Bush Says He Lacked Info on Sept. 11

[Florida_Geek]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sept-11-Commission.html

April 5, 2004
Bush Says He Lacked Info on Sept. 11
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:19 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Monday he will tell the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that his administration lacked the information needed to prevent the terrorists from striking.

The federal panel reviewing the attacks plans to meet soon with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in a joint private session to determine whether anything could have been done to stop the attacks.

A date for the meeting has been set but neither the commission nor the White House has disclosed it. Bush said he looks forward to ``sharing information with them.''

``Let me just be very clear about this,'' he said. ``Had we had the information that was necessary to stop an attack, I'd have stopped the attack. ... If we'd have known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we would have done everything in our power to stop it.''

.....more at AP....

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. "I mean, we would have cut some taxes and bombed Iraq"

"That woulda dun it!"

[htuttle]

2. He's seriously parsing that claim

``Let me just be very clear about this,'' he said. ``Had we had the information that was necessary to stop an attack, I'd have stopped the attack. ... If we'd have known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we would have done everything in our power to stop it.''

"Had we the information that was necessary to stop an attack..."
"If we'd have known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings..."

Not exactly unequivocal, is it?

[leesa]

12. Even when he DID know that someone was flying airplanes into

buildings, he did nothing. Why would we believe he would have stopped it he knew about it in advance? Somebody ordered the fighter jets to stand down. Is this the response he means?

[joeunderdog]

32. Why did they know nothing about who did it at 9am

and have Osama Bin Laden's picture on tv by 2pm? Did they find a smoking gun in the rubble...a monogrammed boxcutter, perhaps.

That's good, fast investigating.

[boobooday]

3. Did you see the video?

He was looking even more whacked than usual. Nervous. Twitchy.

Scary.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[bahrbearian]

8. More wacked.

must be time for a pretzel party,,,all alone in the room by himself. The guy can't be trusted,,,I hope there's no buttons in the room.

[lightbulb]

34. Do you mean this video?

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/washingtondc/media/video/6/9_11laugh.mpg

Just can't get enough of this one.

[jimshoes]

4. Gee chimpy...

what did you expect the terraist's to do .... send you a f_cking note?

[Skittles]

9. you know it, jimshoes

what a f***ing moron - he's acting like it had to be laid out in grade school format on his desk, with pictures, for him to pay attention to it.

[leesa]

15. The "terrorists" may not have sent him a note, but plenty of other heads

of state and intelligence representatives did.

[punpirate]

5. Ah, the Sergeant Schultz defense....

"I know... NOTHING!"

[bahrbearian]

6. Man how can you trust someone who won't even read a Newspaper.

I knew something was up just reading the Headline's that summer.

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. Bush lacked fundamental ethical and moral judgment prior

to and after 9/11. He is a subhuman beast. He remains completely unphased by all of this and totally unrepentant.

[chelaque liberal]

10. Is he pleading incompetence?

It's his job to know.

[htuttle]

13. Pleading incompetence is the Neo-American Way

Think about all those corporate corruption scandals last year and in 2002.

In nearly each one, the CEO and the board provided excuses like:

"I had no knowledge of our corporate investments."
"I had no idea that our profit figures were exaggerated."
"I had no idea that not paying corporate taxes was illegal."


Which, of course, begs the question: what do any of these people actually do to deserve their pay?

Bush is, of course, the poster child for this new management technique.

[chelaque liberal]

19. They learned it from the best

Ronald Reagan, Iran Contra, "didn't recall"
George H W Bush Iran Contra "Out of the loop"

[Octafish]

36. Like Poppy, like putrid son.

The old man never once took the fall. It was always some other fellah. World War II. Habana. Dallas. Vietnam. Watergate. October Surprise. Iraq-gate. BNL. Iran-Contra. BCCI. Savings & Loans. Selection 2000. 9-11. War on Terra. All the work of the Bush Organized Crime Family, stooges for the military-industrial-CIA-Mafia-KKK-NAZI Thing that acts as the War Party.

[gulliver]

38. Bingo. n/t

[Dulcinea]

11. Neither Boy George nor anyone in this administration...

can admit that they completely dropped the ball.

They're ideologues, and ideologues never, ever think they're wrong about anything.

[leesa]

17. They didn't drop the ball, they took the ball and hid it.

It was the only way they could have their Trifecta.

[bobthedrummer]

14. George W. Bush to the press at Camp David, 9-15-2001

"This is an administration that will not talk about how we gather intelligence, how we know what we're going to do, nor what our plans are."

FLIP,FLOP...

