Good thing this didn't come out before the November election or we might have been distracted from finding out whether 30 odd years ago John Kerry crossed the Cambodian border or was only close to it.
In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission...
The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.
...Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time.
Really what to say?
Who cares about the failures of the civil aviation system, we've got an election to win... and if terrorists strike and kill a few thousand we'll just blame it on the Democrats for not being 'tough enough.'
Unconscionable does not nearly state how cynical, dangerous and repulsive this is.
And let's not forget those wise words by the current secretary of state.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." – Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002
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