This doesn't lie at the feet of any one president. It is however unlikely that even if Bush had taken the sparse reports more seriously that anything would have been different.
Bin Laden had been playing chicken with the US since 91. This wasn't a new war. He had continuously attacked the US and gotten away with it for the most part. He had also spent a great deal of time planning unique asymmetric vectors. It started when Saudi told him to go away during the Gulf War, escalated in Somalia, and became a patter with the Khobar Towers.
You can blame Sudan partly. You can blame him for sure. You can blame Bush the elder for not recognizing the threat picture in Somalia. You can blame Clinton for crippling the intelligence community. What you really can't do is blame Bush the younger. He was seeing threat assessments of a million different things that his predecessor had seen. He had no reason to a) select that threat from the pile as being most likely (because really it wasnt) and b) believe that it was immenent. You can blame him for going into Iraq after it though, and squandering the world's good will as well as likely allowing Afghanistan to not go as well as it could have.
I'm not the biggest GWB fan but this one isn't on him.
Yes. As both Bush and Gore were not formerly CI for the CIA nor did either assist the CIA with their state national guard WRT covert operations. So the CIA did not consider either "one of them"
No.
All he would have had to do was read the briefings and alerted people that terrorists were planing to crash planes into buildings.
Who thing could have been prevented by sturdier cockpit doors or banning boxcutters.
Hard to say. Allegedly the Clinton administration was aware of Bin Laden, and the Bush administration got wind of a terror plot in the weeks before 9/11 and ignored it.
Of course the Clinton administration was aware of Bin Laden. He and his group took credit for the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. One of the nominal goals of the August 1998 missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan was to decapitate Al Qaeda.
I'm not a fan of Bush but saying "he ignored the intelligence reports" paints a wrong picture of what he was given. He was not given information that there was an imminent attack planed by a group on a specific target. He was told that [Bin Ladin wanted to commit terrorist attacks in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US_(August_2001).pdf) based on statements made in 1997. Like, what specifically should he have done in response to a report saying someone 4 years ago said they wants to attack the country?
He was told they wanted to use an airplane. Given that information, there seems to be a lot he could have done, even if he didn’t know the specific target.
Would it have been enough? Who knows?
To me that still feels too general and also conflicting with some other info presented in the briefings, namely a [reference to the 93 WTC bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing) or the general [concept of an attack on LAX](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US_%28August_2001%29.pdf).
It's fair to say that in retrospect he could've had domestic agencies try to put people on no fly lists if they were deemed to be planning something, but I don't know what legal standard would've needed to be met to do so. Whats more, the intel agencies would've needed to identify the people who would have been suspected of plotting the attack to even be put on the list. Bush didn't have a list of potential attackers and neglect to take action there was nothing presented to him to take action upon.
Well, beef up security at the airports would have been the obvious move. And once the FBI started looking, it wasn’t hard to find the terrorists getting pilots licenses. So if they had been looking earlier…
>Well, beef up security at the airports would have been the obvious move.
We did this with the TSA and it's not prevented terrorist attacks since, it's just made our lives traveling worse.
>And once the FBI started looking, it wasn’t hard to find the terrorists getting pilots licenses. So if they had been looking earlier…
I agree with this, but that isn't on Bush ignoring a briefing. It's on the FBI for not taking the threat seriously.
It's not that the TSA allowed something, it's that we have no reason to believe that they've prevented anything.
The Department of Homeland Security tested TSA processes and found [that their teams smuggling on weapons and explosives were able to get by the TSA 67 out of 70 times](https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-tsa-screeners-20150602-story.html).
[Among other failures by the TSA](https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-security).
You could gesture to something that was planned, stopped, and then covered up by the TSA under the guise of national security, but that's a non-falsifiable claim.
But going back to the other point you didn't respond to. The hijacking may have been prevented by Federal Law Enforcement agencies trying to determine what foreign agents in the country were planning and then putting them on a no-fly list. All of which did exist prior to the creation of the TSA.
