How should the Dem candidate answer "How would you prevent another 9/11?"

[BurtWorm]

You know they're going to be asked that. You know Dean in particular is going to be asked that, now that he has aired his suspicion that Bush had sufficient information to expect and maybe prevent the attacks. What would be a good answer to the question?

[Jack_Dawson]

1. "Let me ask my President - General Wesley Clark"

[SahaleArm]

2. LOL n/t

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

3. 'I'd actually read the daily security reports

instead of having them condensed to one page, and then having that read to me, unless I'm on vacation.'

You might also mention that from Day One this WH has been stone-walling ANY meaningful investigation into 9-11, including events leading up to it and the government's (and Bush*'s) reaction while the event was in progress.

[sandnsea]

4. I wrote a book on it

Back in 1997. I'd also pay attention to the Hart-Rudman report, you know, written by foreign policy expert Gary Hart who endorsed me!

[BurtWorm]

5. kick

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

6. important question

how about, "We'll have a National Security Advisor that WILL bother to read the memos, unlike Rice." or maybe, "When a plane gets hijacked, the photo op will end." or even "I won't tell the FBI to "back off" investigating terrorists just because my family is in business with them."

Well, that's just for starters I guess.

[BurtWorm]

7. Good answers. Good starter answers, especially.

Dean has been talking about depoliticizing intelligence. I know you're not a Dean fan, but this is kind fo a crucial point any Dem nominee should make. That is, they should make a pledge: I will, to the best of my ability, make decisions to act based on the evidence in hand; I will not make the evidence in hand serve the decisions I make.

[Minstrel Boy]

8. this needs to be thrown back in Bush's twitchy face:

Why, under your presidency, was the FBI called off the bin Laden family?

Why, even as US intelligence received conclusive evidence that al-Qaeda was behind the USS Cole bombing, did your administration discontinue the covert deployment of cruse missile submarines within striking distance of bin Laden's camps?

Why, after having been warned over the summer of 2001 by the likes of French, German, British, Syrian, Israeli, Afghan, Moroccan and Egyptian officials, and corroborated by US intelligence, that al-Qaeda was planning a devastating attack upon American landmarks in early Fall using planes as weapons, did Standard Operating Procedure collapse on the day?

Why, on September 10, 2001, did senior Pentagon officials suddenly cancel their commercial flights for the following morning?

Why, even before they could be questioned and when American airspace was closed, did the White House fly Osama bin Laden's close relatives out of the country?

Why did you just sit there, Mr Bush?

Because 9/11 isn't a hypothetical. It happened, on his watch.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Wishful thinking.

What I would like to see, but have absolutely no hope of seeing:

"The Western countries are responsible for the impoverishment and exploitation of most of the rest of the world. Those impoverished people, in their billions, are going to demand their share of the fruits of their labor and the product of their land. Either we will share it with them, or the repeat of 9/11 will occur many times. Either we will succumb to the temptation of fascism to protect 'our' material wealth or we will become responsible members of the world community and strive to share the world with all of it's people."

I'm not holding my breath to hear any Democratic candidate dare to expound even a heavily watered down version of the obvious solution to a repeat, many repeats, of 9/11.

[BurtWorm]

10. I think Bill Clinton, of all people, has actually said something like this

in the last year. Al Gore may have too. It should be a component of an answer: here's how you prevent terrorist attacks long-term: eliminate the social and economic conditions that breed terrorism, namely the relics of colonialism in particular. In the short-term, attention to pre-politicized intelligence can prevent attacks before they happen, but resources must be put into long-term prevention.

[sandnsea]

11. Gee, Kerry's said that for years

But never mind, he voted for the war.

"Over the longer term, to prevail in the war on terror, we must build new bridges to the Islamic world. In recent years, our capacity to communicate and to persuade has constricted. Think about that. It has constricted. Even as we have seen the Cold War end and half the world that was closed to us open up, our efforts to reach out and be involved have in fact been diminished, rather than grown.

Our diplomats have been forced to withdraw behind concrete barriers in the face of increased terrorist threats. Our annual budget for international affairs, what we spend on the war of ideas, is a fraction of what we spend to prepare for the war on the battlefield. Yet as we have learned through painful experience, we cannot afford to win one war and lose the other.

As president, I will fight for funding to expand our diplomatic presence, and I will direct American representatives overseas to reach out to populations, not just to governments, to religious and cultural leaders, and to a new generation growing up in this age of mass communications. We invented it, and we should be using it to greater effect.

And this kind of public diplomacy cannot be an afterthought; it has to be at the core of our efforts. We must speak and we must listen."
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2003_1203a.html

[BurtWorm]

21. Good for Kerry! He's not Satan incarnate after all!

:toast:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. No he didn't.

"In recent years, our capacity to communicate and persuade..", and the rest of the speech is about PR.

Winning hearts and minds by use of the usual smoke and mirrors. He doesn't address the need for a change in globalist/corporate policies that are busily ripping off the world and generating enemies. He's talking about PR, not change.

[blm]

26. wrong. The guy worked on the Kyoto Protocol for 10 years.

He has addressed root causes for years.

He understands the economic and social needs of other nations and cultures better than any other candidate. Even his wife is steeped in what it takes to bring preventative measures for the health of these countries and the health of the environment and how it all connects to national security.

