Isn't amazing how the American government refused to take responsibility for failing to prevent 9/11?

I blame them both, but find the Patriot Act reprehensible and unconstitutional.

DHS is BS and so is TSA(feeling people up and posting nudies of celebrities).

All examples of big government trampling my rights. I am no more safe today than I was on Sept 10, 2001. I am however much poorer and there are 500,000 more federal employees I get to support.

I get no Health Ins from my job and only a 5 percent match on my 401K. I think the DHS folks are doing way better than me, how about you?

Old Guy

Former head of counter terrorism Richard A Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet was running around with his "hair on fire".

At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Stephen Hadley (Condi Rice's NSA dogsbody) a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaeda and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again."

On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings. At the outset of his testimony Clarke offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and an acknowledgment that the government had failed: "I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to those who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness." Clarke was the only member of the Clinton or Bush Administrations who provided an apology to the family members of victims along with an acknowledgement of the government's failure.

Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Among his highly critical statements regarding the Bush Administration, Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit". After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events.

Prior to the 9/11 Commission, portions of the Clarke's August 6 Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush were subsequently redacted by The White House for national security reasons. Despite the title of the memo, in response to aggressive questioning from Richard Ben-Veniste – a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission – Rice stated that the document "did not warn of attacks inside the United States." Clarke then asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues, and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. No principals committee meetings on Al-Qaeda were held until September 4, 2001.

In a late November truthout interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal said, "Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of Al-Qaeda.. the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last briefings on terrorism. I believe he told Clarke that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible... The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke's memos and statements were".

It is instructive to note that former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, the only member of the 9/11 Commission to read the President's Daily Brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before 9/11.

Still think Bush was not to blame?

the Pentagon also warned Bush that terrorists were threatening to make an attack using airplanes but Bush brushed that aside so I think it's both administration's fault.

the Pentagon also warned Bush that terrorists were threatening to make an attack using airplanes but Bush brushed that aside so I think it's both administration's fault.

David you need to do much more research on the topic.

Your lack of knowledge is painfully obvious.

Godu dumm.

jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

tryna b ib??????? EPICfail.i get 10000000000000000% and u gt 000.

eeeeskafukmeee.