11-02-2004, 03:15 PM
I agree that cutting the intel budget was a bad move. I don't where and how he made the cuts but in light of the several terrorist attacks around the world that was certainly a foolhardy decision. The USS Cole, the 1st World Trade Center bombing, and several embassy attacks around the world should have been his clue.
Bush didn't exactly jump up to prevent 9/11 either. He could have re-increased the intel budget at the time, or maybe his cabinet could've paid more attention to the threats they were receiving. Maybe they could've looked into the interagency communication problems that had been repeatedly brought to their attention. But they didn't, probably because they didn't realize how urgent the threat was, despite the report titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America" from the CIA.
We cannot ignore the fact that we should not be supporting certain types of people. Bin Laden was one of them. Noreaga was another. Pinochet, Saddam, the Nicaraguan Contras; all bad guys that we should not have been supporting in the first place. Sometimes we have to make strange alliances but we need to do so carefully otherwise we may find ourselves cleaning up an even messier situation in the future.
We had several opportunities to head off 9/11 tacitly or explicitly but many people dropped the ball along the way. Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr. and Sr. all played their parts. If any of them had known something like this would happen I'm sure they all would have done things differently but none of them had the benefit of hindsight. I'm sure Bush Jr. especially would've broken his neck to do things differently if he knew that our intel failures and the lack of airport security would cause a catastrophic attack like 9/11.
Right now the big thing that bothers me is that for all the millions we've spent on Homeland Security we haven't even begun to really address port security. I hope whoever gets elected takes care of this oversight.
Bush didn't exactly jump up to prevent 9/11 either. He could have re-increased the intel budget at the time, or maybe his cabinet could've paid more attention to the threats they were receiving. Maybe they could've looked into the interagency communication problems that had been repeatedly brought to their attention. But they didn't, probably because they didn't realize how urgent the threat was, despite the report titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America" from the CIA.
We cannot ignore the fact that we should not be supporting certain types of people. Bin Laden was one of them. Noreaga was another. Pinochet, Saddam, the Nicaraguan Contras; all bad guys that we should not have been supporting in the first place. Sometimes we have to make strange alliances but we need to do so carefully otherwise we may find ourselves cleaning up an even messier situation in the future.
We had several opportunities to head off 9/11 tacitly or explicitly but many people dropped the ball along the way. Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr. and Sr. all played their parts. If any of them had known something like this would happen I'm sure they all would have done things differently but none of them had the benefit of hindsight. I'm sure Bush Jr. especially would've broken his neck to do things differently if he knew that our intel failures and the lack of airport security would cause a catastrophic attack like 9/11.
Right now the big thing that bothers me is that for all the millions we've spent on Homeland Security we haven't even begun to really address port security. I hope whoever gets elected takes care of this oversight.