If Al Gore Wasn't Cheated Out of Office, Then 9/11 Does Not Happen

[Yavin4]

If Al Gore had been allowed to take his rightfull place as president in 2001, we would have attacked Afghanistan, crushed Bin Laden, and 9/11 does not happen. The Clinton exchange and the 9/11 commission interview with Bush confirm this simple fact.

[gratuitous]

1. Right as rain; I've been saying it for five years

After watching the Bush administration fumble around from December 2000 to the end of August 2001, I think the planners and perpetrators had gotten a pretty fair measure of Bush and his corrupt cabal. Their failure to follow through on the USS Cole bombing, their complete pwning by the Chinese in the spy plane incident, their obsessive concentration on looting the Treasury, only interrupted by Bush's relentless vacation schedule, were all persuasive to the surviving planners of the 9/11 attacks that they would not suffer any retribution for their heinous deeds.

And they've been 100% right for more than five years. They took Bush's measure, found him wanting, and pulled off their evil caper. Mene mene tekel upharsin, indeed.

[Spoon]

4. So you think the planners cared what president we had in office?

lol

[Bridget Burke]

5. They knew there was an idiot in office....

At least one of Bush's failed businesses was partially underwritten by the Bin Ladins.

But the main reason is that Clinton & Gore were actually concerned about terrorism.

[Spoon]

11. The planners were yearning to attack us for a decade prior

to 9/11. Their major grievence was the US presence in Saudi Arabia, and the plan was going to move forward regardless of the political affiliation of our chief of state.

As to whether they would have been caught or not with Gore in office, is another story.

[Bridget Burke]

16. Bush's "political affiliation" was less important than his idiocy.

Or that of his handlers.

He (or they) ignored warnings.

[gratuitous]

12. No, I'm saying they were emboldened

Based on a shrewd assessment of Bush and his corrupt cabal's first eight months in office, they gauged their chances for success and their chances for getting away scot-free, something they knew they couldn't count on with Bill Clinton or a sympathetic successor in office. And the passage of time has proved them 100% correct. Bush didn't pursue the perpetrators, didn't stay focused on the real threat, and hared off to do some more looting of the Treasury, just like he'd been doing for the first eight months of his presidency.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Before 9-11

it was apparent to me that BushCo was doing everything they could to provoke a terrorist attack.

Everything they did was meant to piss people off. Their arrogance knew no bounds.

They knew everything. They had all the secret intelligence. We had to trust their judgments. No one could even question or criticize anything they did.

The amazing part was that they got away with it. The M$M was more then willing to support their fantasies. They were all in on it together.

[bigbrother05]

18. What you just said was the first thing in my mind

when the 2nd plane hit on 9-11. The first words out of my mouth were that the bastard had provoked it. He dared them to knock the chip off his shoulder and they smacked him (US) upside of the head with a two-by-four.

[Goat or Panic]

19. Katrina, Afghanistan, Iraq....

The list goes on and on of things Bush has fumbled. Why is is it so hard for people to entertain the thought that he wasn't on top of things before 9/11?

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. I think that is glaringly obvious now, though I always believed that

too be true.

[Captain Hilts]

3. No. Gore was distancing himself from Clinton.

He wouldn't have taken the total 'any way but the Clinton way' but there is no guarantee how he would have acted on this issue.

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. I think he would have paid attention to the Hart/Rudman report . One

thing we do know is that Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq, in retaliation, he said as much in a speech he gave.

[Captain Hilts]

17. No thinking president would have invaded Iraq. nt

[dave29]

21. Gore was more of a hawk than Clinton

He was also responsible for trying to get airport security tightened during the Clinton Presidency. I think he would have been more aggressive than even Clinton on terrorism.

[bullimiami]

6. he likely would have disrupted the hijackings

and if he missed that, he would have scrambled our defenses in time.

and if one or more of the planes had gotten through he would have waged an effective investigation and pursuit of the responsible parties.

he would have had so much good will and turned it into so much cooperation that the entire tenor of the world would be much different now.

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Usama would be on trial

in either NYC or DC at this point.

Clinton got the WTC 1993 bombers and they will now be spending the rest of their lives in jail.

Bush has even brought to trial a single major terrorist. Not one.

[Warpy]

8. He certainly would have put the recommendations

contained in the exhaustive Hart-Rudman report into action instead of tossing it onto a shelf unread until after 9/11.

He still would have been blocked by a GOP congress more concerned with protecting Enron than protecting the country, so we can't say for certain whether or not 9/11 would have happened.

The one man who allowed 9/11 to occur was Phil Gramm. He refused to let a bill out of committee that would have closed a lot of the offshore banking conduits that were financing the hijackers. This bill was proposed in 1996, and Gramm refused to consider it, calling it "fascist."

Enron was using those same offshore conduits to launder stockholder money and hide losses in dummy subsidiaries. Enron was more important than the lives of the nearly 3000 US citizens who died on 9/11.

[maxsolomon]

10. If my Aunt had balls...

no way to prove this one way or the other. IF one more supervisor in the Minneapolis FBI office had pushed to look at that computer, IF one flight instructor had been suspicious enough to contact the FBI, or hell, REFUSE to teach them how to fly without takeoff & landing training...

[The2ndWheel]

13. What?

Then it could've been 6/29. Or, like you said, maybe it doesn't happen. Or, maybe it doesn't happen until 2017. Or, maybe something worse happens.

And wait a second. Gore would have attacked Afghanistan without 9/11? What have we been complaining about all this time?

[johnnie]

14. I agree

I don't think Gore would have given the green light for the attacks. :)

Even if there had been attacks while Gore was in office, he wouldn't have sat around in a classroom looking like someone else just stole his last line of coke. He would have done something.

[Jack Rabbit]

20. I wouldn't be that certain about Gore preventing 911.

But the chances of that scenario being reality would have been a lot better, if only because of the null hypothesis (Bush did nothing, therefore he failed; anything anybody else would have done would have been more than Bush did).

We had a little fun at DU a while back writing an alternate history with Al Gore as President. Mine was one of the few that assumed that the September 11 attacks would have happened regardless of who was president, but it shows how much better Gore would have handled it.