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A Shock, Not a Surprise
The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.
In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb.They killed six and wounded a thou-sand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U.S. helicopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as “Black Hawk down.”Years later it would be learned that those Somali tribes-men had received help from al Qaeda.
In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds.The attack was carried out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received help from the government of Iran.
Until 1997, the U.S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a financier of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God’s decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world, because of American “occupation” of Islam’s holy places and aggression against Muslims.
In August 1998, Bin Ladin’s group, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.The attacks killed 224 people,including 12 Americans,and wounded thousands more.
In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists, and a U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U.S. Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intended for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport.
In October 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden,Yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a destroyer, the USS Cole, almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors.
The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were far more elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by September 2001, the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Congress, the news media, and the American public had received clear warning that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers.
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Policy
Terrorism was not the overriding national security concern for the U.S. government under either the Clinton or the pre-9/11 Bush administration.
The policy challenges were linked to this failure of imagination. Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as practically inconceivable before 9/11.
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Management
The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot were also symptoms of a broader inability to adapt the way government manages problems to the new challenges of the twenty-first century.Action officers should have been able to draw on all available knowledge about al Qaeda in the government. Management should have ensured that information was shared and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic divide.
There were also broader management issues with respect to how top leaders set priorities and allocated resources. For instance, on December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials and the DDCI for Community Management, stating: “We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community.”The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. This episode indicates the limitations of the DCI’s authority over the direction of the intelligence community, including agencies within the Department of Defense.
The U.S. government did not find a way of pooling intelligence and using it to guide the planning and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving entities as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the military, and the agencies involved in homeland security.
If you want to play cute with the comments and the accusations pony boy it is in fact you that should be ashamed of yourself. I am not disrespecting a one of them it is the absolute fools comments here that are disrespectful to those people. Narcissistic clowns are some. I think the accuser here is just two notes short of a chord.
I would suggest next time you should express your opposition to them directly instead of creating a sarcastic post (which I missed sorry to say) that appeared rather cruel and off-kilter. I'll accept your explanation but don't ever resort to name-calling when you respond to someone. It detracts from the argument and yourself. If you disagree with the OP, cite why and be specific.
9/11 was a very good production brought to us by the powers that be. Of course, you don't know their names and you never will. You might think our President runs the country but he does not. Life as we know it is an illusion and few people have found the holes. But there were many on 9/11. Simply applying logic, there's no way so many unique coincidences could occur without foresight and planning. First time for buildings to collapse after a plane crash even though these were built with such a possibility in mind (recalling the 1940s crash into the Empire State Building). First time the black boxes from the planes were claimed to have been destroyed. Steel debris and any evidence quickly whisked out of the country by the same outfit that removed the Alfred P Murrah building debris from Oklahoma City. 100 days of 1000+ degree heat in the towers' basements without any plausible cause. Two earthquakes that preceded each actual collapse and at a magnitude larger than if the fall of the buildings had caused them. Intact windows on the Pentagon wall. Two weeks of nonstop television coverage and not one complaint from any network about the impact that must have had on their bottom line. It goes on and on. Your gut instinct should always rule.
I am glad you are hear to tell me how to think and how to post. That is a trait of the left as I have noticed over time.
What could any sane person extract from posts like this and others revealed here except sarcasm. In my preceding posts, try as I may to be sarcastic ,with a spontaneously creative post ,I barely rise to the incredulity of this garbage.
I have nothing against you House except your propensity to be a hypocrit. If you want to be taken serious try to be for real. This imaginary friend garbage is basically pretty immature. Just making a point. Believe as you will. Don't fall down the rabbit hole.
I was just entertaining myself having fun with the nuttyness of these posts.I don't belong on this thread so I will leave you good folks to your imaginations.
I still contend that my hologram theory is just as valid as yours.
I am glad you are hear to tell me how to think and how to post. That is a trait of the left as I have noticed over time.
What could any sane person extract from posts like this and others revealed here except sarcasm. In my preceding posts, try as I may to be sarcastic ,with a spontaneously creative post ,I barely rise to the incredulity of this garbage.
I have nothing against you House except your propensity to be a hypocrit. If you want to be taken serious try to be for real. This imaginary friend garbage is basically pretty immature. Just making a point. Believe as you will. Don't fall down the rabbit hole.
I was just entertaining myself having fun with the nuttyness of these posts.I don't belong on this thread so I will leave you good folks to your imaginations.
I still contend that my hologram theory is just as valid as yours.
I don't know where you are other than where the light shines but here in New York City where the attack used to push your agenda happened it is a sensitive subject! You might not be interested on what actually happened, but your posts discredits you from using 9/11 for your argument! Not that you won't try but when you do remember that you are being a hipocrite! I wonder how you would feel if I commented on that about an attack on your town! Your resonse to this is meaningless unless it includes an apology!
I don't know whether the US government (specifically Bush & Co ) intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen ... but there were way too many unanswered questions:
1. Why did Bush pretend like he had no idea a major attack was coming, when there were so many pre-9/11 warnings? Vladimir Putin stated he warned the US government two weeks before 9/11. CIA said they had a huge amount of terrorist-related chatter, which was significantly higher than normal. George Tenet was running around DC the entire summer of 2001 with his "hair on fire", knowing a major Al Qaeda attack was about to happen.
2. Why was Bush & Cheney's 9/11 testimony kept from the public? Why were no recording devices of any kind (including pencil/paper) allowed during their testimony? Why would they only testify together at the same time (obviously to keep their stories in sync)?
