Just yesterday at a news conference one of the reporters from that "LIBERERAL MEDIA" that you're always hearing about finally got the gumption to ask Bush what Iraq had to do with 9/11.

After his usual stumbling around the subject he finally said NOTHING. No one from this administration has ever said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, he said. They may not have said it in so many words but they sure as heck have implied it. And up until yesterday I have never heard them come right out and say that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

So who was it with Iraq that chose the war you are referring to?

And as far as the republican congress giving their approval for the war in Iraq, and YES the democrats that voted with them, it was not approval so much for the war in Iraq, but approval for the president to do what he had to do to fight the war on terrorism. At that time the president was enjoying the wave of popularity and support brought on by 9/11. The ones that didn't vote to give him the power to do whatever he wanted were seen as weak on terrorism.

I wonder how many more might have had more reservations if they knew what they know now or had known
President Bush was told in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes - information which prompted the administration to issue an alert to federal agencies - but not the American public.

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reported the warning was in a document called the President's Daily Brief, which is considered to be the single most important document that the U.S. intelligence community turns out. The document did not, however, mention the possibility of planes being flown into buildings.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that while President Bush was told last summer that bin Laden's al Qaeda network might hijack planes, "until the attack took place, I think it's fair to say that no one envisioned that [using planes as suicide bombs] as a possibility."

However, a federal report issued exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks contrasts with that statement.

The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," warned the executive branch that bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building.

It described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al Qaeda might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.

"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.

The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for various federal agencies under contracts.

And it's come out that an agent in the FBI's Arizona office also speculated about using planes as weapons, writing in his case notes about Zacarias Moussaoui that Moussaoui seemed like the type of person who was capable of flying an aircraft into the World Trade Center.

It was the observation of an agent taking notes as he thought about his case - an observation whose significance simply did not register at the time.

Separately, the New York Times reports that an FBI agent in Arizona warned his superiors last summer that bin Laden might be sending students to U.S. flight schools.

The FBI failed to make a connection between that warning and the August arrest of Moussaoui - a French citizen of Moroccan descent detained in Minnesota after raising suspicions among his instructors at a flight school where he said he wanted to know how to fly, but not how to land or take off.

Moussaoui has emerged as the lone defendant charged in the aftermath of the attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. He is charged with conspiring with bin Laden and the 19 suicide hijackers to attack Americans.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said repeatedly that he wishes the FBI had acted more aggressively in addressing the Arizona and Minnesota leads. Mueller has also said that nothing the FBI possessed before Sept. 11 pointed to the plot.

When hijacked airliners plowed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, Middle Eastern men trained at U.S. flight schools were at the controls.

According to Fleischer, after the information was presented to President Bush in August, the administration put domestic agencies on alert in the summer, just months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

That alert was not announced publicly but Fleischer suggested it may have prompted the hijackers to change their tactics.

"The administration, based on hijackings, notified the appropriate agencies and, I think, that's one of the reasons that you saw that the people who committed the 9-11 attacks used box cutters and plastic knives to get around America's system of protecting against hijackings," he said.

Fleischer did not say which agencies were put on alert and what they did in response.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice described a series of threats uncovered by intelligence officials, beginning in September of 2000 and reaching a height in the summer of 2001, that dealt mostly with American interests overseas.

Those threats prompted a series of alerts issued by the FBI to law-enforcement agencies and from the Federal Aviation Administration to the nation's airlines and airports, she said. There also were strong warnings to Americans to be careful overseas.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham complained that the Justice Department and CIA had not provided congressional investigators with adequate access to documents and witnesses for a probe into intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Graham said through a spokesman Wednesday that the revelations in the FBI memo mark an important discovery in Congress' investigation into why the FBI, CIA and other U.S. agencies failed to learn of and prevent the Sept. 11 plot.

"It represents a failure to connect the dots," said Graham spokesman Paul Anderson. "This was dismissed rather lightly at FBI headquarters."

