What was the political climate at the time Mr. Bradley?
“The Declining Terrorist Threat” by VIPS member Larry Johnson published in the NYT in July 2001 represented the Left-Center, Media-Liberal view that AQ and Jihadist terrorists were of no threat to the US. Johnson specifically states in the editorial that no Muslim terrorist threat in the US existed.
Quote: “Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.
None of these beliefs are based in fact.”
Given the rather nebulous information available to the President, 9/11 could certainly have been averted, but Liberals would have howled and rushed impeachment.
Instituting profiling and summary bans on air travel for Muslims would have done the trick. Allowing gate agents, ticket agents, security screeners, air crews, and passengers to simply summarily ban Muslim men from flying would have kept the 9/11 hijackers off the planes. Thus, no plots.
Every liberal of course would rather have 9/11 than something like that, so there was no political before the fact to act to stop the plot.
If Clinton and Congress had acted to tighten ID requirements (the 9/11 pilot-hijackers had been issued Florida driver’s licenses and were registered to vote) the hijackers could possibly not have gotten on the planes, lacking valid IDs. Of course this would have impinged on illegal immigration (and Democrat illegal voting through Motor-Voter give Illegal Aliens the vote measures) so it was not done. Had it been done in say 1996, by the time the pilot-hijackers arrived they would have found the security environment very very hostile.
The poll and the conspiracy nuts and yourself Mr. Bradley are frankly, not adult but rather childish.
There is a trade-off between security and preventing attacks and the wide-open liberal society that Liberals want.
The 9/11 attacks certainly could have been prevented, if America had been serious about the threat: Muslims, and greatly reduced the ability of Muslims to live and move in the US without constant surveillance and many restrictions.
This of course would have also included a large domestic intelligence operation with paid informers, Hoover-like COINTELPRO operations, blackmail, “illegal activities” and the like.
No free lunch.
Otherwise, 9/11 was inevitable and a follow-on attack of even greater (and likely, nuclear proportions) even greater.
Much of the arguments here display fantasy projections. It’s not Muslim men on jihad who are the enemy (violates PC-Multiculti Liberal religion) but “evil GWB” who is a safe villain. Hence the “Truthiness” of the idiot conspiracy theories.
