Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Labels: 9/11

Labels: 2008 election, 9/11, Barack Obama, John McCain, presidentail candidates

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.

The new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was intended to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave a smoother path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington’s risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan. They also argue that catching Mr. bin Laden will come only by capturing some of his senior lieutenants alive.

But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Heck of a job, Bushie. The piece goes on to describe bitter turf battles between the White House and CIA over how to conduct the hunt for bin Laden, and the supposedly cowboy-led Bush administration's reticence to launch actual raids, which would logically yield the best results. It's almost as if they don't want to a) offend Pervez Musharraf, or worse, b) find Osama bin Laden...

Labels: 9/11, al Qaeda, al Qaida, Bush administration, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, the forgotten war, U.S. military

elf-proclaimed al-Qaeda commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, he would welcome the martyrdom of execution for masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.

``This is what I wish,'' Mohammed, speaking in English, told a judge who warned that he might be executed if convicted. ``I am looking to be martyred for a long time.'' Mohammed said he was rejecting legal representation and will defend himself. ``Nothing shall befall us, save for what Allah has ordained for us.''

Mohammed, 43, identified in the 9/11 Commission report as the ``principal architect'' of the strikes, is accused of murder with four co-defendants who also appeared in court. The charges carry the death penalty. Mohammed said he and his co-defendants were tortured following their capture by U.S. forces and now face a proceeding that ``is inquisition, it is not trial.''

``After torturing, they transferred us to inquisitionland in Guantanamo,'' said Mohammed. ``We don't have a right to anything.''

The five defendants are charged with conspiring to finance, train and direct the 19 hijackers who seized four airliners used in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington. They are charged in the deaths of 2,973 people killed in the attacks and the crash of one airliner in Pennsylvania.

Translated to Arabic

The men spoke to each other and laughed as they pointed to reporters seated in a glassed-in spectators' gallery. ``It seemed to be a reunion'' of the suspects, Navy Commander Suzanne Lachelier, who represents Ramzi Binalshibh, 36, told reporters during a break.

Lachelier said it was her ``impression'' that Mohammed was orchestrating his co-defendants to refuse counsel. Binalshibh was the only defendant to sit in court with his legs shackled to a bolt in the courtroom floor, a restraint Lachelier said is ``protocol'' for a detainee who is medicated. A court order forbids disclosure of the drug or why he is taking it, she said.

Trial judge Marine Colonel Ralph Kohlmann repeatedly warned civilian defense lawyers to be seated and admonished them for being argumentative.

``Don't ever interrupt me,'' he told one defense lawyer, Thomas A. Durkin, who also represents Binalshibh. ``You are way off point.''

Labels: 9/11, military tribunals, terrorism

Labels: 9/11, Rudy Giuliani

Labels: 9/11

Labels: 9/11, September 11, terrorism

Labels: 9/11, Bush, Cheney, impeachment, polls, September 11

Labels: 9/11, Bushbots, neocons, right wing nut-jobs

Former Environmental Protection Agency Chief Christine Whitman is testifying at a congressional hearing about the environmental impact of the September 11th attacks in Washington today.

Whitman took the stand at the hearing, led by Manhattan Congressman Jerrold Nadler, to answer questions about the cleanup of the Trade Center site. The former EPA head famously declared the air around the site to be safe to breathe just days after the attacks. But in the nearly six years since, thousands of first responders have come down with respiratory problems.

Speaking on WNBC yesterday, Whitman criticized former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his staff for not adequately protecting workers, saying the city should have made them wear respirators.

"It wasn't nearly as clear who was in charge. The city is the primary responder,” said Whitman. “And then you have OSHA can't enforce – interestingly enough OSHA regulations can't be imposed on public servants and those were mostly, by the time you started the real clean-up, firefighters, emergency responders. EPA was not in charge of being able to enforce that."

“Every effort was made by Mayor Giuliani and his staff to ensure the safety of all workers at Ground Zero in the aftermath of this unprecedented act of terror," said former deputy mayor Joe Lhota in the press release. "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators. This is well-documented and indisputable. No one from the City ever tried to block the Environmental Protection Agency. Any statement or suggestion to the contrary is simply baseless. Administrator Whitman never voiced any of these concerns at the time – not at the daily meetings which included federal, state and local officials, not at any press conferences. Doing so now is revisionist at best.”

Labels: 9/11, Rudy, Rudy Giuliani, September 11

Labels: 9/11, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, September 11

Mayor Giuliani resigned from the Iraq Study Group when it became clear that signing the group's report would politicize its findings and conflict with his likely presidential run in 2008.

Ouch. This is a damaging one for Rudy Giuliani: He apparently quit the Iraq Study Group last spring in favor of giving millions of dollars worth of speeches trading on his status as the "hero of 9/11."

So far, Mr. Giuliani's Iraq position has boiled down to, "We have to win." That, plus instituting Compstat in Iraq — an almost laughable if it weren't so serious solution to the hell on earth we've helped birth in the broader Middle East. One has to hope he (and the rest of the Republicans) has a little something better up his sleeve.

Labels: 2008, 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, world trade center

GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani is hoping to ride his 9/11 experience straight into the White House. But while "America's Mayor" is playing well in New Hampshire, New Yorkers directly impacted by the World Trade Center tragedy are less convinced.

In a recent New York Daily News poll, New Yorkers said they favor current mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hasn't declared his candidacy, over "America's Mayor" by almost 2 to 1.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of money management firm Cantor Fitzgerald who lost 658 of his employees on 9/11 and whose brother died in the attack, has given Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign $4,600 of his own money over the last two months and has not given the Giuliani campaign a dime. Diny Ajamian, who as Cantor's human resources director worked with families of deceased employees and helped rebuild the company's staff, says she's disgusted by Giuliani's use of 9/11 as a political prop, adding that while Giuliani made plenty of public overtures to Cantor families in the immediate aftermath, he was virtually invisible two weeks later when she went to work for the firm. "It's absolutely disgraceful. He's just a sleazebag," Ajamian says. "I think now the families feel like he left them high and dry."

A rep for a group that aids families of those injured or killed in the WTC seconds that. "Rudy thinks our grief and the hurt we experienced somehow makes us stupid," says Monica Gabrielle, co-chair of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization which assists families affected by 9/11. "Rudy just can't control himself.... He can't acknowledge his failures.... He just can't stop creating his own myth about himself and about that day. The man is in love with his own legend."

But Giuliani's most potent critics are those who became a symbol of bravery after the 9/11 attacks—America's fire fighters. The 280,000 member International Association of Fire Fighter's fund has been at odds with the former mayor since shortly after 9/11, claiming the man now worth as much as $70 million "gave up" on dead firefighters and devoted Ground Zero cleanup efforts to, of all things, recovering gold and silver. Removal of victims' remains amounted, they say, to a "scoop and dump." Tensions heated up again in March, when a draft of a letter explaining the union's decision to snub Giuliani from their 2008 presidential forum was leaked to the press. The union eventually decided to invite him, but the candidate turned down the half-hearted invitation. That was the last straw for the group's president, Harold Schaitberger, who says Giuliani's actions since 9/11 show "disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen."

Labels: 9/11, politics, Rudy Giuliani, war on terror

Labels: 9/11, Bush administration, terrorism

[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.

Labels: 9/11, CIA, George Tenet, Iraq war, neocons