April 8, 2004
FREE THE MALAYSIA TWO!:
Bush’s Biggest Mistake: The pre-9/11 blunder you’ve probably never heard of (David Corn, 4/09/04, LA Weekly)
The real question for the 9/11 commission — and the American public — is not whether George W. Bush considered al Qaeda an urgent threat before 9/11, but this: How did the U.S. government let Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi get away with it?Don’t know who al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi are — or were? Their names should be household words; they should be as famous as Lee Harvey Oswald. They were two of the 9/11 hijackers who took control of Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon. But they were different from the other 19 hijackers. The CIA had been watching them as early as January 2000. Yet the CIA failed to let the FBI know that these two men — who had attended an al Qaeda summit in Malaysia in early 2000 — were in the United States or heading toward it. Consequently, the FBI lost what probably was the best opportunity it had to unravel the 9/11 plot.
It's an interesting enough story but what does it have to do with anything? That's how large bureaucracies function--badly. And what would we have done with them if we'd arrested them? You can't even hold al Qaeda members who are captured on the battlefield without the David Corn's of the world whining about civil rights violations. Imagine the reaction from the Left if George Bush's government had started arresting Arabs on suspicion they might be up to something? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 8, 2004 11:40 PM
Normally, I don't have to fight through so much spam to leave a comment.
David Corn is... David Corn. Why waste any more time on it than that?
Posted by: at April 9, 2004 1:06 AMYou missed an important clueless feature of David Corn's most recent article. Of course the CIA did not share its information with the FBI. This was illegal until the Patriot Act was passed. Mr. Corn and his fellow leftists now are unhappy about the state of the law before the Patriot Act; however, they also claim that it represents a violation of civil liberties in America. What do they really want?
Posted by: George Richardson at April 9, 2004 1:33 AMMr. Richardson: Easy. To complain about W. And America.
Posted by: at April 9, 2004 7:05 AMSolution to this conundrum: give every leftie like David Corn a Beretta, and tell them to shoot all swarthy men they fears. The right will be clean, and the left will learn something about responsibility.
Posted by: jim hamlen at April 9, 2004 9:00 AMThis argues greatly for the CIA and FBI to engage in "extrajudicial" killing.
I'm thinking that a few of those with confirmed terrorist background and intent showing up dead with some of Hormel's best bacon jammed in their mouths might get the attention of the rest.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at April 9, 2004 10:16 AMAh, but this is necessary to bash Bush and get a Democrat in the White House, which as We All Know Is Far More Important.
Posted by: Ken at April 9, 2004 12:20 PMDavid Corn has taken over for me as the number one idiot anywhere. Carville has been moved to second.
Posted by: BJW at April 9, 2004 12:47 PMGregg Easterbrook posted today to answer this precise question as to what might have happened if the Bush Adminstration had done exactly as David Corn thinks it should have done:
http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml
(the post entitled "An Alternative History")
Posted by: Joe at April 9, 2004 7:56 PM" . . . arresting Arabs on suspicion they might be up to something?"
As far as I'm concerned, they're all up to something. Only an imbecile would assume otherwise.
Are they waking up and freaking out in Europe, or what?
Uh... man... whew! Uh, so 'zackly how many of these sons o' bitches we got livin' in Spain? WHAT?! Yer kiddin'?
Posted by: I.C. G. Had at April 10, 2004 1:07 AM