Misleader: Bush Admin resorts to lies about 9/11 (and US Media says ?)
BUSH ADMINISTRATION RESORTS TO LIES ABOUT 9/11
With President Bush's former top counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke issuing well-documented criticisms of the White House's failure to defend America, the Administration has resorted to outright lies and distortions about its record. The president himself once again tried to deflect criticism, saying "had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September the 11" (1) - a statement designed to deflect attention from the specific warnings that he personally received outlining an imminent Al Qaeda attack (2) that could involve hijacked planes (3) being used as missiles (4).
Here are four other explicit lies that the Administration has told over the last few days:
LIE: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed that Clarke "chose not to" (5) voice his concerns about the Administration's counterterrorism policy. But Clarke sent an urgent memo to Rice in January 2001 asking for a Cabinet-level meeting about an imminent Al Qaeda attack (6). The White House itself admits top Bush officials rejected Clarke's request, saying they "did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." (7)
LIE: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan yesterday denied Clarke's charge that the president ordered the Pentagon to begin drafting plans to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11. (8) But according to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." (9) This was corroborated by a September 2002 CBS News report which reported that, immediately after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told "aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." (10)
LIE: Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley denied Clarke's charge that there was an imminent domestic threat against America from Al Qaeda, saying, "All the chatter was of an attack, a potential Al Qaeda attack overseas." (11) But, according to the bipartisan Congressional report on 9/11, "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August <2001>." (12)
LIE: Bush National Security spokesman Jim Wilkinson claimed that "it was this president who expedited the deployment of the armed Predator" (the unmanned plane) (13). But, according to Newsweek, it was the Bush Administration who "elected not to relaunch the Predator" and who did not deploy the new armed version of it despite "the military having successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001." (14)
In the wake of Richard Clarke's well-supported assertions that the Bush Administration neglected counterterrorism in the face of repeated terror warnings before 9/11, the Bush Administration has launched a frantic misinformation campaign – often contradicting itself in the process.
CLAIM #1: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. – White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM #2: "The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection.
2. Buzzflash editorial on Bush lies about 9/11 (WTC coulda been Empire State)
Buzzflash editorial on Bush lies about 9/11 (WTC coulda been Empire State - they did not have specific info as to which building was being targeted!!! - and US media says what?????)
Documentation of Plans to Crash Airplanes Into Buildings that Bush and Condi Claim They Knew Nothing About: They Lie, Assassinate People's Characters Instead of Refuting Their Evidence -- and They are, Most Dangerous to the Nation, Incompetent.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
First, Let Us Share Damning Evidence Provided by a BuzzFlash Reader:
Dear Buzz:
Thanks for a great website...in addition to your excellent editorial about Condi the liar , here's an excerpt from a January 2003 USA Today magazine article written by John L. Scherer, entitled "Is Terrorism's Threat Overblown?"
I disagree with his conclusions, however he does refer to several incidents I thought I remembered as well - that terrorists had already attempted to crash planes into buildings & monuments years before 9/11.
Don't the Bushwackers read this sort of thing in their security briefings, or as I did in the papers, or is it that they can't retain anything they don't see on Fox News?
Excerpt:
"Al Qaeda had planned attacks in London, Paris, Marseilles, Strasbourg, Singapore, and Rome, but most of the conspirators were arrested a short time after the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, no one had hijacked an aircraft in the U.S. using a "real" weapon in almost 15 years, although crashing planes into structures is not new. The Israelis shot down a Libyan jetliner they said was headed for a building in Tel Aviv in the 1980s. A Cessna 150 fell 50 yards short of the White House in September, 1994. French commandos prevented a jumbo jet, hijacked in Algeria by the Armed Islamic Group, from crashing into the Eiffel Tower the following December. In the mid 1990s, terrorist Ramzi Yousef plotted to have his friend Abdul Hakim Murad fly a light plane loaded with chemical weapons into CIA headquarters at Langley, Va., or to have him spray the area with poison gas. A Turkish hijacker attempted to crash an aircraft into the tomb of former Pres. Kemal Ataturk in Ankara in 1998. With enhanced security on at airports and passengers on commercial airliners who will react to any danger, this threat has diminished."
BuzzFlash Note: But even more damaging is this 2002 CBS News Article, " Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings"
"(CBS) Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people," Mr. Bush told U.S. Air Force Academy football team members who were visiting the White House on Friday. It was his first public comment on revelations this week that he was told Aug. 6 that bin Laden wanted to hijack planes.
CBS Senior White House Correspondent Bob Schieffer reports that other top officials were less forthcoming. The usually talkative Attorney General John Ashcroft just stared when reporters asked him about the terror warnings. FBI Chief Robert Mueller also refused to comment.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration was aware of the 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and U.S. intelligence on emerging threats. He said the document did not contain direct intelligence pointing toward a specific plot but rather included assessments about how terrorists might strike.
"What it shows is that this information that was out there did not raise enough alarm with anybody," Fleischer acknowledged.
Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld have been using carefully crafted "legal" statements this week in which they say that had they known planes were to be hijacked and flown SPECIFICALLY into the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, they would have taken steps to prevent the incidents. It takes an idiot not to see that they are "protecting" themselves from being charged with lying. Lying about what? Claiming that they were not warned about potential imminent hijackings and use of planes as assault weapons in general.
5. OH well, what can ya say Repblicans own major media.
Now, if they get some ratings outta this mess, I'd say we have some hope for REAL information coming out. After all, the only thing they love more than Bushie is ratin'z.
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