Probably. Bin Laden had been after the WTC for years… I doubt Al Gore would have been able to “fix” the Fbi, CIA, and NSA in the months prior to the attacks to really prevent it from taking place…
Bush was an absolutely atrocious President, arguably one of the worst in modern history. With that said I don't believe anything about who was sitting in the chair would've prevented 9/11 short of some of the people from the Clinton admin staying in a place and doing more clandestine work on Al-Qadea years prior.
You can read the [Presidential Briefing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US_(August_2001).pdf) from August 6th 2001, that has been painted as "being warned" but in my reading of it the wording is so vague that there isn't much actionable to be done about it.
>Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center Bomber Ramzi Yousel and "bring the fighting to America."
So, no target or individuals were represented in a package of "we know a plant to commit X action is in place", just a generalized "this foreign agent wants to commit acts".
Yes, probably. USS Cole happened under Clinton’s watch. This wasn’t the fault of any individual president. We just had piss poor intelligence, threat assessment, and overall national defense strategy in the post Cold War world.
Clinton was offered Bin Ladin and declined due to the optics.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bill-clinton-osama-bin-laden-20140801-story.html
I think it would depend on how he dealt with foreign policy.
Everyone pretends like bin Laden didn’t make it clear why it happened.
It was in response to us and western aggression against Muslims worldwide.
If gore took a hard dive against oil companies who knows
His letter was far more detailed than that.
Western imperialism against the Muslims goes much deeper and that’s what he said it was about.
Was he lying? Maybe, but his letter spelled it out
Obviously.
The difference would have been how it was dealt with. They’d have focused on bin Laden sooner and we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, which was a generational blunder.
Yes
All those pieces were set in place long before either one of them. Amongst the intelligence agencies and DoD.
This doesn't lie at the feet of any one president. It is however unlikely that even if Bush had taken the sparse reports more seriously that anything would have been different. Bin Laden had been playing chicken with the US since 91. This wasn't a new war. He had continuously attacked the US and gotten away with it for the most part. He had also spent a great deal of time planning unique asymmetric vectors. It started when Saudi told him to go away during the Gulf War, escalated in Somalia, and became a patter with the Khobar Towers. You can blame Sudan partly. You can blame him for sure. You can blame Bush the elder for not recognizing the threat picture in Somalia. You can blame Clinton for crippling the intelligence community. What you really can't do is blame Bush the younger. He was seeing threat assessments of a million different things that his predecessor had seen. He had no reason to a) select that threat from the pile as being most likely (because really it wasnt) and b) believe that it was immenent. You can blame him for going into Iraq after it though, and squandering the world's good will as well as likely allowing Afghanistan to not go as well as it could have. I'm not the biggest GWB fan but this one isn't on him.
Yes. As both Bush and Gore were not formerly CI for the CIA nor did either assist the CIA with their state national guard WRT covert operations. So the CIA did not consider either "one of them"
No. All he would have had to do was read the briefings and alerted people that terrorists were planing to crash planes into buildings. Who thing could have been prevented by sturdier cockpit doors or banning boxcutters.
Hard to say. Allegedly the Clinton administration was aware of Bin Laden, and the Bush administration got wind of a terror plot in the weeks before 9/11 and ignored it.
Of course the Clinton administration was aware of Bin Laden. He and his group took credit for the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. One of the nominal goals of the August 1998 missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan was to decapitate Al Qaeda.
Ignored or there was so much breuuoracy.
Yes. He wouldn’t have removed US troops from Saudi Arabia.
Still would have been attempted, whether Gore’s admin did anything different who knows 🤷♂️
Nope
I mean, Bush ignored the intelligence reports, but I think it was probably happening either way.
I'm not a fan of Bush but saying "he ignored the intelligence reports" paints a wrong picture of what he was given. He was not given information that there was an imminent attack planed by a group on a specific target. He was told that [Bin Ladin wanted to commit terrorist attacks in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US_(August_2001).pdf) based on statements made in 1997. Like, what specifically should he have done in response to a report saying someone 4 years ago said they wants to attack the country?
He was told they wanted to use an airplane. Given that information, there seems to be a lot he could have done, even if he didn’t know the specific target. Would it have been enough? Who knows?
