What should Bush have done when he received the memo telling him Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US?

"i'm talking about the pdb that said "bin laden determined to strike inside america" and mentioned airliners as bombs as a potential means."





What should he have done? Ground air traffic indefinitely for years? Keep all possible targets such as landmarks, Government buildings closed?





I don't see how anyone could expect him to act on such vague, non-specific information.|||Well, it is not even as simple as that. You see, warnings of this type are given to every President by the thousands. Nothing in the security briefings placed a higher priority on these warnings than the thousands of others. So, he could not have reacted specifically, as you suggest. It was also not the first time warnings regarding airliners was reported and to be quite honest, everyone assumed that such an attack, if it ever happened, would be from international flights, not domestic flights.





So, you are correct. There really was no where near enough information to actually do anything about anything. In fact, right this very moment, for all we know, the next warning about the next attack may be in the report sitting on Obama's desk but it is only one of many such warnings.





There is never likely to be the kind of warning that would enable the President to take action to thwart it. That is not how these things go.





Let me put it this way. These type of attacks are perpetrated by small groups working without much outside support. In other words, they start a fire from the bottom up. You cannot fight it from the top down. When these plans are thwarted, it is always at a lower level. The President is too far removed to be able to make key decisions in a timely manner. That is one of the strengths of the enemy and weaknesses in our defense. We need more decision making authority lower on the chain.





*|||Why would they bother warning him about an unresolvable threat? Pretty sure that there are things he could've done besides not even mentioning that he'd heard about it.|||He could have ordered increased screening and such at airports, for starters. It's always better to do something, then nothing at all.|||The President receives thousands of threats every day.|||Bush werent two brite|||He should have taken it seriously instead of just trashing it.*|||I couldn't begin to understand the interworkings of such things as covert operations, miltary special forces, CIA, FBI and such, but the President does. We had been tracking Bin Laden for years.|||vague? non-specific? they had full documentation on many of the suspected hijackers. france sent us pictures of mohammad attah getting on the plane to america. intelligence services of five different nations warned us; warned who was involved. that's how they came up with the names so fast. since no hijackers were on any airline manifest, they had to come up with those names somewhere.|||Clinton also received a very similar memo when he was president and did NOTHING just as he did NOTHING when the uss cole was struck. I say both Clinton and Bush and others did not do there job well. I put the blame only on the terrorists though.|||President Bush knew before hand that Ben Ladden would strike the country and as usal he played the jerk card. President bush and his father had a financial tie with ben ladden, believe it or not!. The bushes are very sinister people. Bush never came for 8 days to Louisiana to save american citizens who were hard working upstanding and more than decent tax payers. As an african american woman that proved enough for me to know George Bush Don't Like Black People! and anyone that is not a republican supporter with money. He doesn't care for anyone whom is not devious like him. He killed a lot of innocent prisoners in texas even as the dna proved their innocence when he was governor. So what does that tell you?. Anyone who supports him and his policy, please question their soul?|||He should've called Clinton and asked "Why the hell didn't you kill him when we had him in our crosshairs?"