They Knew

UPDATES: More evidence of prior warnings via Le Monde (thanks to HamdenRice at DU for this translation).

Forget all the recursive, masturbatory arguments about thermite charges, the temperature of molten steel, and whether or not a plane really hit the Pentagon. Regardless of your opinions of what was really behind 9/11 -- a PNAC-led cabal, a "let it happen on purpose" operation, or simple neglect and incompetence -- it's time to focus on the available evidence in order to prosecute those who are responsible.

Today, another piece of damning evidence emerged -- evidence that Bush administration officials were warned, in stark terms, of an impending attack on the U.S., that they ignored those warnings, and that they have repeatedly perjured themselves and covered up their incompetence.

Below, a rogue's gallery of the criminals:



The full story from the San Jose Mercury News is here. But this is the smoking gun (smoking tower?) summary:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

It doesn't get any clearer than that.

So my advice to the "9/11 Truth" movement is this:

We have the beginnings of the truth, laid out clearly.

So stop thinking about truth -- let's start thinking about consequences.

Prosecute these criminals and the rest of the flimsy house of cards will fall, as quickly as the Twin Towers fell into dust.