Maybe.
If you deny that any mistakes are ever made (like Republicans do) then you certainly won't learn from your mistakes. Of course there were failures leading up to 9/11, in both administrations. One doesn't have to completely fabricate history to find mistakes.
since alot of folks seem to miss my point, here's a great clarigying comment:
Due diligence (1+ / 0-)
Clinton failed to nail bin Laden, but he did not fail at due diligence as trumpeted by the mockumentary.
Bush failed both to nail bin Laden and to take due diligence to see that the US was not attacked. The 9/11 Commission Report is clear about those facts.
-6.00/-7.18 The Partie Lion
Given that 9/11 even occurred, we can say with near analytic certainty that neither president took the threat seriously enough to have done every single thing that could have been done to prevent it. So, yes, there were failures. Mature leadership commands that admission. Now we need to move forward and implement the 9/11 Commission Recomendations, which Bush and the so-called "strong on security" Reps (who don't learn from mistakes because they "don't make them") have failed to do.
On the other hand, even AFTER 9/11 Bush seems not to have taken bin Laden seriously. To anyone that wants justice, that wants to see the terrorist that attacked us captured or killed, the story of how Bush pulled commanders and resources off the hunt for bL at Tora Bora is shocking.
Bush let bin Laden escape.
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
When Tommy Franks was asked by Bush to pull himself away from the hunt for bin Laden to instead plan for Iraq, he is quoted in Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" (a book the Bush admin endorsed) as saying: "Goddamit, what the fuck are they talking about?" (Page 8)
http://www.topdog08.com/...
In a recent interview with CNN's Christianne Amanpoure, Peter Bergen (who has reported on bin Laden for more than a decade) and Gary Berntsen (a former CIA officer who lead the CIA paramilitary team that chased bin Laden from Kabul to Tora Bora) give the details on how we missed our best chance, just a few weeks after 9-11, to kill the terrorist that attacked us. Pay special attention to the fact that Berntsen did not receive the troop support he needed. Bergen: "By my calculation, there were more American journalists than American soldiers at the battle of Tora Bora, and that fact kind of speaks for itself."
The Bush team was holding back military resources for Iraq. These are the people, the ones that passed on the best chance to kill the terrorist that attacked to instead focus on a country that didn't, that want Americans to think that they are "strong on national security."
AMANPOUR: On November 12, Kabul was overtaken by an Afghan militia allied with the United States. The Taliban were routed, and bin Laden ran to the one refuge he knew best, the Afghan mountains.
BERGEN: Bin Laden went to Tora Bora. And it's not surprising he did. Tora Bora is very defensible. It's 10,000 feet up. It's a place he knew very well. He's, you know, been going in and out of that area for more than a decade.
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AMANPOUR: But bin Laden was wrong. He was followed, tracked by U.S. intelligence and Afghan militias. They had Osama bin Laden in their crosshairs. He was cornered. Or so they thought.
NOTE: ABC's falsified scenes allege that before 9/11 the CIA and Afghan militias had bL surrounded and the Clinton admin refused to pull the trigger. This scene is falsified and completely usupported. Several insiders with first-hand knowledge have contradicted the scene while ABC has not produced a single source to corroborate it. Here, Amanpour interviews the head of the CIA team that surrounded bL after 9/11 but failed to get support from the Bush admin to kill the terrorist that attacked us.
AMANPOUR: Gary Berntsen was the leader of the secret CIA paramilitary unit that had pursued bin Laden since he had fled Kabul. And now the CIA was sure it knew where he was, thanks in large part to a radio taken off a dead al Qaeda fighters.
BERNTSEN: We listened to bin Laden for several days using that radio, listened to his communications among him and his men. We listened to him apologize to them for having led them into this trap and having led them into a location where they would be having airstrikes called on them just relentlessly.
AMANPOUR: More than two weeks of bombing, solid intelligence, the U.S. had thrown its biggest bombs, its most sophisticated missiles, bunker busters, daisy cutters, at bin Laden, but somehow, some way, it wasn't enough.
BERGEN: The policy of using very limited number of U.S. Special Forces on the ground calling in airstrikes and a large number of Afghan ground troops worked brilliantly at overthrowing the Taliban, but at the battle of Tora Bora, it was a total disaster.
AMANPOUR (on camera): The plan was for Afghan and Pakistani soldiers to block any escape routes, but Osama bin Laden managed to slip away through the mountains. And the mission to capture or kill the al Qaeda leader failed. By most accounts, the main problem was not enough American soldiers on the ground.
BERGEN: By my calculation, there were more American journalists than American soldiers at the battle of Tora Bora, and that fact kind of speaks for itself.
BERNTSEN: In the first two or three days of December, I would write a message back to Washington, recommending the insertion of U.S. forces on the ground. I was looking for 600 to 800 Rangers, roughly a battalion. They never came.
"Blame Clinton" and "I hate liberals" are not national and homeland security policies. Instead of falsifying history we should learn from it. Even after 9/11, it seems like the Bush administration did not learn necessary lessons. They failed to commit the resources needed to kill or capture bin Laden.