On Feb. 6, in his first public comments after the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA Director George Tenet told a congressional hearing that the CIA had seen "spectacular threat reporting about massive casualties against the United States" in the spring and summer last year, but there was no specific information.

A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the CIA had continuously informed policymakers throughout the summer before Sept. 11 that bin Laden and his network might try to harm U.S. interests and discussed a range of possibilities that included hijackings.

"That was among the many things that we talked about all the time as a potential terrorist threat," said the intelligence official. "But when we talked about hijackings, we talked about that in the traditional sense of hijackings, not in the sense of somebody hijacking an aircraft and flying it into a building. We talked about concern about the general noise level about al Qaeda planning and we were trying to figure out what they would do. We never had specifics about time, place, MO (method of operation)."

But in the VERY least we should have had heightened security at all the airports and maybe put some air marshalls on planes.
DON'T YOU THINK gimpel??????????????

Gimpel, the definition of Patriotism does not mean blindly following a President (who won a fixed election the first time around). Your blindness makes you equate love for country as love for President. They are not one in the same. If he is doing wrong by our country, our love of the country will cause us to decry him. Iraq had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but it sure feeds the recruiting of terrorism. Bush, whether he purposely seeks it, or is "an idiot" as some say, stirs the wasp's nest.

Should patriots not question why a company that Dick Cheney has ties to was allowed exclusive contracts to supposedly help rebuild Iraq? Should we not question whether the middle east is better off now? Should we not question why the administration ignored a memo sent by Iran in 2003 requesting discussions which would have averted the Iran Nuclear issue we now face? Does us asking questions make us non patriotic? That is essentially what you are saying.

If patriotism is what you seem to think it, and your love of the George Bush is blasphamy against your God. Yet you probably dare call yourself christian.

I enjoy freedom...the freedoms and liberties Bush would have taken away from me if he could...I enjoy this country, and that is why I do criticize or question politicians I or others voted for that are not doing what is in the best intrest of this great nation.

I know I cannot suade you Gimpel's Bread, nor the others who are hard headed and refuse to ever admit they have made mistakes on who they voted on, but I admit I made a mistake by voting for George W. Bush the first time around. I am not ashamed to look at things with open eyes and change when I see I am wrong. What would you say if Bush called for all Blogs to be banned? Would you be upset, or would you say, "Yay, Bush is doing what it takes again to protect America!"?

Could someone please explain how the 2000 election was fixed? Every recount gave the same result, even when the Sore/Loserman standards were used. Besides...fixing a national election for the highest office in the land is a pretty tall order for an Idiot.

No, no, no, that isn't it. The election was fixed by a group of men from Florida whose first names were Chad. I don't guess they ever figured out what their last name were. But there was a lot of talk about hanging Chads which seems kind of overly violent to me. After all it was in an effort to beat a man named Al and Al invented the internet and is now trying to find a way to tax all Americans for using it. Maybe the Chad's understood this would happen.

Since then I have avioded getting to know men whose first name is Chad. I figure if their past ever caught up with them that the small left wing conspiracy group would go into a killing frenzy and I might suffer from their zeal. I've know 2 Chads in my life and one was a Georgia State Police Officer and every knows you cannot trust the police especially a Republican one. After all they randomly give tickets to unsuspecting motorists.

Oh, wait a minute, this blog wasn't about an election.

Never mind.

Boss, Boss, the plane.

FrozenOne: The absolute master of "physological warfare". I am so intimidated (physological) UH I MEAN PSYCHOLOGICALLY. Just a little well intentioned suggestion FrozenOne. I don't mean to be harsh or critisize in any way but if you are going to be the master of something, you should learn how to spell it.

I don't guess I should even bring up your spelling of (hippocrit) that's hypocrite since you weren't calling yourself that but rather calling me that. Still yet if you are going to insult me in print or anybody else for that matter, it might be good and it just makes you look better if you spell whatever you are calling them correctly.

