This’ll get the Truthers pumped up, although it shouldn’t. Richard Clarke claims that in 2000 and 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, former CIA Director George Tenet hid intelligence about al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. from the White House. From The Daily Beast:
Clarke offers an incendiary theory that, if true, would rewrite the history of the 9/11 attacks, suggesting that the CIA intentionally withheld information from the White House and FBI in 2000 and 2001 that two Saudi-born terrorists were on U.S. soil—terrorists who went on to become suicide hijackers on 9/11.
Clarke doesn’t know why Tenet would have done this, but he believes the CIA may have been trying to recruit the two Saudis to be informants. Of course, after 9/11 Tenet and others in on this plan would have gone into massive butt-covering mode.
There have been all kinds of speculation and rumor about what the CIA might have known about the terrorists prior to 9/11, and these rumors helped give birth to the Truther movement. However, Clarke’s story places some of this narrative during the Clinton Administration. Even if you believed the haplessly incompetent Bushies somehow pulled off the Mother of All Conspiracies to give Dubya dictatorial powers, it’s even more absurd to think that the Clinton/Gore White House was in on it before the 2000 election.
Clarke’s theory is far more plausible, especially given some of Tenet’s other bizarre judgments (remember the “slam dunk”?).
Either this, Tenet wanting to “turn” the two into informers, or sheer incompetence by the Bushies (and are the two really mutually exclusive?), is more likely than a conspiracy organized by the George W. Bush Administration – who couldn’t put together a one-car funeral procession, let alone a two-car one.
Any thoughts of any conspiracy that I might have had regarding 9/11 went out the window when I realized that the Bush/Cheney cabal wasn’t evil, organized, tactical, and manipulative in doing what they did, but rather evil, disorganized, ignorant, and incompetent in everything they did; except get what they ultimately wanted – America on the verge of being ready for “The Shock Doctrine.”
In that, they were totally successful.
In the end, and whatever the reason, the fact that George Tenet received the ‘Presidential Medal of Freedom” is a joke.
One that no one will ever, ever laugh at.
One day when we’re all dead and buried, the real and total truth will be known.
I seriously doubt it, not as long as we believe Tom Ridge resigned to spend more time with his family, to be replaced with Alan Chertoff.
Not as long as war crimes and torture go un prosecuted,Not as long as the Secretary of State can go before the UN and LIE HIS ASS OFF to make a case for invading a country and not have any price to pay.
15 of the 19 “suspected” hijackers were Saudis, but Iraq was attacked, only to find there was no “AlQaida” in Iraq until after the invasion when pissed of Iraqis formed the club?
Oh, I could go on for hours, but here’s the bottom line; from this point forward, if an elected or appointed official makes claims for war against another country, they will be put to death slowly if they lied or just “got some bad information”, and the AEI will be hit with a predator drone strike, just in case they had anything to do with it.
If we review all of the commentary, and all of the results of the actions taken, NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE.
That is, unless we realize the true reasons for the wars.
Even if you believed the haplessly incompetent Bushies somehow pulled off the Mother of All Conspiracies to give Dubya dictatorial powers…
Don’t think of it as the Bushies being in control. Think of them as “winning the trifecta”.
I agree that the Bushites were incompetent, mostly; but that does not rule out malice and opportunism as well. There’s a fine line between exploiting their own failures, and deliberate sabotage; a line which they probably blundered across repeatedly.
Gulag, I could see Bush being so incompetent as to allow al-Qaida to attack. The Truthers fail to realize there are many historical examples of sheer incompetence, and the Bush maladministration was just one of the more recent examples.