What specifically do you think they could have been doing between noon on 20 January and midnight on 10 September which could have prevented (not simply delayed) the events of 11 September? "That's what the commission is supposed to find out" is not the answer. The commission's duty is to find out why such action was not taken if indeed there was any such action that could have been taken to prevent the terrorist attacks on 11 Sep 2001. I'm asking what action(s) the Bush administration could conceivably have taken between the time they got into office and the instant before the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center which could have prevented the attacks. Also, what would have been the other consequences of such action(s)?
Let's say, just for the sake of example, that they could have taken more seriously the warnings that Al Qaeda was going to try to hijack planes to crash into buildings (which, contrary to their protestations, they had been alerted to). They could have issued warnings to airlines to train personnel to resist hijackers (instead of the notion to let them take the plane on the idea that hijackers would not be suicidal). They could have beefed up airport security, added sky marshals, made it more difficult to get into airliner cockpits, stationed air patrols along major air corridors, etc. They could have taken seriously warnings about people on terrorist lists taking flight training who appeared not to be interested in learning how to land planes. They could have started tightening student visa controls, beefed up security at ports (which they still haven't done), warned the American public, built an international alliance against Al Qaeda. Bush claims to believe in preemptive war - they had enough intelligence before 9-11 to go into Afghanistan after Al Qaeda before the attacks.
These things are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are far more things they could have done - had they taken all the many warnings seriously. Instead they didn't do any of them, and as soon as the attacks occurred, they immediately fixated on Iraq.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------
Tom Beck
my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/
"I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last." - Dr. Jerry Pournelle
------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