Now I realize that a man of your superior intellect needn't worry about something so trivial as spelling when you are philosophizing and sharing all of your vast storehouse of knowledge with us poor unfortunate morons. I know that we aren't worthy to have and share the benefit of your wit and wisdom. I know I can't speak for everybody but I feel sure, they like myself are honored just to learn at the feet of the master.

Oh and that fighting thing you're talking about, I do hope you know that I was just joking because I know that you would just spank my little 240 pound candy ass. I can't even believe you didn't know I was just kidding. I might be an illiterate moron but I know better than to lock horns with somebody like you that is far superior both PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY.

No sirre! I ain't messing with the master. However you mentioned rehit 1. I think I just might be able to take him so my invitation to him still stands. And since we are both right here in NA it shouldn't be all that hard to arrange. Let me know there rehit. You can back me into a corner. LMAO

Now FrozenOne if you won't take offense I will try to answer kirbycoggin about how somebody as dumb as Bush could rig the election. You are right that he couldn't of course. However I think old Jeb just might be smart enough to do it with the help of Susan Harris. (wonder how's she feeling about Bush right now) You do know the old saying of course that THE ELECTION IS NEVER OVER UNTIL YOUR BROTHER IS THROUGH COUNTING THE VOTES.

Oh and there was no recount. Do you not remember what happened? The Florida Supreme Court said there should be a recount of the whole state, which by the way Florida law called for with such a slim margin of victory. But Mr. I BELIEVE IN STATES RIGHTS TO BE AUTONOMOUS Bush filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court IMMEDIATELY. Since the Supreme Court was and still is loaded with republican appointed judges, Bush prevailed of course and had the recount stopped.

And by the way, Al Gore won the POPULAR VOTE of the whole country by quite a bit. He just didn't win the electoral college vote. He would have won Florida outright anyway if the stupid old people down there could read a ballot OR if Ralph Nader would have kept his nose out of it. He got over 70,000 votes that would have all been Gore's. Oh and guess where the bulk of his financial backing came from in Florida. If you can't guess let me tell you. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!! Although they hated Ralph Nader and everything he stands for, they knew it would draw votes away from Gore.

All of that and Gore still only lost Florida by a little over 500 votes and I'm betting he didn't really lose it at all and they knew that and that is why they resisted a recount so valiantly. They knew though if they got it to the Supreme Court, it was game, set and match.

YES GIMPEL, BUT RIGHT SPELLED RIGHT IS THE BEST COMBINATION!!!!!

I think gradually pulling out of Iraq and letting them finally stand on their own would be a first step. We are told we are there to stop the violence. Alot of the violence continues because we are there. At some point you have to take the training wheels off. Iraq's army will not be any more prepared to handle things themselves in five years. Plus the situation is one that Bush put us in himself. Again, Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. IN 2003 I do believe most other politicians, regardless of party, would not have wanted to be the bull headed bully Bush is, and would have had talks with Iran. Simiarly they would have worked better with North Korea. When you come out and call several countries an Axis of Evil, then attack one of them ( Iraq) of course the others are going to want to build up their defense. Why are we so aggresive in Iraq, but were only aggresive in Afganistan for a year? The Taliban is far from gone.

Since both major parties are controlled by lobbyists neither will keep companies from continued outsourcing of jobs, nor will they really stop the oil barrons from gorging us more and more.

The real solution is some people who are not paid off being put into the white house and congress, but that will not likely happen in my lifetime.

Oh, also about stealing the elections. Many people who discuss this are not referring to what happened in Florida. When Walden O'Dell, the chief Exectuive of Diebold,Inc, the company who produces voting machines says in a fund raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" before the 2003 election, of course people think something smells fishy.

imdstuf, I guess if you can see a major company like Diebold Inc. changing votes with their machines so that they could give the presidency to whom they choose by saying, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" then I guess you can see anything you want in any given sentence to help reflect your opinion.

Why would a company like Diebold Inc. take the risk of changing votes, getting caught, but even better than that, they tell people in advance in printed matter that they are going to do it.

