First off, we've had sworn testimony from soldiers and testimony before our staff that wasn't sworn, that said these alarms rarely went off, that they went off after the war in most cases and went off a lot.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies.
The country is not a democratic state. Therefore we fear that they might carry a recorder in their pocket or there may be bugs in the walls, and you cannot be absolutely sure that you get a straight testimony.
I don't believe that the Bush Administration had something to do with September 11th. I do believe that there were a lot of warning signals, but I don't think they were ignored on purpose - Bush just wanted to go to the ranch for a month.
On the other hand I have seen several, several top targets for these investigations of these terrorist activities that were allowed to leave the country - I'm not talking about weeks, I'm talking about months after 9/11.
That soldiers do terrible things during wartime should not surprise us.
When I resigned, I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues, that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations, that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed.
I always want to make sure we protect our soldiers' pay if there is a shutdown of any kind.
The whole purpose of those attacks was to drive those contractors out. Lots of them had to leave. They were terrified.
I hate alarms. If they go off I get really tetchy. I hate them. They just get me going, I'm hyper at the best of times, but they drive me mad.
Our people were very restive, saying that they could not sit under that notice, and that if the National Board did not call them out soon they would go out of themselves.