Who's in Charge Here? (9/11)

[shraby]

“Who’s our quarterback” in case of a future terrorist attack? “Who’s in charge?” That was the core question members of the 9-11 commission put to every government official they interviewed. “The reason that you’re hearing such a tone of urgency in our voices is because the answer to the question was almost uniform,” said commissioner Jamie Gorelick at the press conference following today’s release of the 600 page final 9-11 Commission Report. The person in charge, she said the commissioners had been told over and over again, would be the president.

“It is an impossible situation for that to remain the case,” Gorelick observed. Impossible, because the commission’s report clearly shows that on the morning of September 11, 2001, the president and the other top officials in charge of the systems to defend the country from attack were, in essence, missing in action: They did not communicate, did not coordinate a response to the catastrophe, and in some cases did not even get involved in discussions about the attacks until after all of the hijacked planes had crashed.

Yet, even though the commission’s report paints a stark portrait of opportunities lost in defending against terrorism, many observers—especially the families of some 9/11 victims, who pushed hard for the commission’s creation—were disappointed in its failure to provide a timeline of the actions of the nation’s top leaders that morning. Such an analysis, they believe, would have shown conclusively that blame for failing to defend against the attacks goes all the way to the top.

My involvement with the families goes back almost three years to my first interviews with the four widows who became known as “the Jersey girls.” They were among the families I followed to write my book, Middletown, America. As early as April, 2003, three of the widows--Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg, and Kristen Breitweiser--had been aghast to discover that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared to have effectively sat out one of the worst foreign assaults on the American homeland in the nation’s history. In what may be one of the most remarkable statements in the report, the commission concludes that “he Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning’s key events were over.”

(much more)

<http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/07/07_400.html>

[Generator]

1. Either it's mind boggling incompetence

or it's treason because they let it happen.

It's a simple as that. My husband believes in incompetence, I'm not convinced that it could possibly only be that due to the obvious nature of the coverups. (Sibel Edmonds/Pakistan connection ect.)

Either way, to allow these people to remain in office is untenable.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. LIHOP bordering on MIHOP

is the way I feel.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Wolfowitz: There didn't seem to be much to do about it immediately

This is Wolfowitz's version of what he and Rummie where doing on 9-11 and how they reacted (actually didn't react) at the start of the attack. The appalling part is that neither the head of DOD, nor his right hand man, thought there was much they could do, despite the fact that their main job is defending the US.



Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair

Friday, May 9, 2003


One is, where were you on September 11th? Were you at the Pentagon when --

Wolfowitz: I was in my office. We'd just had a breakfast with some congressmen in which one of the subjects had been missile defense. And we commented to them that based on what Rumsfeld and I had both seen and worked on the Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, that we were probably in for some nasty surprises over the next ten years.

Q: Oh, my gosh.

Wolfowitz: I can't remember, then there was the sort of question of what kind of nasty surprises? I don't remember exactly which ones we came up with. The point was more just that it's in the nature of surprise that you can't predict what it's going to be.

Q: Do you remember then the impact of the plane into the Pentagon? Or had you first heard stories about New York? What was --

Wolfowitz: We were having a meeting in my office. Someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then we turned on the television and we started seeing the shots of the second plane hitting, and this is the way I remember it. It's a little fuzzy.

Q: Right.

Wolfowitz: There didn't seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was. Then the whole building shook. I have to confess my first reaction was an earthquake. I didn't put the two things together in my mind. Rumsfeld did instantly.


http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

[TA]

4. Thanks, great post and article from Mother Jones

After reading chapter # 8 of the 9/11 Report you get a clear picture of how Condi Rice and John Ashcroft failed America in preventing or at least minimizing the deaths of 9/11. This article in Mother Jones by Gail Sheehy with quotes from 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick is a telling statement about how Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush failed to react or lead on 9/11. The United States has this massive missile based military that can kill thousands with the push of a button by someone thousands of miles away. This is Rumsfeld and Cheneys manly war machine but put THEM in the trenches like they send our true military hero's and they show what useless pathetic cowards they are. We all got a prefect image of that cowardly fear while watching Bush in that Florida classroom. Rumsfeld and Cheney did no better than Bush and American citizens paid the price.