If Gore were president during 9/11?

[ogsball]

Someone one C-Span (I think) was speculating this weekend about a number of things involved with the elections. She asked "What if Gore were president during 9/11?" Her answer surprised me she said "the republicans would have given him hell for allowing such a thing to happen and then they would have impeached him. It would have torn the country apart." She said it almost as if she were glad the republicans were in power because they would have torn the country apart.

I think she was right. I think we need another Gandhi.

[LisaLynne]

1. That's sort of what my mother says.

She's afraid of the RW because they are so rabid and mean about things. I look at them like bullies. Yeah, bullies are mean and they can actually hurt you, but if you don't stand up to them, your life becomes unbearable real quick and you are selling out fairness and justice.

You don't back down from somebody because they are an irrational jerk without letting irrationality and ... er ... jerkiness prevail!

[InvisibleBallots]

22. Republicans enjoy hurting people

not all of them obviously, but Republicanism attracts certain personality types. Just listen to the radio for 10 minutes and it's obvious the GOP attract bullies and their masochistic fans.

[Ducks In A Row]

2. it wouldn't have happened because he would have carried on the work...

he and clinton started.

bush hates to be reminder of that.

[PragMantisT]

3. It would have been just another day

And he could have read to schoolchildren all day.

[pacalo]

15. I'm with you. It would have been just another beautiful September day.

[PragMantisT]

24. Cool name 8

Sorry you had to change it.

[mandyky]

4. If Gore's August 6th PDB was titled Bin Laden determined

to strike in the US and Gore had stayed on vacation the rest of the month, _I'd_ have wanted him impeached! LOL So imagine what the GOP would have done, and they wouldn't have waited until the 911 Commission either. In away, I agree with the CSpan caller, it would have been a disaster for Dems had a Dem been president and 911 happened. As it is they blame Clinton, even though he'd been gone for 9 months.

[ZombieNixon]

26. I think Gore would have been at the White House on August 6th.

He wouldn't have GONE on vacation and 9/11 would have never happened.

[wurzel]

5. There is no doubt about that.

There would have been no "rally round the President", that's for sure. Can you imagine what the Republicans would have done if the Gore family had the same relationship to the Saudis as the Bush family? Frankly one of the great failures of the Democratic Party is to educate even their own supporters about the true nature of the Republican Party.

[ramapo]

6. Red meat for the wolves

Gore would've been ripped to shreds, then impeached for treason.

Hell they might've brought Clinton up on charges too. After all, Bush's regime tried blaming Clinton anyway.

[RBHam]

7. 9-11 would never have happened under Gore...

He would never have signed off on it.

Google search "operation Northwoods" and see how John Kennedy stopped the Joint Chiefs from staging their own version of 9-11 to justify invading Cuba...

There is nothing new under the sun. Rove reads Machiavelli and Goebbels religiously...

[pacalo]

16. I agree.

[lenidog]

21. Then I guess its time to start

reading Machiavelli and Goebbels. For as Sun Tzu says "Know your enemy as you know yourself and you will always have victory."

[Maccagirl]

8. I've been saying the same thing from day one

That if 9/11 had happened on President Gore's watch-there wouldn't be a President Gore. Impeachment proceedings would have started the next day no matter what his response.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. The News from 9-11-2001 (alternative universe #95003874)

"In other news today, Republicans on the House Foreign Relations Committee denounced President Gore's August 17th order to detain 36 Saudi nationals on suspicion of terrorism. The Saudis, all of whom have connections to controversial financier Osama bin Laden, are accused of plotting to pilot jumbo jets into the Pentagon, the White House, and the World Trade Center to create a state of chaos in the United States.

"House leader DeLay issued a statement calling for Gore to resign the presidency over 'this reprehensible abuse of Executive power' and is said to be drawing up Articles of Impeachment against Gore, although his office will neither confirm nor deny these reports.

"On the other side of the political landscape, one-time Gore rival Ralph Nader called Gore 'worse than Hitler' in a speech last night at the University of Massachussetts at Amherst. Nader has made a concerted effort to reach out to conservative activists from what he calls 'the loyal opposition' to work for laws that would make such preventive detention illegal.

"Meanwhile, an embattled President Gore maintains that several intelligence agencies, including foreign agencies such as the Israeli Mossad and British MI-6, provided what he calls 'indisputable proof' of the attacks, originally planned for this week, to coincide with the Muslim New Year. In a statement issued yesterday, Gore said 'we have no idea exactly how much destruction and grief would have come to America, but estimates in the thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars have been provided by reliable observers of terrorism'.

"And finally, George W. Bush, who was defeated by Mr. Gore last November in a bitterly contested post-election legal drama, said in a speech today to the conservative Manhattan Institute, that 'Al Gore has attacked a close family friend as a way of getting revengance on me. He couldn't do it with the activist courts and his fancy trial lawyers, so he's going after Osama, a good family friend of mine I grew up with and consider to be my good friend.'