I guess if you look hard enough you can find a conspiracy in everything you read or see.

Good grief if the Anti-Bush crowd could put together plausible, verifiable, irrefutable evidence I would be willing to reconsider my opinion. These days there are so many people out there with personal agendas you have to sort through the information, look at different sources both liberal and conservative. Neal Boortz a syndicated talk show host from Atlanta tells you up front and I am pasting this from his web site, "ALWAYS REMEMBER Don't believe anything you read on this web page, or, for that matter, anything you hear on The Neal Boortz Show, unless it is consistent with what you already know to be true, or unless you have taken the time to research the matter to prove its accuracy to your satisfaction. This is known as "doing your homework."

Neal will tell you up front that he is an entertainer. He provokes to get people to listen and raise his ratings.

It is impossible to determine what a person thinks or what he is really trying to say. Do not read into comments. You will be wrong a whole lot more that right.

mydtwc

My, my...
I see that girl is still trying to impress everyone with no original ideas but having the ability to use spell check.
You have regurgitated the talking points of the wacky far left as well as any woman can.
Are you serious about these conspiracy theories?
Or is it merely your goal to practice typing the same words over & over?
To actually believe that the election as close as it was was fixed by only 1 or 2 states....
Don't you think we actually played with the count in the other states as well??
And your reference to former Vice President Gore winning the popular vote and only losing the electoral college vote...
Didn't you guys know the rule before this election??
You made a lot of claims in your long overly zealous rantings. Should we google each of them to verify as you tend to be less than truthful...

First of all...there were several recounts, none of which the Supream Courts allowed, because of the rediculous manner in which they wanted to "devine" the voter intent from improperly used ballots. Such as when trying to figure out which candidate they really wanted to vote for when 2 chads were punched, or trying to decide from scratched chads etc. (Yes I know the previous is a sentence fragment so don't hit me for that) I saw the so-called butterfly ballots used in FL, and they didn't look that confusing to me. Personally, I think a ballot should be at least a litte confusing so as to weed out the votes of people that are too stupid to vote! (again a joke, so don't take your usual stance of "oh yeah....well your're another one!")

g_dog_blog, I did not say this is true, I said it is something to discuss. If it does not raise your eyesbrows atleast, then nothing will. Reading comments from people like you make me pretty sure he Bush did win fairly, whether he was a good candidate or not, but fixing an election is still possible.

I voted for Bush myself the first time around, but when I see things getting worse, and a President failing to do a good job, I see no need to keep supporting him. I realized I am an American, not a Republican. That is just a name, and I am not supporting a bad President just because he carries that label.

As for answers, Ralph Nader had better answers than Bush or Kerry, yet in this supposedly free country of ours, he was not allowed to be on nationally telivised debates. He was not on Presidential ballots everywhere, yet people laugh and say, "no one votes for independents"....how can they?

Is it not blatantly obvious to anyone with open eyes that Republicans and Democrats do not care about the average citizen? They care about satisfying the lobbyists of the corporations who pay their campaign fees.

imdstuf, your comments on this blog make more sense. I went back an re-read your comments and I owe you an apology. You were passing information not an opinion in reference to Diebold. My comments still apply to the information though.

I agree that people like Ralph Nader should have been in the debates and that it is impossible for a person other than a Republican and a Democrat to gain access to ballets in every state in the union. I would like to hear Independents and Libertarians be a part of the debates.

I agree that Republican and Democrats are not interested in the average citizen. The Federal Government have long since left the idea of "by the people for the people." We have digressed to a system that is moved by power and control. The Democrats don't have it and their sole purpose in attacking President Bush and the Republican party is to re-gain control of the White House, Congress, and the Senate.