[Marthe48]

16. He DIDN"T KNOW?

what a load of crap

[chelaque liberal]

18. Stand down order found. New instructions issued June 2001

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A (dated 1 June 2001) was issued for the purpose of providing "guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects." This new instruction superseded CJCSI 3610.01 of 31 July 1997.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1345998

[pacifictiger]

20. just like he didn't know Harken

was in financial doodoo when he was on their audit committee.
In other words, he was privy to audit details, sold his stock at a huge profit and got out - right before the truth came out.

[Catherine Vincent]

21. Lacked info?

Richard Clarke is probably blowing a fuse!

[Generator]

25. But, he didn't know it was going to be on September 11th

so what could he do? (big Texas smirk and shrug) Those warnings never gave a date, darn it!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4660387/

Sibel Edmonds has made it into Newsweek, but only as a snip quote:

"President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11 and that is accurate, but only because he said September 11." Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI Turkish-American translator, claiming that U.S. senior officials didn't know the exact date terrorists would strike, but they knew of Al Qaeda's plans to attack with aircraft.

That's mainstream media, too bad it didn't merit an article!

[Catherine Vincent]

26. Welcome to DU, Generator!

:bounce: :hi: :bounce:

[newyawker99]

30. Hi Generator!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MasonJar]

22. Don't you believe him? He barely knows how to say "gooder."

[philosophie_en_rose]

23. Anyone see a buck?

I thought it was supposed to stop somewhere.

:shrug:

[Mz Pip]

24. Bush's brain is a sieve

He retains nothing. Doesn't matter what he was told, he didn't get it didn't remember it, didn't think it was important, didn't want to be bothered, didn't care, didn't have the time, didn't want to put in the effort. Yada, yada , yada.

MzPip
:dem:

[GaryL]

27. A friend of mine claims he has perfected ignorance.

I, on the other hand, believe him to be a perfect a**hole.

[Generator]

28. Another whistleblower

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37903


WASHINGTON -- When he watched the planes hit the Twin Towers on 9-11, former FBI translator Behrooz Sarshar says he "immediately" remembered a tip about an al-Qaida plot the bureau got from an informant more than four months before the terror group attacked America.

Sources familiar with the briefing say the FBI informant told two FBI agents from the Washington field office in April 2001 that his sources in Afghanistan had heard of an al-Qaida plot to attack America in a suicide mission involving planes. Sarshar, fluent in Farsi, acted as an interpreter at the meeting, held at a Washington-area residence.

Interesting article..too bad we have to rely on WorldNet Daily for this stuff! He testified before the 9/11 commission, how much more is there out there that THEY know and we never will?

[jimshoes]

33. It would be good to know who was at that

meeting. In fact, it why is a farsi speaking informant in a Washington area residence? Is that normal? Who were the 2 FBI guys and have they testified to the 9-11 Commission?

[carolinayellowdog]

29. What can Gorelick reveal?

It seems to me that a Democrat who knows exactly what was in the daily briefings would have a hard time standing by while * lies about them. Is this something that is supposed to remain secret forever?

[bushisanidiot]

31. "Lacked Info"?? Hell, He lacked a friggin' brain! He lacked LEADERSHIP

skills!!

what a friggin' excuse making loser!

[johnnie]

35. Any story

With the heading being "Bush says"..probably isn't worth shit.

[DrBB]

37. How to turn a damning admission into a defiant self-justification

"We didn't have the information we needed to stop 9/11."

Okay. Why not? Wasn't that Job #1? Protect America from attack? And if you didn't do it, isn't the presumption, then, that you fucked up unless proven otherwise? If you didn't have the information you needed, you owe us an explanation as to WHY you didn't have it. Other terrorist attacks have been stopped; why not this one? Unless proven otherwise, "We didn't have enough information" is a declaration of failure, not guiltlessness.

[Lisa]

39. "enemies foreign and domestic" -- you PROMISED, George

You raised your hand and swore a solemn oath to do everything you could to protect your people. (And by this I mean "Americans", not just the ones who voted for you or gave you money.)

If the best you can do is try to cover your own behind, without even the teensiest "I'm sorry" -- I pity you. If you offered to let me slap your face on live TV to make this all go away, I wouldn't do it. Instead I would bring out my friend, whose husband went off to work on that day and never came back, and have you explain to her and her little girl why you didn't try to save Daddy. You had two chances to save him. You could have connected the dots when the warning bells were going off in August. Or you could have told them to turn the planes around, instead of sitting in that Florida classroom waiting for someone else to make all the decisions for you.