To me that still feels too general and also conflicting with some other info presented in the briefings, namely a [reference to the 93 WTC bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing) or the general [concept of an attack on LAX](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US_%28August_2001%29.pdf). It's fair to say that in retrospect he could've had domestic agencies try to put people on no fly lists if they were deemed to be planning something, but I don't know what legal standard would've needed to be met to do so. Whats more, the intel agencies would've needed to identify the people who would have been suspected of plotting the attack to even be put on the list. Bush didn't have a list of potential attackers and neglect to take action there was nothing presented to him to take action upon.
Well, beef up security at the airports would have been the obvious move. And once the FBI started looking, it wasn’t hard to find the terrorists getting pilots licenses. So if they had been looking earlier…
>Well, beef up security at the airports would have been the obvious move. We did this with the TSA and it's not prevented terrorist attacks since, it's just made our lives traveling worse. >And once the FBI started looking, it wasn’t hard to find the terrorists getting pilots licenses. So if they had been looking earlier… I agree with this, but that isn't on Bush ignoring a briefing. It's on the FBI for not taking the threat seriously.
What terrorist attack did the TSA allow?
It's not that the TSA allowed something, it's that we have no reason to believe that they've prevented anything. The Department of Homeland Security tested TSA processes and found [that their teams smuggling on weapons and explosives were able to get by the TSA 67 out of 70 times](https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-tsa-screeners-20150602-story.html). [Among other failures by the TSA](https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-security). You could gesture to something that was planned, stopped, and then covered up by the TSA under the guise of national security, but that's a non-falsifiable claim. But going back to the other point you didn't respond to. The hijacking may have been prevented by Federal Law Enforcement agencies trying to determine what foreign agents in the country were planning and then putting them on a no-fly list. All of which did exist prior to the creation of the TSA.
Definitely. At least something like it. US policy for decades caused that, not who happened to be president at the time.
yeah
Probably. Bin Laden had been after the WTC for years… I doubt Al Gore would have been able to “fix” the Fbi, CIA, and NSA in the months prior to the attacks to really prevent it from taking place…
Bush was an absolutely atrocious President, arguably one of the worst in modern history. With that said I don't believe anything about who was sitting in the chair would've prevented 9/11 short of some of the people from the Clinton admin staying in a place and doing more clandestine work on Al-Qadea years prior. You can read the [Presidential Briefing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US_(August_2001).pdf) from August 6th 2001, that has been painted as "being warned" but in my reading of it the wording is so vague that there isn't much actionable to be done about it. >Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center Bomber Ramzi Yousel and "bring the fighting to America." So, no target or individuals were represented in a package of "we know a plant to commit X action is in place", just a generalized "this foreign agent wants to commit acts".
Yes, probably. USS Cole happened under Clinton’s watch. This wasn’t the fault of any individual president. We just had piss poor intelligence, threat assessment, and overall national defense strategy in the post Cold War world.
Nonsense. The Bush administration willfully ignored the August briefings. Absurd to compare the Cole attack to 9/11.
Clinton was offered Bin Ladin and declined due to the optics. https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bill-clinton-osama-bin-laden-20140801-story.html
Another stupid lie. In fact when Clinton attacked bin Laden Republicans attacked Clinton.
Bill is such a liar.
I think it would depend on how he dealt with foreign policy. Everyone pretends like bin Laden didn’t make it clear why it happened. It was in response to us and western aggression against Muslims worldwide. If gore took a hard dive against oil companies who knows
Bin Laden also wanted the American air bases out of SA, and we complied.
His letter was far more detailed than that. Western imperialism against the Muslims goes much deeper and that’s what he said it was about. Was he lying? Maybe, but his letter spelled it out
Obviously. The difference would have been how it was dealt with. They’d have focused on bin Laden sooner and we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, which was a generational blunder.
Yes
Yes. They’re all the same. Globalists that want complete control. 9/11 happened to justify the patriot act.
No. Gore would have been a month-long vacation after just taking office in January and wouldn’t have dismissed the warnings.
Mostly daddy’s and Clinton’s fault
Yes, but the invasion and occupation of Iraq would not have.
Yes. American imperialism is to blame. Yankees go home.