I could be wrong since it’s mostly a vague memory at this point, but I recall reading at some point that Bush brushed off some reports in the handoff from the Clinton admin about Islamic terrorism.
So maybe 9/11 would have happened anyways and we just would have seen a different response, or maybe Gore could have acted on those reports and caught the perpetrators before 3000+ people were killed.
Bin Laden was #1 on the FBI’s most wanted list for years. Everyone knew he was a threat. And 9/11 wasn’t the first time that al qaeda trained militants attacked the World Trade Center… it was bombed during the Clinton / Gore administration. Years later they attacked US Embassies, and instead of sending troops in to try to get Bin Laden, instead they launched missiles at an al qaeda training camp. Then all qaeda attacked the USS Cole, and again the US government under both Clinton / Gore and Bush did little to nothing as a response. Clinton/ Gore had 8 years to go after all qaeda and did very little… Bush had 8 months.
The issue wasn’t that the US government (under either administration) didn’t take it seriously, the issue was that the FBI, NSA and CIA weren’t communicating the information they had… and that’s what the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to help resolve. The mission of DHS was good… the (lack of) guardrails, was not.
Its also possible they would indeed stop 9/11 but that doesnt stop them from trying again later and maybe they blow up a sports stadium full of people instead.
Stopping one thing by no means means stopping future things.
Edit: just to be very clear here, stopping 9/11 short of taking out Bin Laden and the leadership would have just resulted in them planning something else amd trying again. They weren’t ever going to stop trying. We might have had intel about 9/11 but that doesnt mean we’d have Intel on the next thing.
I could be wrong since it’s mostly a vague memory at this point, but I recall reading at some point that Bush brushed off some reports in the handoff from the Clinton admin about Islamic terrorism.
So maybe 9/11 would have happened anyways and we just would have seen a different response, or maybe Gore could have acted on those reports and caught the perpetrators before 3000+ people were killed.
Bin Laden was #1 on the FBI’s most wanted list for years. Everyone knew he was a threat. And 9/11 wasn’t the first time that al qaeda trained militants attacked the World Trade Center… it was bombed during the Clinton / Gore administration. Years later they attacked US Embassies, and instead of sending troops in to try to get Bin Laden, instead they launched missiles at an al qaeda training camp. Then all qaeda attacked the USS Cole, and again the US government under both Clinton / Gore and Bush did little to nothing as a response. Clinton/ Gore had 8 years to go after all qaeda and did very little… Bush had 8 months.
The issue wasn’t that the US government (under either administration) didn’t take it seriously, the issue was that the FBI, NSA and CIA weren’t communicating the information they had… and that’s what the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to help resolve. The mission of DHS was good… the (lack of) guardrails, was not.
Its also possible they would indeed stop 9/11 but that doesnt stop them from trying again later and maybe they blow up a sports stadium full of people instead.
Stopping one thing by no means means stopping future things.
Edit: just to be very clear here, stopping 9/11 short of taking out Bin Laden and the leadership would have just resulted in them planning something else amd trying again. They weren’t ever going to stop trying. We might have had intel about 9/11 but that doesnt mean we’d have Intel on the next thing.