US needed ‘better information’

WHITE House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that in hindsight if anything might have helped stop 9/11 it would have been better information about threats inside the United States.

Testifying before the commission investigating the September 11 attacks, she predicted the war on terror would go on for at least a generation.

She said: “Tragically, for all the language of war spoken before September 11, this country simply was not on a war footing.

“Since then, America has been at war. And under President Bush’s leadership, we will remain at war until the terrorist threat to our nation is ended.”

She said: “We are not going to see success on our watch. We will see some small victories on our watch.”

She added: “I believe we have really hurt the al-Qaida network; we have not destroyed it. I get up every day concerned because I do not think we have made it impossible for them.”

Ms Rice said there had been an “insufficient” response to terror threats by successive US governments over the past 20 years.

Shortly after taking office, President George W Bush told Ms Rice he was “tired of swatting flies” in respect to tackling al-Qaida.

On September 4, 2001, days before the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, a new policy on combating al-Qaida was created.

Dr Rice said this was the first major intelligence strategy document of the Bush Administration: “Not Russia, not missile defence, not Iraq, but the elimination of al-Qaida”.

She said the administration “set as a goal the elimination of the al-Qaida network”.

Intelligence “chatter” was gathered in the weeks before September 11.

Among the “frustratingly vague” communications picked up were three that Ms Rice quoted. “Unbelievable news in coming weeks”, said one; another read “big event ... there will be very, very, very, very big uproar”; and another said “there will be attacks in the near future”.

But there was no “actionable intelligence” suggesting there would be an attack on US soil, she said.

During her appearance, Ms Rice notably did not apologise to the families of the victims of September 11, unlike former counter-terror adviser Richard Clarke who said two weeks ago that he, and the Bush Administration, “failed” the people of America by not stopping the attacks.

Mr Clarke accused Mr Bush of treating the terror threat as a “serious” but not an “urgent” issue.

He told the commission Mr Bush was obsessed with invading Iraq and had undermined the war on terror by doing so.

And he accused Ms Rice of incompetence.

Instead of an apology, Ms Rice said in her opening statement: “We owe it to those we lost, and to their loved ones, and to our country, to learn all we can about that tragic day, and the events that led to it.

“We must stay on offence, to find and defeat the terrorists wherever they live, hide, and plot around the world. If we learned anything on September 11, 2001, it is that we cannot wait while dangers gather.”