 9/11 happened. Do politicians really think we are this stupid?
Eurasia has always been the enemy….
September 26th, 2006 at 3:24 pm“…the unusually close, personal nature of her (Rice’s) relationship with Mr. Bush…”
Now, will the Evangelical Christians who were so concerned about President Clinton’s sex life insist that President Bush testify under oath as to whether or not he had sexual relations with that woman?
September 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pmClinton put himself in the “trick bag” and now he can’t get out. This is great news for the GOP (mid-terms). Americans already think liberals are weak on the war on terror and national security, and Clinton brings the whole issue to the fore-front with less than 45 days to the mid-terms. What a dummy !!!
But, I’m glad he did it, because now the GOP will maintain the House & Senate … GUARANTEED !!
PS – Thanks Billy Boy …
September 26th, 2006 at 3:29 pmThere you go again, won’t tell the truth. What would you have said?
ROTFL, you say I make dumb comments but I stoop to your level when you say things like – “We’d say we wish you and mighty aphrodite had been on the planes!!!”
That was informative, ROTFL!!!!
September 26th, 2006 at 3:31 pm30#
Do you really see it as a benefit to Bush? Both the UK and the US seem to be stuck in Middle East countries with young men dying and no way out. Terrorism is on the increase around the world. How can this be seen as success in the war on terror?
September 26th, 2006 at 3:45 pmI thought it was tax cuts and clearing brush.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:47 pm#30 You are totally wrong. Bill Clinton told the truth and you Republican are going to be out on your ear in November GUARANTEE!!!!!!!
We can get rid of all the bad Apples Republicans like Allen, Burns, Ney, Santorum, Huckabee, Green, etc, etc. The Dems will take over both Houses and we can impeach Bushies, Cheney, and their admin.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:49 pmThere is a smoking gun leading up to 9/11. Cofer Black could be Bush’s equivalent of Nixon’s Alexander Butterfield, who divulged the existence of a audio tape system in the Oval Office. Without those tapes Nixon would have undoubtedly completed his term. Two weeks ago Cofer Black, referring to 9/11, stated that they had strongly expected a serious attack to occur in AUGUST. That statement had to be inadvertent on his part. Leading up to 9/11, Black was head of the State Department’s Counter Terrorism efforts. After 9/11 he was appointed to an Ambassador At Large position. Was this a reward for his silence? Black is currently an executive officer with Blackwater USA which has made a fortune out of war. If the Democrats ever gain subpoena power, he should be one of the first served.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:50 pm30
I don’t understand. Bush ignored Osama prior to 911 and caused us to be attacked. How does that help you?
September 26th, 2006 at 3:51 pmAnd by the way, I think you’re lost. The terrorists are in Iraq-not in ThinkProgress.
I may have this completely wrong and if it is, I apologize now. I seem to recall hearing that Rice was supposed to give a speech the morning of 9/11/01 that was about the threat from missiles, and nothing about al Qaeda. Perhaps I am mistaken, and if I am, please accept my apologies. But if this is correct, then as our then-National Security Adviser, shouldn;t she have been concerned about the threats from al Qaeda that Richard Clarke had been warning her about for eight months?
September 26th, 2006 at 4:03 pm#28 – “…the unusually close, personal nature of her (Rice’s) relationship with Mr. Bush…â€
Now, will the Evangelical Christians who were so concerned about President Clinton’s sex life insist that President Bush testify under oath as to whether or not he had sexual relations with that woman?”
Comment by Briseadh+na+Faire
********Dear Braid Faire – Thank You (!!) for taking the time to contribute to the conversation in your usual manner. Your hypocrisy and superficiality are quite amusing – not very illuminating — but amusing…
***Back on thread – “Bush Said “Most Urgent Threat†Was Ballistic Missiles. In a speech on May 1, 2001, Bush said, “Unlike the Cold War, today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.†[Bush, 5/1/01]”
*******Dear Faiz – I don’t blame you for including this speech segment in your copy. AfterALL, our President should have KNOWN on 05/01/01 that the US would have 19 Islamic radicals hijack four planes from the East Coast on 9/11.
Loaded with fuel and hell-bent for destruction. it is unconscieneable that our President, having the premonition that 9/11 was about to occur was worried about a little country named North Korea. Who cares that the NK’s had been selling weapons which were intercepted on the way to “Palestine”? Why should the President have been concerned that nuclear Pakistan had a diplomatic arrangement with the Taliban?? So a few people died as a result of Irann and puppet Syria controlling the purse strings of Hezbollah??
No offense, Faiz, but your copy appears trite, desperate and whiny. I do have a constructive suggestion — why doesn’t the staff of TP research and write about the POSITIVE mid-term agenda the Democrats are proposing? Let’s have some concrete examples of the well-thought out plaform honed by the Dems and Progs. Every Dem friend I have talked to lately KNOWS they HATE Repubs, but they haven’t gotten the positive “talking points” from the Party apparatachik. Hope this helps……
September 26th, 2006 at 4:08 pmSorry, I didn’t see that last item the first time I read the post.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:10 pmI pulled out my copy of Richard Clarke’s book and found that I had highlighted a number of passages.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:19 pmClarke was not 100 flattering to Clinton, neither to the Bushies.
But for Clinton to indicate that Clarke reported history pretty factually, says something about Clinton’s ability to fault himself for failed attempts, but it says more about Bush’s inability to accept responsibility for dereliction and neglect.
