Could we have stopped 9/11?

After recently watching Keith Olbermann's "8 Years of Bush in 8 minutes", he made sure to mention how a month before 9/11 (8/6, to be exact) he received a warning memo that bin laden was going to attack the U.S.

I know we're going to commonly refer back to this in the future, but do you think it was possible for Bush, even our Government to have stopped it?

Personally, I'd say no. There weren't any specifics on how or when it would happen, so what would Bush have done? Stop all traffic into the united states? Arrest every person in America from afghanistan?

It would be Impossible. Hell, even convincing Airports to spend more money on even stricter machines on the basis of a warning would have been impossible.

It's just bothering me how blame for the attack is being blamed on Bush for not acting. I just don't see how it could have been done...

What do you guys think?

Yes I feel it could have possibly been averted.

If the FBI, CIA, FBI and local authority's were allowed to share information, I think we could have lessened it's impact if not avert it completely.

Let me clarify something. I think we would have have a very slim of the attacks being completely averted. In the end if we had stopped just 1 hijacking, lives would have been saved.

Blackdog said:

If the FBI, CIA, FBI and local authority's were allowed to share information, I think we could have lessened it's impact if not avert it completely.

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Absolutely correct!

I'm extremely passionate about this very subject and now make my living working to help agencies correct this issue. The number one breakdown in our intelligence and law enforcement institutions prior to 9/11 was a culture of isolationism. Intelligence and information equated to bureaucratic power.

Thank God we making progress.

Lerxst said:

Absolutely correct!

I'm extremely passionate about this very subject and now make my living working to help agencies correct this issue. The number one breakdown in our intelligence and law enforcement institutions prior to 9/11 was a culture of isolationism. Intelligence and information equated to bureaucratic power.

Thank God we making progress.

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Blackdog said:

Yes I feel it could have possibly been averted.

If the FBI, CIA, FBI and local authority's were allowed to share information, I think we could have lessened it's impact if not avert it completely.

Let me clarify something. I think we would have have a very slim of the attacks being completely averted. In the end if we had stopped just 1 hijacking, lives would have been saved.

Click to expand...

Agreed. In some respects it was good to have 9/11 because it opened our eyes as a whole what we need to be better at.Please do not take this the wrong way.I say this in the best regard possible.My thoughts and prayers go to the victims and families daily.

I blame Bush for pretty much everything you can possibly blame a President for. However, I don't think there is any way that you can stop any terrorist from attacking a target (short of arresting every member of a terrorist cell, which is very difficult to do).

Terrorists have a world of options when it comes to when, where and how to conduct a mission. While we're busy strip-searching Granny before she gets on a Southwest flight to El Paso, some terrorist is busy training to do something that has nothing to do with commercial airlines.

America is famous for always preparing to fight the previous war.

ElephantPhil said:

After recently watching Keith Olbermann's "8 Years of Bush in 8 minutes", he made sure to mention how a month before 9/11 (8/6, to be exact) he received a warning memo that bin laden was going to attack the U.S.

I know we're going to commonly refer back to this in the future, but do you think it was possible for Bush, even our Government to have stopped it?

Personally, I'd say no. There weren't any specifics on how or when it would happen, so what would Bush have done? Stop all traffic into the united states? Arrest every person in America from afghanistan?

It would be Impossible. Hell, even convincing Airports to spend more money on even stricter machines on the basis of a warning would have been impossible.

It's just bothering me how blame for the attack is being blamed on Bush for not acting. I just don't see how it could have been done...

What do you guys think?

Click to expand...

COULD it have been stopped?

Sure, it could have.

Is it reasonable to suggest it could've been stopped.

Not at all, and its the kind of hack move that shows KO to be as much of a ****ty, low brow, partisan as any Hannity or Rush despite what liberals like to tell themselves to make their own hate filled rhetoric spewers feel "different".