4. Why was the public never allowed to see any videos confiscated from the security camera in the store across the street from the Pentagon?
5. Why did Bush constantly "stonewall" the 9/11 commission whenever they requested documents from Bush?
6. Why did Bush initially allocate such a tiny amount of money (like $3 million) for the 9/11 investigation?
7. Why did Bush try to prevent an investigation into 9/11? It took the families of 9/11 victims EIGHTEEN MONTHS to convince Bush to conduct an investigation!
8. How did NORAD military training exercises (Operation Northern Shield, etc) get scheduled on precisely 9/11, which took most of our fighter jets away from U.S., and left us unprepared to react in the event of any attack? It also created a state of confusion at the Flight Control Centers who didn't know whether something was "training" or "real".
9. How coincidental that a top FBI official (John O'Neill), who was the most active agent investigating into Al Qaeda, was dismissed from the FBI in Summer 2001, and then took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center just two weeks before 9/11? O'Neill was one of those killed on 9/11 when the building collapsed.
10. Why did WTC building 7 collapse when it only had a small fire? Coincidentally, FEMA had it's office in WTC 7.
11. Why did the Anthrax attacks which occured two weeks after 9/11 target several top news anchors, and top Democrats in Congress? Was it to scare the media and Congress into not investigating too deep into 9/11?
12. Why did it take until Fall of 2008 before someone was finally held accountable for the 2001 Anthrax attack, and then that person just coincidentally commits suicide as soon as the public is aware of his identity? That seemed extremely suspicious!
13. The presidential limo is equipped with every imaginable type of communication device. Bush was in this limo when the first plane hit. Why did Bush continue to the elementary school, knowing a plane just struck the WTC? The images on the news at 8:45am showed the WTC with a huge plume of smoke. Why wouldn't the president consider "that" a serious enough national tradgedy to cancel a school photo-op?
14. The FAA was supposedly put on high-alert during the Summer of 2001. Why didn't they immediately notify the president, or National Security Council (Connie Rice, etc) when the first hijack was known, at around 8:15am?
15. Whatever happened to Zacarious Moussoui (sp?), the supposed 20th hijacker, who was taken into custody by the FBI in August 2001, before 9/11? Did he ever testify in court?
Such logical and intelligent questions and they have been floating around since 9/11. Yes, they are the white elephant in the room, but the problem is that there are so many white elephants these past few years that they are just commonplace and we are forced to accept them. Governmental secrecy and corruption has accelerated to such an extent that is is difficult to keep up with the latest scandal or controversy. If you question anything that does not add up, you are labeled a conspiracy theorist. All of the questions you posed were 100% valid and yet, where are the people demanding that the investigation be re-opened? Sorry state of affairs.
9/11 was a very good production brought to us by the powers that be. Of course, you don't know their names and you never will. You might think our President runs the country but he does not. Life as we know it is an illusion and few people have found the holes. But there were many on 9/11. Simply applying logic, there's no way so many unique coincidences could occur without foresight and planning. First time for buildings to collapse after a plane crash even though these were built with such a possibility in mind (recalling the 1940s crash into the Empire State Building).
That's the first time buildings of that size have ever been hit by a 767.
So the reality is EVERYTIME a 110 story building has been hit dead on by a Boeing 767 its collapsed.
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First time the black boxes from the planes were claimed to have been destroyed.
Aerospaceweb.org | Ask Us - Airliner Black Boxes The relevant part being: "Flight recorder design has improved considerably since the devices were first introduced in the 1950s. However, no recording device is perfect. Black boxes are sometimes never found or too badly damaged to recover some or all of the data from a crash. To reduce the likelihood of damage or loss, some more recent designs are self-ejecting and use the energy of impact to separate themselves from the aircraft."
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Steel debris and any evidence quickly whisked out of the country by the same outfit that removed the Alfred P Murrah building debris from Oklahoma City.
Which of the hundreds of outfits that were involved with both cleanups are you refering to? What other country were the debris whisked too?
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100 days of 1000+ degree heat in the towers' basements without any plausible cause.
References?
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Two earthquakes that preceded each actual collapse and at a magnitude larger than if the fall of the buildings had caused them.
Are you saying earthquakes collapsed the buildings? Or do you mean the seismic activity that correspondes exactly with the collapse of the building.
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Intact windows on the Pentagon wall.
Try looking at footage of any blast. There are always window that don't break. Entire cities have been bombed and windows have stayed intact.
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Two weeks of nonstop television coverage and not one complaint from any network about the impact that must have had on their bottom line.
Why would they complain about improved ratings. The networks decide what they are going to report. They covered it for 2 weeks because it made them money for 2 weeks.
Man people are still bringing this nonsense up? Look, Bush did a lot to destroy America, but running two planes into the twin towers was not one of them. There is no evidence whatsoever to say that the government had anything to do with it. Who was responsible for it, and if it was the government not taking a threat seriously are different questions, but 9/11 was NOT an inside job. Zeitgeist has done a lot to pollute American's minds.
And to those bringing up that the twin towers were built to withstand a plane crashing into them, 747s didn't even exist then.
And to those bringing up that the twin towers were built to withstand a plane crashing into them, 747s didn't even exist then.
The Boeing 747 was first flown in 1969 and began commercial flights in 1970. And the World Trade Center was systematically opened to commercial business between 1970-1973.
So not only had 747s been invented by the time The World Trade Center began commercial business, they were also flying regularly out of JFK.
Just a small hole in your (I'm guessing) made-up facts there nickeldude
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