[genius]

12. Not hire anyone to do it.

Has anyone here looked closely at the film of 9/11. If you look closely, you can see a series of systematic explosions down the towers. The heat of the fuel was about half of what was needed to produce that result and someone didn't want to take any chances.

[PsN2Wind]

13. I would not have allowed the first

one if I had been president and had had the information and warnings that the current administration had in hand. So since there would have been no FIRST there would be NO second 9/11 to prevent.

[Fleshdancer]

14. the first step is to not ingore the intelligence briefings. n/t

[TexasPatriot]

15. how about

elect a president who wont have internal squabbles between the central intelligence agency and the whitehouse...

someone who wont be the under investigation from the justice department for putting CIA agents who are responsible for researching the acquisition of WMD by enemies of the united states at risk by exposing their identities for political gain.

[sandnsea]

17. You mean like this?

"Finally, we must recognize that America will only be secure if our intelligence is sound. The Bush administration has stonewalled the 9/11 commission and resisted congressional investigation of our intelligence failures. And I will tell you, as a veteran of the Intelligence Committee who used to argue vociferously for more money for human intelligence, compared to our fascination with technological intelligence, we desperately need to grow our capacity across the globe to understand what is happening in countries, with their cultures and their histories and their populations.

The need here is to fix the problem, not define blame, and the speedy completion of this task is critical to prevent and respond to future terrorist attacks.

We must ensure that our intelligence is accurate, not manipulated, and that it flows efficiently between agencies and to our allies abroad, and that the law enforcement community at home also shares it, because even what we do know will hurt if it is not known in the right places. We must end the multiple watch lists and the bureaucratic rivalries that put international (sic) pride ahead of national safety. As president, I will address this danger immediately by asking Congress to pass legislation creating a director of National Intelligence with real control over all national intelligence personnel and budgets. And I will appoint a secretary of Defense and other officials who will operate with this change and who will understand that their job is to protect the country, not their own fiefdom.

I will also complete a comprehensive review of the national intelligence establishment, a review which the Bush administration commissioned in its early days, but which has stalled in the face of entrenched bureaucratic interests."

[blm]

30. If Kerry listens to Will Pitt he'll answer: So I wrote this book.....

heheh

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

16. Clear and concise (until they ask a follow-up question)

That's how the game's played. I can picture a couple of the candidates adhering to this simple sound-bite principle.

Dem. candidate: "The answer's simple: 1) COMPLETE transparency in finding out how we failed to miss the road signs for 9/11, beginning with the Clinton administration up until 9/11. If we don't learn from our mistakes and level with the American public, we're doomed to repeat them."

You can insert everyone else's ideas in the answers to the follow-up questions. DO NOT GIVE THE ANSWER REGARDING WORLD POVERTY (even though it's THE right answer) in a short question-answer period.

[ShimokitaJer]

18. By treating terrorism as a criminal act rather than an act of war

It was Bush's rhetoric that elevated the 9/11 terrorists from criminals to warriors, simply because Bush wanted to fight a war. More importantly, America knows how to fight wars and has all the best tools for it, but fighting crime is more complicated, requiring international cooperation and a lot of non-sexy investigative work. It's also less flashy, since it's harder to take credit for stopping an attack that might have happened than it is to take well-publicized revenge after an attack occurs. Treating terrorism as a crime also allows us to stop ignoring domestic terrorists and to apply our counter-terrorism policies to friendly as well as unfriendly nations, without having to declare war on Israel or Saudi Arabia.

You fight wars against countries... not against drugs or terrorists.

[snippy]

29. Excellent point.

[blm]

19. Read the 1997 book The New War by Sen. John Kerry.

He explains the terrorist networks and their international funding and their impact on various governments around the world, many of whom are involved in the funding.

Kerry has said he'll give notice to all those countries and give them 100 days to comply with international laws against terrorism or he'll start to name names.

[OneTwentyoNine]

20. Umm...when several guys ONLY want to learn to take-off in aircraft...

And NOT LAND.

Hats off to the people running these flight schools who WARNED the FBI about groups of people who didn't really want to learn all the aspects of flight.

But Bush and Co. didn't want to listen,might have prevented something.

David

[MoonRiver]

23. By listening, instead of ignoring as * did, my agents on the ground.

Our CIA agents were screaming their heads off, and being shut up by their "superiors", about an imminent alQaeda attack on US soil. Heck, intelligence agencies from many different countries knew a major attack on the WTC with airplanes was coming down that week (of 9/11/01), AND warned *, but His Lowness was somehow clueless???

[Code_Name_D]

24. Would that be before, or after we support dictaters like Saddam or Noryaga

We go around nocking over democracies, then errecting dictators in there place, arm them to the teeth, and have the nerve to be surprised when they turn on us?

[Fleshdancer]

25. By not invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. eom

[fob]

27. I'll do the exact opposite that bush* did, who was at the helm

doing the exact opposite of what Clinton did when this happened. Do you remember the devastating terrorist attacks around the millenium? No? That's because Clinton and his staff actually worked proactively on the problem. Just as I will do. What about the '93 WTC attack, you say? Yeah that was a problem, but do you know where those who carried out those attacks are today? In jail, tracked down, caught, tried and convicted all without killing one innocent civilian in a foreign land, at a cost much less than $150 billion and without a SINGLE American soldiers death. The course is clear, it's the leadership that's been muddy.


fob

[imhotep]

28. Dean will have a great answer

dont worry.