Bush ignored warnings about an attack

Claim

Intelligence agencies from 11 countries warned about an impending attack but the Bush administration ignored the warnings.⁰

Background

The claim is used to support the conspiracy theory that the terror attack on September 11, 2001, was not planned and carried out by Islamic terrorists but instead by the New World Order which, ostensibly, has George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other powerful people and organizations among its members.

The many warnings should have been ignored deliberately by the American government because it wanted to pass legislation that removed civil rights so that the overall plan for the New World Order could be implemented more easily.

Facts

Intelligence agencies will always receive information, of various credibility, about impending threats.

None of the warnings were so specific that the CIA, the FBI, or the U.S. Military were able to implement sufficient countermeasures to prevent the attack: There was no precise information regarding time, place, methods, or targets.

A large number of the sources used to support the claim are the same, thus inflating the supposed number of warnings.

Quoting out of context
Quoting out of context is common so that it looks worse than it really is. The following examples are from 911review.org, one of the Truth Movement’s most quoted sources:

CNN: Bush briefed on hijacking threat before 9-11
“President Bush’s daily intelligence briefings in the weeks leading up to the September 11 terror attacks included a warning of the possibility that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network would attempt to hijack a U.S.-based airliner, senior administration officials said Wednesday.”¹

It has not been deemed expedient to quote the next paragraph that completely takes the wind out of the murky prophecy:

But, the officials said, there was no speculation about the use of an airplane itself as a bomb or a weapon and no specific credible information about the possibility of a hijacking of any sort.

Another example, from the same conspiracy source, is a reference to the then President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak:

Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before September 11 that Osama bin Laden’s network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, President Hosni Mubarak said.²

The following was left out:

Mr. Mubarak said his intelligence officials had no indication what the target would be and had no idea of the magnitude of the coming attack. ”We didn’t know that such a thing could take place,” he said, referring to the September 11 attacks. ”We thought it was an embassy, an airplane, something, the usual thing.”

The information that the intelligence agencies had intercepted in the various countries has thus been exaggerated and the parts that weaken the claim that there was a forewarning of the terror attack on September 11, 2001, were left out.

The terror attack changed the procedure for dealing with hijackings
Prior to September 11, 2001, the standard operating procedure for hijacked planes was crystal clear: All hijackings that were not meant to fly the hijackers to specific destinations were meant to create a crisis situation where the hijackers would get the upper hand by taking the crew and passengers hostage. When that had been achieved, negotiations based on the demands of the hijackers would start, demands that were often only put forth after the hijacked plane had landed somewhere.

The terror attack on September 11, 2001, changed all this. With one stroke, the procedures on how to deal with terror threats were changed fundamentally.

Hindsight is 20/20, of course: It is easy to say what exactly should have been done. The harsh facts are that none of the available sources were of such quality that it would have been possible to prevent the attack from happening.

Logic

The claim is wildly misleading and manipulating.

Those advocating this conspiracy theory have not explained what exactly Bush should have done.

The claim contradicts the overlying conspiracy theory about a New World Order controlled by powerful politicians, money moguls, and the media. If the U.S. government should impose restrictions and warn the general public about impending terror attacks on such a flimsy pretext, it would result in widespread restrictions of civil liberties.

If the U.S. government should sound the alarm every time any intelligence agency around the world receives any information about an impending terror attack, society would change at once from a free democracy to an oppressive regime that constantly ignores civil rights, sends the military into the streets, eavesdrops on all phone calls and data communication on the Internet, and enforces the strictest censorship.

It is contradictory when it is on one hand claimed that there were sure signs of an impending terror attack by al Qaeda, and on the other claimed that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were not behind the terror attack on September 11, 2001.

Conclusion

The claim is, therefore:

• Misleading
• Manipulating
• Illogical
• Self-contradicting

Sources

0. Løbeseddel, i11time.dk
   Early Warnings, 911review.orgThe White House had (at least ) 28 Advanced Intelligence Warnings Prior to 9/11, Eric Schmidt, Global Research 
1. Bush briefed on hijacking threat before September 11, CNN, 16 maj 2002
2. New York Times, 4. juni, 2002

Q & A