U.S. Cover-Up? What do you think?

I read an article on September 7th of this year in the Sacramento Bee (newspaper) on "Four widows on a quest for truth about 9/11" it states that in a meeting at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building with FBI director Robert Mueller III, "...four planes that the government had been forwarned could be used as weapons-even bombs-but chose to ignore."

One of the widows, Kristen Breitweiser asked Mueller "I don't understand, with all the warnings about the possibilities of al-Qaida using planes as weapons, and the Phoenix memo from one of your own agents warning that Osama bin Laden was sending operatives to this country for flight school training, why didn't you check out flight schools before September 11th?"

To which he answers "Do you know how many flight schools there are in the U.S.? Thousands. We couldn't have investigated them all and found these few guys."

And then she rebuttles "Wait, you just told me there were too many flight schools and that prohibited you from investigating them before 9/11, how is it that after a few hours after the attacks, the nation is brought to its knees, and miraculously FBI agents showed up at Embry Riddle flight school in Florida where some of the terrorists trained?"

"We got lucky" was the reply.

Flaky... I wouldn't dwell on this too much. Given the CIA's incompetence in the past, it wouldn't be too surprising for them to simply do a lazy job until something (like 9/11) makes them motivated to get it done right.

Bullshit.

Its easy to say that. Before 9/11 there was little reason to believe it was going to happen (and on that scale). There was no major antiterrorism or the need to go all the way against it. That's why checking it out wasn't seen as necesary.
After 4000 americans died obviously there was no question of not doing it.

this is certainly a difficult situation we (americans) have put ourselves in. there is overwhelming evidence that something "major" was going to happen much before 9/11. i for one have always found myself as one of the "black helicopter" types... so naturally i think there is some sort of cover up to all of this... but i also ask myself what it would have been like had we been doing heavy investigating prior to 9/11... what if nothing DID happen? we would be getting even more flack from other countries than we are now... we started investigating Iraq more heavily after 9/11... why? because we had reason to believe they pose(d) a threat to our nation... and were not about to let something even worse happen to our country... still we havent found substantial evidence of Iraq being a threat and because of this are being looked down upon by the rest of the world... imagine if we had also been "investigating" Afghanistan prior to 9/11 and then nothing happend... there is no excuse for us not to be monitoring our own country however...

*Nods head to agree with Decius*
A very defensive move. The problem is, if we didn't "think" that something was gonna happen before 9/11, but there was rumors and allegations etc, etc, then why did we invade Iraq pre-emptively? Without evidence, without due cause, why?

I think its good to be the "Black Helicopter" type, because, at the very least you are listening.

heh, yea you guys are right.. i just went on a bit of a rant there, my apologies. i should just stick to the Philosphy threads, politics gives me a headache anyway... probably because im ignorant to a lot of what goes on in that area

PS- Big Brother is watching

"A very defensive move. The problem is, if we didn't "think" that something was gonna happen before 9/11, but there was rumors and allegations etc, etc, then why did we invade Iraq pre-emptively? Without evidence, without due cause, why?"
Irak was invaded baselesly. The US public gobbeled up lies and misinformation from Bush.
Though I can believe him to be a sleazy politician, I do not believe he would cold heartedly (or the dozens of other people who must have "known" about 9/11) let 4000 Americans die.
The evidence presented is circumstantial, and yes, high ranking people are accusing him, but there are political reasons rather to explain those,

Maybe, but what I don't put past him is the ability to let them die in order to get what he wanted ever since his dad failed at it: WAR on Iraq

His dad didn't fail IMO, he followed the UN's orders (quite good)
Something which the present president seems to have trouble doing,

Any war that doesn't have to do with protecting our own soil, is a failure IMO. But most people say that he was going there to "finish what his dad started, and never finished" that is where the failure comment came from.

"Any war that doesn't have to do with protecting our own soil, is a failure IMO."
Well it may be a "bad" war, but not a failure.
And in the long run, Irak could protect US soil. If a solid democracy is in place that spreads to the rest of the ME, that would be a big gain for the free world.
So by your standards of "success" we really don't know whether is was one yet.

Well, lets see, "In My Opinion" means just that. I believe that any war that was allowed to happen for things that do not immediately threaten US soil. An exception to this opinion, is if we as citizens were allowed to vote for or against an attack like that.

It may be that in the long run we will gain, I am not denying that. We'll have to see.

black ops -- black helos Or conspiracy freaks
Did Bin Lauden really order the activation of 9-11?
They seem to have been watching & evaluating security in a lot of areas yet the only attack in the USA are those of which occurred by a cell (?) or cells involved with the airlines? Which would have been far more effective if those trainning as pilots, had in fact become pilots.
Did they lose their cool & jump the gun or where they aware they were being watched? Why didn't they have secondary kamakazee teams in place to act in unison? Looking at the historical aspect of the Japaneese attack at Pearl Harbor, I find it hard to believe that they thought the US would fall from such light damage, they are smarter than that or wouldn't have had such success against the Soviets?

Clinton knew about terrorism but did little, and only lobbed a few missiles during Desert Fox.

He could care less.

And then Bush did adopt the problems, but because the former admin made light of the matter, it didn't seem priority...not to mention, I believe IMO that Clinton knew alot about the terrorists actions, and in fact, held them at bay during his course of Presidency.

Only believe this cos I still recall my papaer back in 94 showing Gore shaking hands with osama Bin Laden, and the Islamic paper stating 'Whitehouse ok with Terrorism'

But, that whole thing got swept under the rug.