DIANA WEST: DID BUSH IGNORE WAARNINGS OF AN AL QAEDA STRIKE?
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2227/Why-Did-George-W-Bush-Ignore-Multiple-Warnings-of-an-Al-Qaeda-Strike.aspx
Kurt Eichenwald examines recently declassified documents regarding multiple warnings President Bush received prior to 9/11 and comes to an “inescapable conclusion,” as he writes in today’s New York Times. “The administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.”
Why did Bush ignore these warnings? Eichenwald:
But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.
Whether true, I think there’s a deeper reason Bush ignored warnings about an Al Qaeda attack. Purely speculating, I think the longstanding Saudi-US relationship, in part fostered/profited from by him and his father before him, gave Bush a sense of protection. I think he was genuinely shocked by the news of the attack as in: How could our Saudi pals/clients/clients of pals have done that to us?
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