Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (119907)	6/14/2005 11:30:22 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793896

KLP, re: But Ed, didn't we "do that" after WTCI???? That was a LONG, SLOW, etc...but it didn't seem to stop WTCII, did it? In response to my statement that: In terms of how you fight them and identify the "bad guys," however, we're fooling ourselves if we think there are any shortcuts that avoid the slow, long, complicated and frustrating process of cooperation, investigation and intelligence. No, we didn't do that, at least not well. We didn't "cooperate" with the governments that had vital information. We didn't share enough and we didn't ask enough of their help. We didn't properly investigate and even then we had enough clues to figure it out with a few obvious follow ups. For instance we had a memo from an FBI field operative that warned that potential terrorist were training in flight schools and learning to fly commercial airliners. We had information that two suspected members of Al Qaeda were in the country and we didn't share that with the FBI and track them. We probably had one of the potential hijackers in custody and we didn't move fast enough to review his computer files or his movements. It now turns out that, in direct contradiction to Rice's statements, Bush's statements and Cheney's statements, the potential for terrorists to fly airliners into targets was not only considered but considered at high levels. So it turns out that if we'd simply done a workmanlike job of sharing information, analyzing it and following it up we would likely have stopped the loss of 3,000 lives and avoided the panic that still persists. The current approach of using conventional military force to bloody Iraq is, as the Bush Administration now seems to realize, creating and training thousands of highly skilled and highly dedicated terrorists who we will not kill, cannot identify and who will constitute a significantly greater future threat. In addition, as I've written, by radicalizing the populations of the middle east and creating fertile ground elsewhere, we are, in effect, creating a jungle for them to hide in. That's why I pointed out that we could have used some of the brainpower, manpower and the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars spent in Iraq to build a better, more cooperative and more efficient system of identifying, locating and neutralizing terrorists. Of course back then the pool of radicalized, likely terrorists wasn't as massive. This is not rocket science. And it certainly isn't politics. Ed