Could Bush Have Prevented the September 11 Attacks?

TruthNews Commentary, May 22, 2002

The strain of supporting the war on terrorism the last 8 months has become too great for Congressional Democrats, who are now trying gain political advantage over recent "revelations" that the Bush administration received intelligence warnings about potential terrorist attacks prior to the September 11 attacks. But a review of the facts shows that the Democrats' allegations are completely without foundation.

Intelligence information in general is difficult to act upon because the information is often too general a nature to take specific actions. Intelligence is often like tornado warnings (and about as accurate). If the National Weather Service issued a warning that a tornado would strike at the corner of Pennsylvania and East Capitol Streets in Washington D.C. at 10:22 a.m. on the 5th of June, this would be useful information. Everyone would know to avoid that particular intersection at 10:22 a.m. on the 5th. But if a tornado watch is issued for half the eastern seaboard for the next 12 hours, the information can hardly be acted on, especially if you don't have a basement.

Such was the case with Pearl Harbor. U.S. analysts had broken the Japanese code and determined that the Japanese were likely to attack U.S. interests in the Pacific. But the location and precise timing of the attack were unknown. The most likely location for an attack was the Philippines, which was, in fact, invaded shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Numerous other targets existed throughout the Pacific, including Wake Island and the West Coast itself. But the U.S. Pacific fleet was too weak to defend against all possible threats, so the intelligence information regarding the impending attack was essentially useless. Is anyone investigating Franklin Roosevelt about this? Maybe we should recall all the dimes and scrape his face off.

The intelligence warnings prior to September 11 were even less useful than the Pearl Harbor warnings. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice told a May 16 press conference that, "In the April-May [2001] time frame, there was specific threat reporting about al Qaeda attacks against U.S. targets or interest that might be in the works. Now, there was a clear concern that something was up, that something was coming, but it was principally focused overseas. The areas of those concern were the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and Europe." Overseas military and diplomatic installations have always been prime targets for terrorism because it's easier for the terrorists to operate there. Osama Bin Laden attacked U.S. targets three times during the Clinton regime, all if them an overseas.

• In 1996, Muslim terrorists exploded a truck bomb outside an Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 airmen and wounding hundreds more.

• In 1998, Muslim terrorists blew up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 212 people and wounding thousands.

• In 2000, the American destroyer USS Cole was attacked by Muslim suicide bombers in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39.

You might say that we should "expect the unexpected," but intelligence is based on facts, not on speculation. One of the fundamental problems with intelligence is that much of it relies on mistakes by the enemy. If the enemy plans an attack well and makes no mistakes in execution (as occurred with both the 9/11 attacks and Pearl Harbor), there may be no intelligence warning at all.

Speaking of speculation, on August 6th of 2001, President Bush, according to Rice, "received a presidential daily briefing which was not a warning briefing, but an analytic report. This analytic report... talked about [Osama Bin Ladin's] methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically... It mentioned hijacking, but... said that the most important and most likely thing was that they would take over an airliner, holding passengers and demand the release of one of their operatives." This "analytical report," which the Democrats are now making so much of, is not intelligence at all but rather a study of what Bin Laden had done in the past in order to make some predictions about what he might do in the future. To say that Bush had warning of an attack and failed to do anything about it is like blaming the governor of California for earthquakes in Los Angeles. Experts are always warning of the impending "big one" so why hasn't the governor evacuated LA?

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, points out that there are many intelligence warnings of potential threats. " I receive frequent classified briefings on various threats to American interests, many of which suggest awful things that could or might happen someday, somewhere in the world," Inhofe said in a May 17 statement. "There are literally thousands of scraps of information about such threats out there at any given time. Most of them turn out to be false alarms." Inhofe concludes that "It is my understanding that the information the President received last year about possible hijackings was so lacking in detail, specificity or credibility that it never made the cover page any intelligence briefing. It is totally wrong to suggest that such briefings should have prompted some presidential action that would have stopped the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those who are saying this do not understand the nature of these intelligence briefings."

Even the left-wing Brookings Institution, normally a mouthpiece for the Democratic position, supports Bush on this issue. Stephen Hess, Senior Fellow of the Washington-based think tank, said in an interview, "From the way the National Security Advisor explains the information that they had, it all seems far too general in nature... That doesn't help very much in terms of what the government does except be more alert." Hess concludes by saying of the Democrats demand for an investigation that "most of that is pure politics and quite irresponsible."

Senator Inhofe perhaps said it best about this partisan political attack:

I find it offensive that so many liberal Democrats in Washington, including a bunch of floundering, would-be presidential candidates, are trying to score cheap partisan points by exploiting leaks about intelligence briefings. It is especially outrageous for them to insinuate that President Bush could have prevented the September 11 attacks.

Spreading such an obvious lie is despicable. It shows complete disregard for the families of the victims of September 11, who are only being emotionally traumatized by erroneous suggestions that, if only they had known what was going to happen, their loved ones wouldn't have boarded those planes.

If anyone should be blamed in these attacks, it should be Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, who failed to provide any meaningful response to three attacks by Bin Laden that killed 248 people, who threw open the nation's doors to immigration by anyone who might vote Democratic, and who sent 160 armed agents to conduct a nighttime raid to deport a 6-year old Cuban boy, gassing bystanders in the process, but failed to stop 19 terrorists from entering the country, overstaying their visas, and training at U.S. flight schools. This, in fact, is the lesson to be learned from 9/11 -- to fight terrorism, you must fight it in its infancy, before the terrorists have a chance to attack, and destroy those who support terrorism. Just going after Bin Laden and Al Quada isn't enough -- we must go after all of those incipient terrorist movements that might someday try to follow in Bin Laden's sordid footprints.

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