Bush Complacent

Bush and Joint Chiefs showed complacency and indifference on the day the world changed.

Complicity. The behavior of President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to all sorts of not unnatural suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief of state who would continue to pose for `warm' pictures of himself listening to a young girl telling stories about her pet goat while hijacked planes were into three buildings.

Constitutionally, Bush is not only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Normally, a commander in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters and direct operations while receiving the latest intelligence.

This is what Bush actually did -- or did not do -- according to Stan Goff, a retired US Army veteran who has taught military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes, in `The So-called Evidence is a Farce'[8]: `I have no idea why people aren't asking some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks. . . . Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plan, all the while on FAA radar.'

Goff, incidentally, like the other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the government's automatic `standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking' was not followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan, fighter planes are sent up to find out why. That is law and does not require presidential approval, which only needs to be given if there is a decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: `The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10am. . . . Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children read.'

`By around 8:15am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handling teachers. By 8:45am, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the [North Tower], Bush is settling in with children for his photo ops . . . Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously . . . and one has just dived into the . . . twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief.

`No one has apparently scrambled [sent aloft] Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, . . . Flight 175 crashes into the [South Tower]. At 9:05 Andrew Card, the . . . Chief of Staff whispers to . . . Bush [who] "briefly turns somber" according to reporters. Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second-graders . . . and continues the banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington DC.

`Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what they have already figured out; that there's been an attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center. There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No. . . .

`At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of the building at 460 nauts.

`When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on [the freeway] at rush hour by buying her a video driving game . . . There is a story being constructed about these events.'

There is indeed, and the more it is added to the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of General Richard B. Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the President's campaigning-as-usual act. Myers was at the Capitol chatting with Senator Max Cleland. A sergeant, writing later in the AFPS (American Forces Press Service) describes Myers at the Capitol. `While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. "They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.'

Whatever Myers and Cleland had to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must have been riveting because, during their chat, the AFPS reports, `the second tower was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."' Finally, somebody `thrust a cellphone in Myers' hand' and, as if by magic, the commanding general of Norad -- our Airspace Command -- was on the line just as the hijackers mission had been successfully completed except for the failed one in Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Myers said he thinks that, as of his cellphone talk with Norad, `the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft'. It was 9:40am. One hour and 20 minutes after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked; 50 minutes after the North Tower was struck.

This statement would have been quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a number of courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims to be uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been overseeing the hijacked planes from at least the moment of the strike at the first tower: yet not until the third strike, at the Pentagon, was the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the dog that did not bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted or shot down. I don't think that Goff is being unduly picky when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force from following its normal procedure instead of waiting an hour and 20 minutes until the damage was done and only then launching the fighters. Obviously, somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no move to intercept those hijackings until . . . what?

On 28 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBC-TV [9]: `That morning no interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which . . . are 12 miles from the White House . . . Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory". Incompetence usually earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were "stand down" orders.'?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were `only four fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US'. Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?

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Bush's and Bin Laden's "business" partners? Yeah, right... So where are the sources?

ACTIVE FBI SPECIAL AGENT FILES COMPLAINT CONCERNING OBSTRUCTED FBI ANTI-TERRORIST INVESTIGATIONS - Judicial Watch, November 14, 2001

Bush took FBI agents off Laden family trail - The Times of India, November 8, 2001

Bush & Bin Laden - George W. Bush Had Ties to Billionaire bin Laden Brood - AmericanFreePress.net, October 7, 2001

Protesters Allege 9/11 Terror Attacks Were Government Conspiracy - CNSNews.com, September 3, 2004

Friendly Fire Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba - ABCNews.com, May 1, 2001 - current link to ABC article

New book on NSA sheds light on secrets, U.S. terror plan called Cuba invasion pretext - SunSpot.net (Baltimore Sun), April 24, 2001

Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel - San Fancisco Chronicle, September 12, 2001

NORAD'S Response Times - FindLaw.com, September 18, 2001 (Original press release has been REMOVED from the official NORAD web site - interesting.)

US Government Documents Show 160 Saudis Flew from the US Between September 11 and September 15, 2001 - Judicial Watch, March 24, 2004

Soldiers say U.S. let Taliban general go - The Washington Times, December 18, 2002

Bush thwarted FBI probe against bin Ladens - Hindustantimes.com, November 7, 2001

Bush took FBI agents off Laden family trail - The Times of India, November 7, 2001

FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated - Guardian Unlimited, November 7, 2001

Report: bin Laden treated at US hospital - The Washington Times/UPI, October 31, 2001
American Hospital in Dubai Web site

CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July - Guardian Unlimited, November 1, 2001

FBI AGENT ROBERT WRIGHT SAYS FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS CONTINUE TO PROTECT TERRORISTS FROM CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS - Judicial Watch, September 11, 2002

Founder of Delta Force: "There is no real threat to the US in the world", "Bush has

fomented world war three" "Americans voted for a second Bush administration out of

Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit. He culled his experiences for "Inside Delta Force" (Delta; $14), a memoir rich with harrowing stories, though in an interview, Haney declines with a shrug to estimate the number of times he was almost killed. (Perhaps the most high-profile incident that almost claimed his life was the 1980 failed rescue of the hostages in Iran.) Today, he's doing nothing nearly as dangerous: He serves as an executive producer and technical adviser for "The Unit," CBS' new hit drama based on his book, developed by playwright David Mamet. Even up against "American Idol," "The Unit" shows muscle, drawing 18 million viewers in its first two airings.

Since he has devoted his life to protecting his country in some of the world's most dangerous hot spots, you might assume Haney is sympathetic to the Bush administration's current plight in Iraq (the laudatory cover blurb on his book comes from none other than Fox's News' Bill O'Reilly). But he's also someone with close ties to the Pentagon, so he's privy to information denied the rest of us.

We recently spoke to Haney, an amiable, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, on the set of "The Unit."

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. ... And I say "we," because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they're going to have from now on.

Our military is completely consumed, so were there a real threat - thankfully, there is no real threat to the U.S. in the world, but were there one, we couldn't confront it. Right now, that may not be a bad thing, because that keeps Bush from trying something with Iran or with Venezuela.

The harm that has been done is irreparable. There are more than 2,000 American kids that have been killed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed ñ which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people, do they? I never hear anybody lament that fact. It has been

a horror, and this administration has worked overtime to divert the American public's attention from it. Their lies are coming home to roost now, and it's gonna fall apart. But somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath and the harm that it's done just to what America stands for. It may be two or three generations in repairing.

A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.

I've argued this on Bill O'Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He's an employee of yours. It's worse than ridiculous. It's criminal; it's utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.

Q: As someone who repeatedly put your life on the line, did some of the most hair-raising things to protect your country, and to see your country behave this way, that must be ...

A: It's pretty galling. But ultimately I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they're starting to see what's happening and the lies that have been told. We're seeing this current house of cards start to flutter away. The American people come around. They always do.

What: Action-adventure about special-ops unit.
Where: CBS (Channel 2).
When: 9 p.m. Tuesdays.