September 11 has become a sacred day in the US. It's a time to mourn for the innocent lives lost 11 years ago today. It's a time to honor the heroes who sacrificed their lives to save innumerable American and non-American ones. It's a time to show respect to the service men and women who have gone to war to try to prevent 9/11 from occurring again. Politicians put their bickering aside on this one day and America comes together in remembrance.
I'm writing this blog today on 9/11 (although I'm publishing it on 9/12) because I think that reflecting on and learning from 9/11 is the best way to pay tribute to all those who are no longer here.
Kurt Eichenwald's newest book, released today, is called "500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars" and took him over 5 years, including 600 hours of interviews, to research. The book examines the 18 months following 9/11. I'm assuming that it was during the writing of this book that he came across recently declassified (but not published) briefings and records from the Bush administration from before 9/11.
On September 11, the New York Times printed an op-ed by Eichenwald titled "The Deafness Before the Storm." In this article, Eichenwald links together these newly declassified documents with the already released and scrutinized August 6, 2001 presidential briefing, creating a time line beginning from spring 2001 onwards of increasing concern over a possible terrorist attack by Al Qaeda in the US. Eichenwald paints a picture of negligent neoconservative leaders within the Bush administration who refused to listen to the CIA's warnings, instead choosing to focus on Saddam Hussein, whom they considered to be the greater threat. The article concludes, "Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all."
Why is this kind of information significant now? Because Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has surrounded himself with foreign policy experts from the Bush administration. In fact, according to Foreign Policy: "out of Romney's 24 special advisors on foreign policy, 17 served in the Bush-Cheney administration." In September 2011, Romney told a crowd in Arizona, in regards to Dick Cheney, "that's the kind of person I'd like to have [as a vice president]--a person of wisdom and judgment."
We already know the effects that the post-9/11 Bush foreign policy has had on the US domestically and worldwide - we have lived it. And at a time when the US has troops fighting and dying overseas, a presidential candidate who possesses little foreign policy experience (and shows a disturbing lack of knowledge about geopolitical realities and American foreign policy) should be judged based upon the people he surrounds himself with. The point that has thus far been missed is that the American people deserve to know more about the Bush administration leading up to 9/11 as well as thereafter, specifically because it is appearing more and more likely that we will be getting the same again with a Romney presidency.
With all the shifting dynamics and global instability facing the United States today, can we really afford another administration that ignores important intelligence affecting Americans in favor of pursuing their own private agendas?
I'm writing this blog today on 9/11 (although I'm publishing it on 9/12) because I think that reflecting on and learning from 9/11 is the best way to pay tribute to all those who are no longer here.
Kurt Eichenwald's newest book, released today, is called "500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars" and took him over 5 years, including 600 hours of interviews, to research. The book examines the 18 months following 9/11. I'm assuming that it was during the writing of this book that he came across recently declassified (but not published) briefings and records from the Bush administration from before 9/11.
On September 11, the New York Times printed an op-ed by Eichenwald titled "The Deafness Before the Storm." In this article, Eichenwald links together these newly declassified documents with the already released and scrutinized August 6, 2001 presidential briefing, creating a time line beginning from spring 2001 onwards of increasing concern over a possible terrorist attack by Al Qaeda in the US. Eichenwald paints a picture of negligent neoconservative leaders within the Bush administration who refused to listen to the CIA's warnings, instead choosing to focus on Saddam Hussein, whom they considered to be the greater threat. The article concludes, "Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all."
Why is this kind of information significant now? Because Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has surrounded himself with foreign policy experts from the Bush administration. In fact, according to Foreign Policy: "out of Romney's 24 special advisors on foreign policy, 17 served in the Bush-Cheney administration." In September 2011, Romney told a crowd in Arizona, in regards to Dick Cheney, "that's the kind of person I'd like to have [as a vice president]--a person of wisdom and judgment."
We already know the effects that the post-9/11 Bush foreign policy has had on the US domestically and worldwide - we have lived it. And at a time when the US has troops fighting and dying overseas, a presidential candidate who possesses little foreign policy experience (and shows a disturbing lack of knowledge about geopolitical realities and American foreign policy) should be judged based upon the people he surrounds himself with. The point that has thus far been missed is that the American people deserve to know more about the Bush administration leading up to 9/11 as well as thereafter, specifically because it is appearing more and more likely that we will be getting the same again with a Romney presidency.
With all the shifting dynamics and global instability facing the United States today, can we really afford another administration that ignores important intelligence affecting Americans in favor of pursuing their own private agendas?
