What to Know About 9-11-2001

On this day, we have an op-ed from the NY Times that the Bush administration was made aware long before August of 2001 that Al Qaeda was indeed gearing up for some major attack.  What needs to be understood is that even with the best information available from our intelligence community professionals, the White House had been staffed with a unique breed of right-wing dim-wits who were already targeting Iraq and Saddam Hussein as the bad guy in the Middle East.  Day after day, the PDBs (Presidential Daily Briefings) that were prepared and went to the highest office in this country, contained CIA warnings of Al Qaeda's threat.  There are more PDBs and Bush administration communications that are now being made available (Freedom of Information Act and otherwise), and we may learn more as time goes one.  The workings of investigative journalists is vital to the understanding of how our government does and does not work, and we should all be thankful that there are news organizations who work to discover and publish sensitive findings.  What we need to take away from this news story today is that many of the same staffers and advisers who were involved int he Bush administration are the same ones who are now providing the same service and advice to Willard Mitt Romney - and I find that ignorant and dangerous.  We learn from our mistakes.  When we discover where a mistake was made, we should be wise enough not to repeat.   On the day of 9-11-2001, I was working on the 5th floor of the large Administrative building on the Delta Air Line campus in Atlanta.  After 9 in the morning, all of us telecom project people were honing in on our PC monitors to the CNN live news event at the Twin Towers in NY.  Lynne was in flight between Atlanta and a business meeting in Miami.   I was aware that the nation was witnessing something on the scope of Pearl Harbor.  I called my son, who was in his college freshman year in California - it was just after 6 in the morning there.  The phone rang, and rang, and rang - a long time - and after navigating the expected insults as to why I was calling him so early, I finally got him to turn on the TV to CNN.   He did.......  and he entered stage of awareness that the entire country was experiencing.  Before we hung up, I told him to remember this day, as it would be a defining moment in his life experience.    It has been:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120911&pagewanted=print

--
Juan