Quote:
Originally posted by Scred
we could have acted on intel multiple times to take the guy out. we didn't. and now it's clear that other options would have been better. hindsight is very convenient.
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Which might explain why reading the original Economist article resulted in a response different from the above quote. The Economist article said more many things. Only quoted were the parts relevant to this thread.
These posts and the press's latest revelations have nothing to do with avoiding a WTC attack. Only those confused by the current administration ploy to deflect blame would care whether a WTC attack could have been avoided. The administration did little to solve obvious management problems and left field people stifled, until the press started asking "What did he know and when did he know it". Top administration officials even went so far at to claim total ignorance of things they were fully briefed on - so that we cannot accuse them of doing nothing.
To divert attention - to confuse the people: administration officials talk about having insufficient information to avoid a WTC attack. Irrelevant. The real question is why that information would not be available. How hindsight is suppose to be used. Instead adminstation cites a mythical attack on the Brooklyn Bridge and has others say government could not have known a WTC attack was coming. All so that we stop asking, "Why have they done nothing about management failures that obstruct the workers?"
Scred talks about not responding to a bomb threat in KoP. Irrelevant to how hindsight must be used. The administration knew, in hindsight, that the system was broken, and instead applied a rediculous solution - "Office of Homeland Security" - rather than addressing a top management disease in the FBI and maybe at higher levels.
We know that the administration was more concerned about Intercontinental missiles than about any 'Tom Clancy' (also called real world) attack. We now know the administration knew after WTC that the system was broken - and did nothing for six months.
Hindsight should correct managers that don't do their job. Hindsight is not about making excuses for failure to stop an attack. Hindsight is about fixing a system corrupted so that it could not detect or avoid future incidents - big difference.
Criticisms directed at the administration by a responsible press are about an administration that ignored managment problems. To avoid that criticism, the administration has many confused - talking about why the one attack could not have been detected. Even if the system worked, the attack still might not have been avoided. But we know the system is corrupted, that top George Jr people knew it was corrupted, and that the solution, instead, was an MBA type solutuion - more bureaucracy - Office of Homeland Security.
It is naive and irrelevant to say we could have avoided the attack or could have finished a flawed task in Mogadishu. An adminstration that has serious management failures wants us to talk about this nonsense. They don't want us to know why they ignored the real problems and why they created an MBA type bureaucracy - Office of Homeland Security - instead of empowering the workers and fixing the existing system.