Please refer to the link at bottom for more in-depth coverage of the events of 9/11 and who was responsible, or knew and negligently failed the Nation in time of crisis. This article tip-toes over the story as where I stomp on it with clod-hoppers but I do so because it is being largely withheld from the public's awareness by the 'controlled-media' and it bothers me that fellow Americans died or were injured and those responsible are acting to silence their stories and claims for political gain. I was as hard on Clinton in my exposing negligence, and I will be on Bush for his, and this is because I am American BEFORE I am a member of a political Party. Some try to keep these facts out of circulation for reasons of their own, and I try to keep such news at the fore as long as our youth are dying and missing Holidays. Feel free to comment or e-mail: wahkonta@graffiti.net Blog On
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-Caveat Lector-


Prejudging the 9/11 report

By Thomas Oliphant, 12/21/2003

WASHINGTON

THE PROBLEM is not Tom Kean's assertion that the
terrorist attack on the United States two years ago
was preventable, it is President Bush's repeated
assurance that it was not. The vaunted Bush attack
machine stirred briefly last week, but paused before
ginning up the conservative establishment for an
assault on the moderate Republican chairman of the
commission investigating Sept. 11, 2001.
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Instead, the White House decided to lead a fresh burst
of weird propaganda on a nearly two-year-old theme
about unconnected dots and intelligence chatter,
designed to create the impression that the attacks
were literally bolts from the blue instead of evidence
that the government had been caught napping. The
political response to a few progress report-type
comments by former New Jersey governor Kean displays
the protective line that has been drawn by Bush
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Vice
President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet.What really
matters -- far more than any eventual citing of
specific individuals or even recommendations for
policy changes -- is a detailed narrative of the
terrorist plot's unfolding. Telling us all exactly
what happened, if it is done with ruthless
thoroughness, will be what counts next spring. Kean's
judgment in making early comments to CBS, then ABC and
The New York Times, is open to question on the
traditional grounds that it unnecessarily courts a
suspicion of prejudgment. However, given the enormity
of what happened, a few signs of official life are
more important to public confidence, especially after
an unnecessarily ugly period of half-hearted
"cooperation" from the White House, Defense
Department, various transportation and immigration
agencies, and New York City itself.

One reason the attack machine didn't unload on Kean
immediately last week was that he quickly amended his
comments to make "clear" that he was only saying
officials at the operational level two years ago
deserved to be singled out for blame and that no
judgments had been reached about senior officials.
That was noncommittal and gave the White House nothing
defined to shoot at.

A more dangerous comment was the unthinking impulse of
Howard Dean to pass along, even as he said he didn't
personally believe it, a "rumor" that Saudi Arabian
officials had prior knowledge of the terrorist plot.
In a charged atmosphere were partisanship and
credibility are antonyms, that is the kind of behavior
that actually undermines the commission, not to
mention Dean's own reputation.

>From what I could find out about what remains an
appropriately confidential and sensitive (as well as
massive) inquiry, what is most important about the
current views of the chairman of the 10-member,
bipartisan body has nothing to do with one-dimensional
blame.

What really counts, I'm told, is the growing view that
the basic narrative of facts that most Americans think
they know about 9/11 is in many, if not most respects
inaccurate. I am not referring to the notion still
spread by administration officials like Cheney that
Saddam Hussein is implicated, a proposition believed
by more than half the people surveyed in a
post-capture poll.

Rather than speculate, it is enough for now to note
that Bush did not listen to the insistence of
departing Clinton administration officials (themselves
culpable for other reasons) in 2001 that Al Qaeda was
the most serious, imminent threat to the country, that
high-level fears persisted through that summer in the
counter-terrorism world, that money from Saudi Arabia
was going to Al Qaeda operatives, that the hijackers
and their supporters left clues that the existing US
network should have picked up, and that real concerns
about the use of hijacked airplanes as missiles went
to Rumsfeld and Bush at a minimum.

That is why the least understandable argument of all
is the line first used by Rice in May of 2002, that no
one could have foreseen that terrorists would hijack
airplanes and crash-fly them into buildings. It is
especially odd coming from the coordination person in
the White House who was also in charge of keeping Bush
informed about a world he only dimly understood. It is
also odd coming from the official who had an
administration plan for actions against Al Qaeda on
her desk on the day of the attacks.

As the commission's work progresses, most Americans
will appreciate the fact that there is a guy in charge
willing to remind everyone of the obvious fact that
nothing like this happens totally out of the blue.
That is hardly prejudging a probe that is far from
complete.

However, those who assert that nothing could have been
done ahead of time are the ones guilty of prejudging.
And those were the people in charge of the store.
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