Pretty Much Sums It Up... :(
Kinda like the "Clean Air Act" (which lets companies pollute more). Should be called the "Dirty Air Act"
Unfunded mandates like "No Child Left Behind". Should be called "Every Child Left Behind".
The "Patriot Act" (an unnecesary law, since the feds can already do what it authorizes. It basically lets the feds do even more snooping on you than they could before, plus it's rarely used on actual terrorist suspects). Should be called the "Traitor Act".
You get the idea... :)
Later,
Proud Liberal Democrat
Unfunded mandates like "No Child Left Behind". Should be called "Every Child Left Behind".
The "Patriot Act" (an unnecesary law, since the feds can already do what it authorizes. It basically lets the feds do even more snooping on you than they could before, plus it's rarely used on actual terrorist suspects). Should be called the "Traitor Act".
You get the idea... :)
Later,
Proud Liberal Democrat
posted by ProudLiberalDemocrat at 3:14 AM
2 Comments:
ISN SECURITY WATCH (11/08/05) - Allegations that the US military community had known more than a year in advance that four of the 11 September hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, were part of a US-based al-Qaida cell has sparked outrage among the victims’ relatives and prompted calls by the 9/11 Commission for a review.
Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, which investigated the attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, told ISN Security Watch that the panel’s members were looking into the allegations.
The allegations were made by a Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, Curt Weldon, who claimed that the US Department of Defense knew that Atta and the others were part of an al-Qaida cell in the US a year before the 9/11 attacks.
Hamilton said the commission’s staff was reviewing documents and would be ready to make a statement by the end of this week or early next week.
John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission who was navy secretary in the Reagan administration, said the issue was “whether there was in fact surveillance before 9/11 of Atta and, if so, why weren’t we told about it? Who made the decision not to brief the commission’s staff or the commissioners?”
The commission released a report last year on the lead-up to the attacks and traced the government oversights that allowed the hijackings to occur. Most notably, the commission cited a lack of coordination among government agencies.
Hamilton said reviewers had examined 2 million documents, and it was possible that “we might have missed one or two”.
“If we made a mistake, we will own up to it,” he said. “We don’t think we made a mistake, but it’s possible we did,” he told ISN Security Watch.
According to Hamilton, during the investigation into the attacks, three of the panel members traveled to Afghanistan where they were “encouraged” to review Pentagon documents, which they did.
“No one remembers seeing Atta’s name there,” Hamilton said.
“The 9/11 Commission did not learn of any US government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohamed Atta or of his cell,” Hamilton said. “Had we learned of it, obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation.”
Hamilton said his team would review the documents again and urged the Defense Department and Congress to follow suit in light of the new allegations.
The firestorm began on Tuesday when Weldon, vice-chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said a classified military intelligence unit known as Able Danger had identified four of the hijackers - Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar, and Nawaf al-Hazmi - as part of an al-Qaida cell code-named “Brooklyn” as early as 1999.
Weldon alleged that the Pentagon had rejected Able Danger’s suggestion that this information be passed on to the FBI, the US domestic law-enforcement agency. According to Weldon, the Pentagon said the four were in the country on green cards - which they were not - and so information on them could not be shared.
“In fact, I’ll tell you how stupid it was, they put stickies [post-it notes] on the face of Mohammed Atta on the chart that the military intelligence unit had completed and they said you can’t talk to Atta because he’s here [legally],” Weldon said on Tuesday.
The allegations are not new. Weldon first made them on the floor of the House of Representatives in a speech on 27 July.
“We had employees of the Federal Government in one of our agencies who actually identified the Mohamed Atta cell and made a specific recommendation to act on that cell, but were denied the ability to go forward,” he said at the time.
“Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America,” he said.
The bimonthly Government Security News reported the comments earlier this week, prompting the flurry of reactions.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said he was not aware of the specifics of the report, but said officials were looking into the allegations.
“I’ve never heard of it until this morning, and I understand that our folks are trying to look into it and see what they can find out for you,” he said.
But in the meantime, the allegations have prompted strong reactions from the victims’ relatives, who were less than appeased by Rumsfeld’s statement.
The September 11th advocates, a group of widows whose husbands were killed in the attacks, issued a statement on Wednesday, saying they were “horrified” by the allegations, which were first reported by the New York Times.
“The revelation of this information demands answers that are forthcoming, clear, and concise. The 9/11 attacks could have and should have been prevented,” the statement said. “To date, not one individual has been held accountable for this nation’s failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.”
(By Krishnadev Calamur in Washington, DC)
I've heard about this.
It just shows we need to make sure we stop terrorists before they strike the US again.
Later,
Proud Liberal Democrat
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