It would've taken massive changes in how our intelligence and law enforcement agencies worked and corresponded. It would've needed for the administration to randomly decide that this singular threat was somehow so much more credible than all the other threats received on a daily basis. And then, even after that, it would've needed for nothing to have caused the terrorists to abort and for law enforcement to successfully pin point the terrorist and stop them before it happened.

It would've required winning the lottery essentially to have stopped it at the point in time in which Bush was warned of it. Possible? Yes. Even in the same state, let alone neighborhood, or probable? Not at all.

We have learned nothing from 9/11! We still have political BS on border control.

We could not have stopped any attack then and we can not stop any attack now...if our borders aren't better protected.

If Mexican's can cross the boarder back and forth almost at will, bringing money, drugs,...PEOPLE back and forth then there surely is an open door for a future germ attack!

I read an article awhile back that talked about an increase in percentage of Middle Eastern trying to cross the Canadian border.

I also read an article about Chinese crossing and some being found with anti-radiation pills on them.

Why weren't these stories a bigger issue in the news?

Yes, it could have been stopped. I read the commision report, it's tragic that more wasn't done to prevent it and share intelligence. By doing that, it would not have been hard to put 2 and 2 together and connect all the pieces together. The agencies not sharing that kind of warnings they were getting is about the most illogical thing I can think of. If even they could have stopped one plane from going that morning, that would have made an impact.

Zyphlin said:

COULD it have been stopped?

Sure, it could have.

Is it reasonable to suggest it could've been stopped.

Not at all, and its the kind of hack move that shows KO to be as much of a ****ty, low brow, partisan as any Hannity or Rush despite what liberals like to tell themselves to make their own hate filled rhetoric spewers feel "different".

It would've taken massive changes in how our intelligence and law enforcement agencies worked and corresponded. It would've needed for the administration to randomly decide that this singular threat was somehow so much more credible than all the other threats received on a daily basis. And then, even after that, it would've needed for nothing to have caused the terrorists to abort and for law enforcement to successfully pin point the terrorist and stop them before it happened.

It would've required winning the lottery essentially to have stopped it at the point in time in which Bush was warned of it. Possible? Yes. Even in the same state, let alone neighborhood, or probable? Not at all.

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Yes, it could have been stopped.

I do agree with you that the steps it would have taken would have been seen as radical and unjust without an attack. There were agents aware of people taking flying lessons that weren't interested in landing planes. The fact that they were ignored isn't Bush's fault. If someone would have taken them seriously, we may have been able to prevent it. Bush never heard about that information before the attacks. They got lost in the multiple filters of beaurocracy.

creativedreams said:

We have learned nothing from 9/11! We still have political BS on border control.

We could not have stopped any attack then and we can not stop any attack now...if our borders aren't better protected.

If Mexican's can cross the boarder back and forth almost at will, bringing money, drugs,...PEOPLE back and forth then there surely is an open door for a future germ attack!

I read an article awhile back that talked about an increase in percentage of Middle Eastern trying to cross the Canadian border.

I also read an article about Chinese crossing and some being found with anti-radiation pills on them.

Why weren't these stories a bigger issue in the news?

Click to expand...

Ask the Canadians what they think of our border patrol.

Zyphlin said:

COULD it have been stopped?

Sure, it could have.

Is it reasonable to suggest it could've been stopped.

Not at all, and its the kind of hack move that shows KO to be as much of a ****ty, low brow, partisan as any Hannity or Rush despite what liberals like to tell themselves to make their own hate filled rhetoric spewers feel "different".

It would've taken massive changes in how our intelligence and law enforcement agencies worked and corresponded. It would've needed for the administration to randomly decide that this singular threat was somehow so much more credible than all the other threats received on a daily basis. And then, even after that, it would've needed for nothing to have caused the terrorists to abort and for law enforcement to successfully pin point the terrorist and stop them before it happened.

It would've required winning the lottery essentially to have stopped it at the point in time in which Bush was warned of it. Possible? Yes. Even in the same state, let alone neighborhood, or probable? Not at all.

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I obviously don't agree with you.

@ the bolded portion...
What you have described should have been changed long ago. The need to change was identified long before 9/11 but bureaucratic infighting and a sandbox mentality stifled that. As to the rest, it wouldn't have taken randomly picking threats at all. Our guys knew in advance there was a plot to use airliners in an attack, it simply wasn't prioritized in the intelligence community and it certainly wasn't shared properly with other agencies.

That attack on 9/11 could have been disrupted. They may have found another way to attack, but that specific attack could have been disrupted.

Of course it could've been stopped, but you can only make such a statement, much in the same way you might make any kind of 20/20 hindsight "what if?" statement. It wasn't just GWB. It goes all the way back to Afghanistan in the 80's, events during the Clinton 90's, Bush's famous indifference, and even perhaps well before all of that. But it could've been stopped, but only in the same way like I could've thought to look up before banging my head on the way out the door this morning. I could've stopped that, too.

Interestingly enough, if you search the white house website for instances of "bin Laden" before 9/11/01, there are 5 matches. Four of them are questions from the press, asking Ari Fleischer what the administration planned to do about him. Here are the answers:

"That's a question I think you want to talk to the Department of Justice about."

"Let me take that and get back to you on that."

"I'm going to, for the moment, refer that question to Mary Ellen, to the Department of Defense."

"The President will take action that he deems appropriate in national security interests."

Who knows whether it could have been stopped. But when you try, or when you even care, you definitely up your chances.

Could it have been prevented? Easily.

Knives should never have been allowed on planes.

Bush only received the memo about Al Qaeda because he specifically asked for it. "Tell me what is going on with Al Qaeda?"

I'm sure the news that AQ was planning terrorist attacks against the US was startling to him. Who would have imagined?

He should have immediately shut down all the airports and stopped all shipping within the country. All Mid Easterners should have been rounded up and put into detention camps.

And then he should have been impeached for gross abuse of power.

If an enemy waits long enough, has enough money, and plans well, it can take even the USA by surprise.

9/11 was horrible.

Bush wanted to go down in history as great Bush, but now he will go down in history as the worst president in our history. A little retarded Bush. He will not be forgotten.

If he has a presidential library, it will say over the Door -----

George Bush, The Forty Third President and The Worst President In American History.

Yes, we knew that the danger level was high before it happened, we should have been able to do something to stop, or at least limit the damage done. However, we most certainly could have stopped it if the U.S. wasn't so busy running around being the world's policeman and pissing off the people who attacked us. They didn't just wake up one morning and decide we'd make a good target, our actions largely are responsible for the attack.

Had we been a bit brighter in our actions, likely no one would have wanted to attack us in the first place.

ElephantPhil said:

... I know we're going to commonly refer back to this in the future, but do you think it was possible for Bush, even our Government to have stopped it?....

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It could have easily been prevented from even starting. Remember back in the early 1980's when the U.S. was giving the Mujahadeen military training, stinger missiles and other weapons to keep the Russians from invading Afghanistan?

In case you don't know, the Mujahadeen are what we now know as Al Qaeda.

If we had just simply done NOTHING, there would have been no Al Qaeda in the first place.

ronpaulvoter said:

It could have easily been prevented from even starting. Remember back in the early 1980's when the U.S. was giving the Mujahadeen military training, stinger missiles and other weapons to keep the Russians from invading Afghanistan?

In case you don't know, the Mujahadeen are what we now know as Al Qaeda.

If we had just simply done NOTHING, there would have been no Al Qaeda in the first place.

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And the Russians were fighting Muslim extremism.

Short term:
I don't think so for the following reason. I believe that this plan was known about in some form. That there was a plan for terrorists to use planes to crash them into buildings. For sake of argument, let's just work from there. The government didn't take it seriously, it seemed too improbable. I don't think 9/11 could have been averted less we had solid evidence of the specific attack. That sort of attack was never done before and if you pick it up off of the rumor mill, you're not going to pay no mind. It's not fault of the government on this one, I would have done the same thing. We do a lot of listening in and the government acts in many ways to figure out terrorist plans and prevent them; but in the process they're going to pick up a lot of rumors which turn out to be false, so they have to give the options some form of credibility. What's most likely, what's least likely, where do we spend time and money and man power, etc. So unless they got some form of solid lead that said "yes, this is going to happen", ramming planes into a building at the time didn't sound like a credible attack.

