Fallibility
Posted at 5:00 pm on Monday, December 1, 2008, in Uncategorized, and tagged bush, cheney, clarke, nine-eleven, rumsfeld.
Culpability of the horrific events of nine-eleven squarely land at the feet of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. However, fallibility in the U.S. government to prevent the events, according to Richard Clarke, is as follows:
- Condoleeza Rice, then National Security Advisor, for failing to understand the urgency to deal with the terrorist threat, and failing to educate the president;
- the CIA for not pursuing intelligence in al Qaeda strongholds;
- the FBI for not investigating al Qaeda within the U.S. and sharing information;
- the Pentagon for refusing to tailor actions to the al Qaeda terrorist network, including refusing to assist in the rendition of suspects;
- John Ashcroft, then Attorney General, for diminishing the importance of counter-terrorism;
- Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, then deputy Secretary of Defense, then Secretary of Defense and the vice-president, who formulated plans for invading Iraq before nine-eleven, and afterward, insisted that Iraq was behind the attacks, and refusing to believe the sophistication and capability of al Qaeda; and
- George W. Bush, president of the United States, for not being analytical and open to discussion on the topic of threats against the United States.
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December 1st, 2008 at 5:24 pm
And Mr. Clarke is absolutely correct in his analysis! The Bush administration’s utter disconnect from the real world at that time reminds me of the statuettes of the three monkeys who “hear no evil. see no evil, and speak no evil”, but just substitute “terror threats” for the word “evil.”
June 10th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
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