I do support the President in his efforts to keep terrorists out of the US. There is no way to get around the fact that after 9/11 there has not been another attack on American soil. The Muslim Extremist plan is to annihilate Israel and those who support her. I have been in the midst of extremist Palestinians and talked with them and they are willing to die along with their wife and children to kill you, yes you. If we don't nip it in the bud now it will only get worse.

imdstuf, we can no longer be a country that looks out for America alone. We live in a global society. Being more concerned about the US than other nations is what got us Pearl Harbor. For a lot of Americans, that was a lesson learned at the cost of several thousands of lives. Now we have 9/11 and things are getting difficult and people are saying pull out. If you read my response to you on the Lincoln blog about President Clinton's address in December 1998 after he ordered the bombing of Iraq, then you know that in 1998 under his watch, Iraq and WMD's were a real threat to the world, not just the US.

People like to say that President Bush is retaliating for his father but in reality he is cleaning up President Clinton's mess.

People are crying about the lack of WMD's but look, they are here in the US and are tearing the fabric of this nation apart. The WMD's are Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Al Gore, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc.

Terrorism needs to be fought or the terrorists will take over the world. I read an interesting story recently. It appears that in the Philipines a toy manufacturer is making a new toy for children. In their commercial, they urge kids to "have fun and become a terrorist." The toy looks like an airmail envelope-"kids write the target's name on it, clap on it heavily, and then give it to the victim within seven seconds so it explodes in his hands."

NO, let's just worry about America, let's hide from a world where insane people raise their children to be suicide bombers, where killing innocent adults and children is O.K., where if you do not get what you want, cut off a few heads of civilians and broadcast it on TV, where indiscriminate roadside bombs are a way of life, where you wake up every morning and you wonder, "Who is going to die today?"

Let's just close our eyes and maybe they will not see us and they will leave us alone. Let's run down our President, pick at everything he does, call him names and accuse him of crimes he has never committed. Let's tell everyone he works for us and it is time for him to do what we want.

Thank God, the President has the conviction to do the right thing and to do what is right for America and the world. His job is not to report to you but to protect your whiny little butt while you moan and groan and call him trailer trash or other unbelievable names.

It does not matter whether there were terrorists in Iraq when American soldiers invaded it. The point is that President Clinton and his whiny Democrats knew that something needed to be done about Saddam Hussein. The evidence shows it but the Dems and the news media do not like to talk about it. What they did was to leave it to President Bush to resolve. Then they start a campaign against the President and the Republicans to regain control.

When you go to sleep tonight, thank God that President Bush is the president and that there has been no attack on American soil since 9/11.

There are a lot of problems with the Federal Government but quite frankly, President Bush isn't the problem.

It's a conspiracy!!! George W. Bush is a major stockholder in the Tylenol Corporation. Another major stockholder in Tylenol is Dick Cheney. I really convinced this time!!!!! Together they convinced Bill Clinton to bomb the aspirin factory in Iraq.

Mr. Clinton was upset because Monica revealed that George W. was indeed a Republican and the Governor of Texas that lived in a doublewide trailor and he had a suite in it. Question! Was that a suite of trailors or a suit of clothing? I can't remember.

Bill Clinton was depressed because he didn't know that Texas actually had a governor. He assumed that the person who ran Texas was the biggest baddest redneck who could flex his muscles and says Git-R-Done the loudest.

Did I forget to mention that George W. had a red Ford truck with mud flaps?

Monica was a plant from the Libertarian Party and was the illegitimate wife to Larry the Cable Guy. Now it is at this point that things get a little fuzzy. I think that Larry had credible information that aspirin caused the molds that his sister was plagued with.

It is a well know fact that Saddam Hussein's plan was to infiltrate the world through the sales of Aspirin and convert all to Islam but Osama bin Laden ruined that plan prematurely by blowing up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

So Saddam convinced Osama to take all of the WMD's from them and hide them. After if Osama is so good at hiding then no one will ever find the WMD's.

I have it on good authority that Osama is now living in Enid, Oklahoma and goes by the name Chad O Mite. His main efforts today are to spread lies about George W. Bush through the news media.

This is a lot more fun that trying to show imdstuf and mydwtc the err of their ways.

Read my Lincoln response.