Missile defense and Saddam before he took office
Senate committee votes to cut president’s missile defense plan
By a party-line vote Friday, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee cut the Bush administration’s budget for missile defense spending next year by $1.3 billion. The vote was 13-12.
September 7, 2001
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/09/07/senate.defense/index.html
Bush team sets ambitious target in Iraq policy
September 26th, 2006 at 4:27 pmDecember 19, 2000
Coupled with Bush’s remark in a campaign debate with Vice President Al Gore on Oct. 11, that he wanted the sanctions to be tougher, Powell added to the impression that a Bush administration would try to tighten the screws on Iraq.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/19/bush.iraq.reut/index.html
Well, to be fair to the Bush admin…their defenition of defense is to go to your enemies countries (or anybody you just don’t like the looks of) and bomb them.
So in a way, I’d say their missile defense policy and terrorism defense policy are one and the same. They just go and bomb everyone.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:33 pmThe fact that Bush’s choice for “National Security Advisor” was a professor of Russian studies was the first indicator for me that Bush was “out of touch”, thinking that “the Cold War” and standing up to The Ruskies was going to be this country’s greatest national security issue after 2000.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:50 pmDo not forget IRAQ, some paper trail (criticized Clinton for not doing enough about IRAQ + more):
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m23024&hd=0&size=1&l=e
September 26th, 2006 at 5:41 pmRice was indeed a poor choice, but not for the reason that she is a Russian “expert.” Rather, the likelihood is that she is a Russian “asset.”
I won’t go into the details of how her academic work on the subject of Russia is suspect as well as inferior, or how suspicious it is that she spent 1978 as an exchange student studying in the USSR, nor will I attempt to explain how her mentor, Josef Korbel (father of Madelaine Alright) was himself a communist.
What I will do is tell you that the Cold War never ended, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a strategic deception designed to pave the way fro the destruction of America, and that we have all been deceived by it.
The space-based missile defense program initiated by Reagan and resurrected by Bush posed an unacceptable threat to the plans of the Soviets. That Bush made it a top priority indicates that it is likely that he was aware that glasnost and perestroika were deceptive Soviet maneuvers as indicated by Golitsyn, and if the Russians had not intended to ramp up their terror operations against the US as early as 9-11-2001 when Bush took office, or if they had intended to allow convergence to continue to work effectively against this nation, as they likely could have had a Democrat been elected to office, terror war-by-proxy was necessitated by, if nothing else, Bush’s decision to complete the vitally important space-based missile defense shield, as he has begun to do.
Do not expect that our missile defense shield, scheduled to be 100% installed by the end of 2007, will be allowed to be completed. The Final Phase of the Soviet plan won’t allow it.
What is the Final Phase? Click my name and find out.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:10 pmThe team who convicted Ramzi Yousef told the press in 1997 that they knew
about the plot to fly planes into the WTC and Pentagon. When I realized that
meant the very counter-terrorist law enforcement and intelligence
agencies who who needed to know already knew, and that thousands of
people read the list of targets in 1998, I realized the plotters were counting
on inside help. Pre-announcing a sneak attack makes it something else.
By evaluating who stood to gain and who would be in a position to create the
necessary conditions, I was able in July 1999 to guess the date and time of
the attack. I told everyone who would listen, but I really thought more
people would remember the news items from the Yousef trial. Instead,
years later, every damn thing I read about 9/11 misrepresents it as a
complete surprise to the people who needed to know.
Remember that the week before the August 6 PDB, in Genoa, Shrub’n’
Condi slept on an aircraft carrier in case the planes-into-buildings attack
took place there, despite the air patrols and surface-to-air batteries that
the Italian authorities put in place on Pentagon advice. After no attempt
was made in Genoa, they crowed about how the publicity around their
air defense precautions let attackers know it wasn’t worth trying.
That’s how you protect a target when you don’t know who the attackers
are to be, that is, when your Pentagon intelligence guys are not already
buying photos of the suspects and pasting Post-Its over them.
AnyCondi.mp3
September 26th, 2006 at 7:52 pmAnyCondiCould.mp3
Rather, the likelihood is that she is a Russian “asset.†Comment by Pacepaâ€
If that’s the case, she’s been a spy for decades, no? And yet the Soviet Union fell, despite her best efforts – not a very wise investment on their part, eh?
September 26th, 2006 at 9:35 pm“All warfare is based on deception.”
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”
“A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”
All quotes by Sun Tzu, the Chinese military genius who wrote the book The Art of War some 2,500 years ago. It is required reading for every Soviet intelligence agent.
Again, the “collapse” of the Soviet Union was a strategic deception.
September 26th, 2006 at 11:56 pmthe olbermann playlist on youtube! a must see
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1D14E64E0701DB37
September 27th, 2006 at 4:19 am“Pay no attention to that negress house slave behind the curtain!”…
-Condi-
September 27th, 2006 at 10:00 amAnd lest it be forgotten, Chris Wallace still sucks.
September 27th, 2006 at 11:02 amBush Administration’s Pre-9/11 Focus was LIHOP on 9/11 and then invading most of the middle east.
September 27th, 2006 at 3:53 pm[...] Bush Administration s Pre-9/11 Focus Was Missile Defense, Not Think Progress, DC – Sep 26, 2006 While the Bush administration should have been preparing for a potential terrorist attack, it was instead focused on developing a costly missile defense system [...]
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm