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Its the Stupidity, Stupid

By David Sirota

Bush campaign ads invoking images of Ground Zero are designed to make it seem as if the president took office on 9/12, instead of eight months before hand, when 9/11 might have been prevented.
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“What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

For an older generation, this Watergate-era question encapsulated how America stopped trusting its leadership. But as President George W. Bush now claims he had no warnings of a terrorist attack before 9/11, our generation is facing a similar crisis of confidence and has a similar question: “What didn’t the president know, and why didn’t he know it?”

The facts are clear: The intelligence community issued 12 separate warnings that terrorists were planning to use airplanes as missiles. The Wall Street Journal noted that the warnings were consistent with earlier intelligence showing that al Qaeda planned to “use passenger jets as kamikaze weapons” and consistent with a federal report in 1999 that said, “Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives … into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House.”

Despite this evidence, the Administration continues to offer the public little except denials that are then proved false. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed in 2002 that no one in the government knew terrorists “would try to use an airplane as a missile.” When confronted with evidence that her statement was untrue, Rice admitted to the 9/11 Commission in January 2004 that she misspoke, but then three months later she made the same claim in a March 22 Washington Post op-ed. She also claimed to never have been briefed on such a threat before 9/11 (as if not reading memos should absolve one of responsibility)—but Rice accompanied the president to the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy. There, she and the president were warned that Islamic terrorists were plotting to use airliners as missiles in a potential assassination attempt on world leaders attending the summit.

Similarly, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley claimed “all the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack, overseas.” Again, this is untrue. According to the bipartisan 9/11 congressional inquiry, in May 2001 the intelligence community reported “that bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States” to “carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives.” The panel also reported that during the same month, the Pentagon “acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven individuals associated with bin Laden departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

The president himself has gone even further in his denials: He has unequivocally stated that he had absolutely no idea of a terrorist threat on airlines before 9/11, claiming “if we’d had known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into a building, we would have done everything in our power to stop it.” The public plea of ignorance, however, is belied by the August 6, 2001, briefing the president personally received at his Crawford, Texas, mansion in which he was explicitly told Bin Laden’s associates could be planning to hijack airplanes in an attack on America.

In truth, one of two things is happening: Either the president and top officials are lying to the American public about what they knew before 9/11 in order to hide their gross negligence, or they are telling the truth and failed to grasp the importance of the dire warnings they were repeatedly given.

The lying scenario would be fairly typical of an administration that has become the Michelangelo of dishonesty. And, in one sense, it would be slightly more comforting than the “asleep at the wheel” scenario: It is better to have a White House that at least understood terror warnings even if it covers up past negligence in addressing them, rather than one that was intellectually incapable of grasping overt national security threats.

And that is where the Watergate-style questions arise: After receiving all the intelligence warnings, how could the president still not have known about a serious threat? What did he fail to comprehend? Why in 2001 did he insist on taking one of the longest summer vacations in White House history instead of acting on the intelligence he was given? And most importantly, if the administration as a whole failed to understand such explicit warnings in 2001, can it be trusted to grasp them now?

For its part, the Bush campaign wants none of these questions asked. Its ads invoking images of Ground Zero are designed to make it seem as if President Bush took office on 9/12, instead of eight months beforehand, when 9/11 might have been prevented. But there is something a little odd about a president running on his supposed ability to protect America while simultaneously admitting he was asleep at the wheel during the worst national security breakdown in American history. It is as if the president thinks voters are as ignorant of reality as he was ignorant of pre-9/11 intelligence.

But people are not stupid. And until President Bush provides real answers about why our country was so vulnerable on 9/11, it will be impossible to believe he has the capacity to secure America in the future.

David Sirota is a senior editor at In These Times and a bestselling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," was released in May 2008. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network -- both nonpartisan organizations.

More information about David Sirota
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  • Reader Comments

    Put aside your GW hatred for a second and consider the following for a moment:

    You have probably heard of the dirty-bomb scenario / plot.  Have you been in Hong Kong and seen all the shipping containers leaving he harbor?  Itís quite amazing!  Anyway, there are thousands of these containers that enter our ports daily… Which one would you choose to inspect for a dirty-bomb? 

    Aside from this being a valid analogy of intelligence data verses actionable security data, consider what the economic burden to inspect just 1% of all containers entering the US.  Not just the cost of inspection, but more so the cost in delays that are passed on to the retail sector and then to the consumer as the end user.  Consider the bonded warehouse fees for shipments pending inspection and the paperwork nightmare for such efforts. 

    Itís easier said than done.  Security efforts must remain within a realistic margin to yield any value.  We are a thriving economy because we are a ìfreeî capitalist system.  It ceases to be effective if you place road-blocks in the marketís infrastructure and we must accept the risks of being a free markets Nation. 

    In short, prior to 9/11 how many Americans would have tolerated the current post 9/11 security screening at airports? 

    Posted by Justo Perez on Apr 21, 2004 at 12:25 PM

    I don’t see much difference in whether the president knew about the possibility of an attack using planes or not before 9/11 but of course I am not american, and I am not used to thinking about my country as the navel of the world. The rest of the world is a very unsafe place, you know, where you can find your economy ruined in no time, where the armed forces you pay for can, with Mr. Kissinger’s approval, “disappear “ a lot of people for their “incorrect” political views. In the rest of the world you learn that although you may be living upon a fortune in oil, you will have to get used to live in poverty, you also learn that most of the now considered terrorists were trained and armed by the CIA to fight countries which at one time or another were considered as enemies by USA’s standards.
    The title of your article suits the purpose of my letter superbly. Don’t you think the American people should for a change at least try to understand the origin of the situation we all are in, instead of considering themselves as “free of sin” as children crying for safety with no analysis of the facts which
    they have contributed to create. While still moaning for the Twin Towers they seem to ignore all the destruction and uncertainty plus the killing of innocent people they have been performing in retaliation. Grow up, will you?

    Posted by Maria L. Etchart on Apr 21, 2004 at 1:12 PM

    Doubting the Official Narrative

    Interceptor jets were not scrambled in the hours, HOURS, after the first plane is off course; no detailed accounting of the failure between FAA, NORAD, or higher-ups is part of the official narrative.. 

    There have been other preposterous and shady ìfactsî, like finding a hijackerís passport in the rubble of WTC. Not teeth, mind you, but a flimsy passport. Remember, the fire is so hot, it supposedly melts asbestos covered steel resulting in the unusual collapse of the buildings. Indeed no forensic evidence has yet been found that identifies a SINGLE hijacker to the remains of any of the crashes.

    After reviewing the information on WTC-7, Iíve come to the conclusion that it is unprecedented that a steel structure built in 1985 could have come down, particularly in the way it did, by fire alone. http://www.wtc7.net/

    Other suspicious, uninvestigated matters: UAL stock put options. The man to focus on is CIA executive director ìBuzzyî Krongard. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html Absolutely devastating piece of information.

    Express visas are granted to Saudi nationals prior to 9-11, after warnings about a possible attack. After the attack, the US government is involved in a secretive mission to fly Saudi friends of Bush, high rollers, out of the country, even though some of them should be under investigation. Who were they?

    The Patriot Act, as a massive text, was written before 9-11.

    Bush is a terrible liar: http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/liar.htm

    Even if 9-11 events are a case of ìnegligenceî, then why isnít someone prosecuted for negligence?

    Ted Olson, a Bush insider who testified to the Supreme Court in favor of Bushís appointment to the presidency, now US Solicitor General, against astronomical odds, loses his wife on flight 77; also against all odds, he claims to have had a phone conversation with his wife on flight 77, the one that reportedly hit the pentagon. NO OTHER CALLS come from that flight. Below is a compilation of the preposterous conflicting accounts which Olson gives about his supposed conversation:

    http://www.humanunderground.com/11september/pent-data-77.html

    Posted by Doubting the Official Narrative on Apr 21, 2004 at 3:28 PM

    It would be preferable if the two scenarios cited by David Sirota about the administration’s culpability were the only ones that existed. Unfortunately, it’s all too possible that they knew plenty and allowed 9/11 to happen to advance their agenda(s). I’ve NEVER believed that Bush looked surprised in that Florida schoolroom. As Sirota himself points out, “Why in 2001 did he insist on taking one of the longest summer vacations in White House history”? Could there be a darker explanation, like staying out of the target zone? It’s not far-fetched in the least. And where was the Air Force, for G-d’s sake?? The ‘investigation’ is barely skin deep. I won’t even go into the fourth, and darkest of all possibilities…

    Posted by Will Rigby on Apr 21, 2004 at 9:12 PM

    It’s much as Mr. Sirota says. The administration was either lying about knowing nothing of the threat, or were too dumb to comprehend the data that pointed to it. I know I’m leaving out the plausibility of admin officials actually permitting 9/11 as a way of creating a climate of fear in America which they could exploit, but I shudder to suggest it. If by any hideous chance it might be true (I pray not!), then the rulers of America are in fact the enemies of the American people, enemies of freedom. Hey, where have I heard that one before...? Regime change, anyone?

    Posted by Kuya on Apr 22, 2004 at 1:26 AM

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Appeared in the May 10, 2004 Issue
Also by David Sirota
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