"Next on Nightly News: Britney Spears' new smoking habit -- will it sway kids to light up? The Surgeon General issues a warning."

--p!

[Karmadillo]

10. President Gore: A Look Back

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0430-04.htm

Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2003
President Gore: A Look Back
by Ted Rall

DAYTON, OHIO--Few political observers anticipated the widespread resentment that followed Al Gore's controversial assumption of the presidency in December 2000. "The U.S. Supreme Court merely adhered to the Constitution when it refused to hear Bush's appeal of the Florida ruling," notes a Harvard law professor now living in exile in France. "Federal courts have no jurisdiction over election disputes, which in the United States are a state matter." Although the ensuing recount ultimately gave Florida to Gore by a comfortable thousand-vote margin, Republicans refused to accept the results. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh continued to refer to Gore as "Vice President Gore" and "Resident-in-Chief" and listed the time remaining in Gore's first term as "days left in captivity for the American people."

Republican candidate George W. Bush, meanwhile, refused to concede defeat. "Make no mistake," the former Texas governor declared from self-proclaimed "internal exile" in Crawford, Texas, "that man will never be my president." The GOP filed a slew of lawsuits challenging the election results, and right-wing militia groups issued dark threats about overthrowing Gore's "illegal junta."

Despite Gore's attempts to govern from the center--he appointed several Republicans to his cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Colin Powell--Congressional Republicans and their conservative Democratic allies stonewalled early Gore Administration attempts to deliver on key campaign promises. The Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Bills to slash federal taxes for poor and middle-class workers, ban oil drilling in national wildlife refuges and crack down on corporate crime failed to make it out of Republican-controlled committees in the House. Senator Trent Lott let the President know that he could expect more of the same in the future: "It is my party's duty to represent the 48 percent of the voters who did not support Al Gore, and that's exactly what we're going to do," he said.

Gore's polls, already falling due to the lagging economy, hit rock bottom in the weeks after the September 11th attacks. "People rightly blamed the Commander-in-Chief for not doing anything to intercept planes that had clearly been hijacked and for ignoring warnings of an imminent threat," says a GOP pollster. "But concern about incompetence quickly segued into the 'wimp thing.' Disgust at Gore's cowardice became widespread when he abandoned Washington to the terrorists and flew off to hide in that silo under Nebraska. Diligent journalists then reminded Americans how he'd wussed out of Vietnam by joining the Tennessee Air National Guard and then going AWOL, and for many voters that was that."

more...

[Robeson]

11. 9/11 would have never happened. Gore isn't incompetent.

[Digit]

19. I agree, 9/11 would not have happened under Gore.

Gore would never have orchestrated it.

[Robeson]

20. Yes, I should have added: "or complicit".

[RBHam]

12. Pentagon Proposed Pretexts Fore Cuba Invasion

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

[RBHam]

14. "the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

Until the year 2001 that is...

[journalist3072]

13. I agree with the caller........

If Al Gore had been President on that day, he would have been raked over the coals by the Republican Party. They would have asked that famous question that was asked during Watergate: What did the President know and when did he know it?"

I wholeheartedly believe that if Al Gore had received a PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States," the month before 9/11, he would have been impeached in the House of Represenatives, and removed from office by the Senate.

[UdoKier]

17. What 9/11?

If Gore had been allowed to assume the presidency (as he was entitled to do), September 11, 2001 would have been just a sunny day like any other in NYC.

I believe that as strongly as I believe the Earth is round, and evolution is proven scientific fact.

[UrbScotty]

18. Gore is on record against invading Iraq.

Instead, he would have kept his focus on Al-Qaida!

Osama bin Laden would likely be in our hands if Gore were President.

Plain and simple.

[RBHam]

23. kick

nt

[fujiyama]

25. That's what would have happened

IF Gore was as incompetant and inattentive to the security threats.

The 9/11 attacks very likely would have been averted had Gore been president. It would have been just another beautiful late summer day.

[blm]

27. Gore would have READ and acted on the Hart-Rudman Report on Global Terror

when it was handed to him on Jan 30, 2001.

Bush REFUSED to read the report and stuck it on a shelf.

[louis c]

28. It would just have been another day....

He would have prevented the disaster.

Bush was incompetent, and still is.

anyone who received that August memo stating that bin Laden was ready to strike within the U.S. would have acted.

Any amount of increased security and public awareness could have thwarted the 9/11 scheme.

certainly the Phoenix memo would have moved further up the chain if the bin Laden threat was made public or at least sent out to all the FBI field offices.

As well as alerting the air lines. This should have been the minimum done by any thinking person in authority.

Instead, President Knucklehead ignored the memo.

I still say if Gore, or almost anyone else were President, 9/11 would have been prevented.

[chicagiana]

29. Moot question ...

... 9/11 wouldn't have happened if Gore was president.