O'Reilly and Intelligence

A few nights ago, I was finishing my workout at the gym with some stretching when America’s favorite bully pundit, Bill O’Reilly, came on the television in the next room. Normally, all of the televisions are tuned in to sporting events, but for some reason Faux News was on. I guess someone needed his daily fill of propaganda masquerading as news.

Whatever the reason, I was now forced to listen to the opening of O’Reilly’s show and thus was thrust into the “Spin Right” zone. I never watch O’Reilly because I can’t stand the arrogance of the man and the lies he tells would just enrage me. Instead, I usually read about Billy Boy’s outrageous statements on the Media Matters for America website, or as O’Reilly likes to refer to it, a far left smear site. On this particular evening, I was a captive audience for about 10 minutes and was forced to listen to O’Reilly continue to perpetuate the myth of “intelligence failure” by the CIA.

Must we debunk the “intelligence failure” of the CIA, et al for the umpteenth time? The only intelligence failures that mattered prior to 9/11 and the Iraq war was the lack of intelligence that resides in the White House. However, let’s re-state the facts. On August 6, 2001, the CIA prepared a Presidential Daily Briefing that stated that Al Qaeda was planning a terrorist attack in the United States and that attack could take place very soon. The Bush Administration’s response? Nothing. They did nothing. The President who pledged to protect America did nothing. Condoleeza Rice later claimed that the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6 was presented in an historical context, but that’s a blatant lie. Presidential Briefings aren’t meant to be history lessons.

Under President Clinton, a similar Presidential Daily Briefing was presented prior to 2000 warning of terrorist attacks to coincide with the Millenium. The Clinton Administration, an Administration that actually paid attention to terrorism, mobilized the FBI, CIA and other governmental agencies in an effort to prevent any terrorist attacks from taking place within the United States. Couldn’t the Bush Administration have undertaken a similar effort in August of 2001? Of course they could have, they just didn't.

The other alleged intelligence failure of the CIA was the “faulty” intelligence provided on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction program, but we now know from various sources that the intelligence provided to the Administration painted a very different picture of Iraq’s WMD capabilities than we were led to believe by the cherry-picking Bush Administration. Not only was the “intelligence fixed to fit the policy”, but also dissenting views presented in the infamous National Intelligence Estimate were suppressed and not publicly disclosed until much later.

It’s clear that the CIA is not at fault for Iraq nor 9/11. The CIA told President Bush that a terrorist attack on US soil was looming and he chose to ignore it. President Bush was presented with dissenting views on Iraq and its WMD program and chose to ignore them. In both situations, intelligence failure was not the problem. The problem was one of choice – the wrong choice. Our President – or should I say Emperor since he’s now above the law – made these choices, not the CIA. The responsibility for 9/11 and the Iraq War resides in the Oval Office.

Yet, we have the great patriot Bill O’Reilly blathering on national television about the failures of the CIA. How can this guy seriously think that his show is a “No Spin” zone? On this topic, it’s a “Bush Spin” zone. He claims to be a patriotic American, but he chooses to smear the hard working folks at the CIA by claiming that they hadn’t done their job when we know that they had. O’Reilly is giving his viewers the party line in an effort to perpetuate the lie so that it continues to be the de facto truth.

Bully Bill isn’t a great American; he’s a man who is allergic to the truth when it doesn’t fit his or Fox News’ agenda. Plain and simple, what he presents on a nightly basis is propaganda and nothing more. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - America has become a land where lies are truth, and the truth is a smear. We can all thank Bill O’Reilly for that.

United 93 and Conspiracy Theories

With the recent release of the 9/11 docu-drama “United 93”, there have been some strong emotional reactions that have come to the surface. Some have felt that the film’s release has come too soon and that audiences aren’t ready to re-live the dramatic events of that day. Others that have seen the movie have come away from the film realizing how embarrassingly unprepared this country was for such an attack, from the FAA to the military to the Bush Administration. Hurricane Katrina showed that we aren’t much better off since 2001.

A third reaction has come from the 9/11 conspiracy theorists or as they like to think of themselves, 9/11 truth organizations. For these people, United 93 is simply the cover-up version of what occurred to that flight on September 11th. So what is the conspiracy / cover-up that these people believe in? Well, in brief, it is that the Bush Administration staged these attacks and / or had knowledge of them, and that United 93 and American 77 were shot down and did not reach their targets. Alternatively, others believe that a missile struck the outside of the Pentagon and not American 77.

While I’m usually all for conspiracy theories, this one seems especially implausible. Take the premise that the Bush Administration knew about or participated in the plot. I think the reason that some people find this plausible is because of the total breakdown in the response of air traffic control, the FAA, the military and the Administration. The only explanation for such a failure in response must be that they knew! Right? No one could be this incompetent.

Or could they? If there is one thing that the Bush Administration has proved over the last 4 plus years is that it can’t do anything right. There is no way that they could pull off a caper of this magnitude. This Administration can’t even tie its own metaphorical shoes. We’re supposed to believe that the Bushies staged this, let 2 of the planes hit their targets, for some reason shot down one or two planes, covered up the fact that they shot down planes, and then covered up their participation in the whole plot with a thoroughly embarrassing portrayal of their performance on that day? Wow, that’s a mouthful.

For a moment, let’s dismiss the theory that the Bush Administration somehow participated in the 9/11 plot (hard to do, I know), and examine the possibility that United 93 was shot down. My first question is, if the military did shoot the plane down, why cover it up? Shooting down the plane would have been the right thing to do, and on a day in which so much went so wrong, it doesn’t make any sense to hide that fact. Perhaps some of the families of passengers would have been upset, but personally, I would have been impressed that the military could have been mobilized so quickly and reacted successfully in a scenario that few people even recognized as a possibility on that day. Certainly that response would have been more impressive than what was presented in the 9/11 Commission Report, which was thoroughly embarrassing to all parties involved. From that account, military fighter jets were never close to being in position to down any of the planes. Confusion reigned that day and the fighter pilots were continuously misled as to where their targets were located (hmm, maybe that was intentional – a new theory?).


Now let’s say that the Bush Administration knew about or participated in the plot. Why even bother shooting the planes down? If you went through all of the trouble to get these attacks to happen, what’s the point in stopping any of them? It doesn’t really make any sense.

The other confusing thing for me about United 93 being shot down is the crash site. If the plane had been hit by a fighter jet, it most likely would have exploded in mid-air and debris from the explosion would have been spread over a wide area. Large chunks of the plane would have been discovered in several sites. However, the actual crash site is not consistent with this. It is a single, localized impact zone that is indicative of a plane crashing at high speed. There was virtually nothing left of the plane.

I did read one conspiracy theory account that said the military not only shot United 93 down, but also crashed one of its own planes into the field in Pennsylvania to make it look like United 93 had crashed there. Again, this just isn’t plausible and it would require a cover up so massive that it wouldn’t even fit on the X-Files.

To be sure, I’m approaching this topic with a different perspective than the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I operate under the premise that the Bush Administration is thoroughly incompetent and didn’t have the operational talent to conceive of nor execute such a plan. Conspiracy theorists see the utter negligence of duty exhibited that day and assume that the Administration must have known about the plot and let it happen. They can’t believe they were just “caught with their pants down.”

Unfortunately for all Americans, being “caught with their pants down” is the most plausible and most consistent with the facts explanation that we have. This administration’s performance since that day only reinforces that conclusion.