It's unfortunate, and it's not the fault of the government on that one. I mean, first off you can't prevent all terrorist attack; some are gonna get through and you have to deal with it. Second, there's a lot of information and misinformation out there that has to be shifted through. Third, this type of attack was unprecedented on American soil. You pick something like this out of the rumor mill, you're gonna rank it rather low on the probability scale. Could it be prevented? I'd say likely not, not unless some solid and credible evidence had come forward before the planes had left the ground (well with enough time for the government to respond).

Long term:
If you want to go back pretty far and consider the actions that America had taken in the Middle East and ask if 9/11 could have been averted or terrorism as a whole made less a threat; here I think most certainly there could have been made change. A lot of the terrorism is blowback against the West, because of our interventionist policies. There's no guarantee that there would be zero terrorism (in fact, I think that's an impossible state); but we have definintely been doing things for decades which has caused a lot of hate and anger against the US and the West as a whole.

ronpaulvoter said:

It could have easily been prevented from even starting. Remember back in the early 1980's when the U.S. was giving the Mujahadeen military training, stinger missiles and other weapons to keep the Russians from invading Afghanistan?

In case you don't know, the Mujahadeen are what we now know as Al Qaeda.

If we had just simply done NOTHING, there would have been no Al Qaeda in the first place.

Click to expand...

Excellent point.

We really do need to keep our nose out of Middle Eastern affairs unless it affects us directly.

It's true that we could've stopped this by making different choices in decades past... But in regards to the current president, it's maybe a different story. Assuming truthers are wrong mrgreen, if the administration had cared about the reports regarding the threat of a terror attack, I'm still not certain they could have done anything.

Torin said:

It's true that we could've stopped this by making different choices in decades past... But in regards to the current president, it's maybe a different story. Assuming truthers are wrong mrgreen, if the administration had cared about the reports regarding the threat of a terror attack, I'm still not certain they could have done anything.

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They would have found any reason unless we were to destroy Israel.

Blackdog said:

Yes I feel it could have possibly been averted.

If the FBI, CIA, FBI and local authority's were allowed to share information, I think we could have lessened it's impact if not avert it completely.

Let me clarify something. I think we would have have a very slim of the attacks being completely averted. In the end if we had stopped just 1 hijacking, lives would have been saved.

Click to expand...

BlackDog,from what I`ve read ,you are right. They had some good intel prior to the attacks. This same question arises concerning Pearl Harbor. The,"powers that be", decided wrongly in both cases. Had thery shared and asked other agencies to wiegh in ,both attacks could have either been averted or greatly deminished in their result.

ElephantPhil said:

After recently watching Keith Olbermann's "8 Years of Bush in 8 minutes", he made sure to mention how a month before 9/11 (8/6, to be exact) he received a warning memo that bin laden was going to attack the U.S.

I know we're going to commonly refer back to this in the future, but do you think it was possible for Bush, even our Government to have stopped it?

Personally, I'd say no. There weren't any specifics on how or when it would happen, so what would Bush have done? Stop all traffic into the united states? Arrest every person in America from afghanistan?

It would be Impossible. Hell, even convincing Airports to spend more money on even stricter machines on the basis of a warning would have been impossible.

It's just bothering me how blame for the attack is being blamed on Bush for not acting. I just don't see how it could have been done...

What do you guys think?

Click to expand...

Without more specificity the info the US Govt. had regarding the planned attacks on NYC and DC was as meaningless as saying there is a young actress in Hollywood who wants to become a star.

Duh!

Of course there is.

Of course there are people planning attacks on NYC and DC. There are any number of attacks being planned at any time by people who hate America. Maybe some as we speak.

Now, how does that information help PREVENT the attacks?