About History Repeating Itself ...

... should one ignore said history:

US 'warned India before Mumbai attacks'

The US warned India before the Mumbai attacks, a senior Bush administration official said today, fuelling criticism of the Indian government's lack of preparedness.

According to an unnamed official, the US told Indian officials that terrorists appeared to be plotting a water-borne attack on India's financial capital.

Several top Indian officials have resigned after the attacks that claimed at least 172 lives and injured more than 300. Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, yesterday became the latest official to offer his resignation over alleged warnings about terrorist activities that were not acted upon.

His deputy, RR Patil, also submitted his resignation after being quoted as downplaying the seriousness of the attacks. Their offers to go followed the resignation of the home minister on Sunday and came amid Indian media reports of a string of intelligence blunders, all of which are adding to an atmosphere that the government and state apparatus cannot cope with the scale and complexity of the security threat facing the country.

Apparently, too many Indu officials were ignorant - or chose to ignore - this little bit of very recent history:

Bush Ignored 9/11 Warnings

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have publicly stated that the top-secret domestic spying program Bush authorized in 2002 could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks had the controversial, and possibly illegal, measure been in effect prior to the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Bush's and Cheney's comments have gone virtually unchallenged by reporters covering the spying story and by a majority of Democratic lawmakers critical of the issue.

However, the reality is much different from what Bush and Cheney would have you believe. The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration ignored hard evidence from its top intelligence officials between April and September of 2001 about an impending attack by al-Qaeda on US soil. There's no chance that the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping initiative would have saved the lives of 3,000 American citizens if an intelligence memo titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside US" that President Bush received a month before 9/11 couldn't move Bush to take such threats seriously.

(...) to suggest that the 9/11 attacks could have been avoided if the NSA had had domestic surveillance powers is outrageous.

Simply put, terrorism was not a priority for the Bush administration during the first nine months of 2001. As former Bush administration counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke told the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks in 2004: "To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you."

Clarke served as a White House counter-terrorism official in three presidential administrations.

The truth is that the administration received warnings about al-Qaeda's intentions to use jetliners as bombs in August 2001, but it was too busy obsessing about a war with Iraq to take action. Although President Bush has maintained over the years that terrorism was his number one priority before 9/11, evidence suggests otherwise.

Just like Bush ignored warnings about levees breaking, of an impending financial meltdown, or of the economy being in a recession.

Lesson from history - even if only the very recent one: ignore warnings at your own risk and at the risk of the lives of countless others.

Let's hope such blatant (and/or willfull) ignorance of such a basic historical lesson will not occur again.

Then again - it seems the whole of Humanity is chronically afflicted by intellectual sloth and such affliction remains quite difficult to treat, let alone cure.

Hence why I'll be keeping my fingers crossed but won't be holding my breath.