Liberation News Service: Is Cressey saying that some senior members of the Bush administration viewed Saddam Hussein as a greater threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden? “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

March 19, 2004

Is Cressey saying that some senior members of the Bush administration viewed Saddam Hussein as a greater threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden? “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

The spiritual struggle within the "US mainstream news
media" continues...If he doesn't blink, Roger Cressey
will have his name scrawed on the John O'Neill Wall of
Heroes...Of course, as the LNS has documented
repeatedly, the Clinton-Gore team had identified Al
Qaeda as the US's #1 threat and, indeed, their
national security team handed the _resident's national
security team a plan to crush Al Qaeda. It was
shelved, along with the pre-9/11 Hart-Rudman
suggestions to establish a Dept. of Homeland Security
(commissioned, yes, by Clinton-Gore)...

Lisa Meyers, NBC: Now Cressey is speaking out for the
first time. He says in the early days of the Bush
administration, al-Qaida simply was not a top
priority, “There was not this sense of urgency. The
ticking clock, if you will, to get it done sooner
rather than later.” Cressey and other witnesses have
told the 9/11 commission of long gaps between
terrorism meetings and greater time and energy devoted
to Russia, China, missile defense and Iraq than
al-Qaida...Is Cressey saying that some senior members of the Bush administration viewed Saddam Hussein as a greater threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden? “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It was
inconceivable to them that al-Qaida could be this
talented, this capable without Iraq, in this case,
providing them real support."

Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4556388/'

Capturing bin Laden: priority before 9/11?
Critics say Bush administration worried about Russia,
China, missile defense, Iraq
By Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:43 p.m. ET March 18, 2004When the 9/11
commission holds public hearings next week, its
central focus will be the choices that U.S. presidents
made in fighting terrorism before 9/11. Just how
committed to taking on al-Qaida was the Bush
administration before Sept. 11? Some critics,
including one former counter-terrorism insider, now
say there was a surprising lack of urgency.

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Shortly after taking office, President George W. Bush
ordered a new, more muscular policy to eliminate
al-Qaida. Helping draft that policy: Roger Cressey, a
terrorism expert in both Democratic and Republican
administrations and now an NBC News analyst.

Now Cressey is speaking out for the first time. He
says in the early days of the Bush administration,
al-Qaida simply was not a top priority, “There was not
this sense of urgency. The ticking clock, if you
will, to get it done sooner rather than later.”

Cressey and other witnesses have told the 9/11
commission of long gaps between terrorism meetings and
greater time and energy devoted to Russia, China,
missile defense and Iraq than al-Qaida.

For example: One document shows a key high-level
National Security Council meeting on Iraq on Feb. 1,
2001. Yet, there was no comparable meeting on al-Qaida
until September.

Is Cressey saying that some senior members of the Bush
administration viewed Saddam Hussein as a greater
threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden?
“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It was inconceivable to
them that al-Qaida could be this talented, this
capable without Iraq, in this case, providing them
real support."

That spring, President Bush learned bin Laden was
responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, which
killed 17 sailors. Why was there no retaliation?

“You would think after an attack that almost sank a
U.S. destroyer there would have been [a mandate] for
some type of action. Yet we never saw that from the
Pentagon,” Cressey answered.

Bush administration national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice insists that President Bush wanted to
avenge the Cole, but not with a pinprick retaliatory
strike, “We were concerned that we didn’t have good
military options. That really all we had were options
like using cruise missiles to go after training camps
that had long since been abandoned.”

NBC’s sources say that the camps in Afghanistan were
thriving, that the United States could have hit the
camps and killed lots of terrorists.

Read the transcript
More of the Condoleezza Rice interview

“Even if you’d been fortunate enough to — to get a few
people, it clearly wasn’t going to impress al-Qaida —
al-Qaida had to be eliminated,” Rice added.

Over the summer, the threats of an al-Qaida attack
grew, focused mostly overseas. Finally, on Aug. 1,
Bush’s new policy, designed to eliminate al-Qaida in
three to five years, was ready for a final decision.

INTERACTIVE

• Global dragnet
Key figures and developments in the hunt for al-Qaida

But the Bush team didn’t get together until Sept. 4,
one week before 9/11.

Can the Bush administration be faulted for spending
nine months hashing out a policy? In retrospect,
shouldn’t it have done something?

According to Rice: “We were in office 230-plus days.…
By the time that we got to the summer of 2001, at
least 16 of 19 hijackers were already in the United
States for the — for the final time.”

The 9/11 commission now is looking into whether the
Clinton and Bush administrations missed opportunities
to get bin Laden and al-Qaida, asking what more could
and should have been done to prevent Sept. 11.