The 9/11 Commission joins its predecessors in creating more

[Veggie Meathead]

myths.By ignoring the uncomfortable questions altogether,by not allowing any skepticism about either the motives or the actions of the Bush administration or the PNAC and by assembling a group of politically connected poohbahs,the Commission has evaded its responsibility to tell the truth to the American people.This mythology will continue to fester as a sore for the next several decades.The truth, already apparent in many bits and pieces,will gradually emerge.We will then learn the true nature of the gang of thugs who occupy seats of power.

[ClintonTyree]

1. When you put............

Lee Hamilton as the Chairman for ANY commission you have already decided the outcome of that commission. You have guaranteed yourself a complete whitewash wrapped in a nice package that will have absolutely no substance to it whatsoever. That was the plan of the Bush White House all along. They were loathe to create the commission in the first place, then when they were forced to by the court of public opinion they chose the one man that they could count on to make it totally meaningless; Lee Hamilton.

He has a long history of cover-ups and never digging too deep to find out the truth about any matter. Why the Dems let Hamilton chair this commission is beyond me. Perhaps they didn't have that much say in the matter, or perhaps they too didn't want to delve too deeply into the root causes of 9/11. Either way, you're correct. The Commission was a joke.

[rfranklin]

2. I believe that Bush appointed the members of the commission...

so the results were preordained.

[Flubadubya]

6. Henry Kissinger...

Don't forget, that was Bush's first choice to head up the commission... Mr. Secret himself. Sheez! :eyes:

[GR]

3. This Has Failed To Meet Even My Low Expectations..My Letter To Commission

Dear Mr. Ben-Veniste:

I cannot tell you how embarrassed I was for you and for America as I listened to yesterday's press conference. Imagine if you will a bank robbery of millions of dollars. Then posit that before the robbery, the bank President was told that criminals were determined to rob the bank, investigators identified notorious bank robbers in the area, the bank doors were left unlocked and the vault door was left ajar. Then imagine the police, charged with investigating the robbery saying, "It was a failure of imagination and we don't want to get into the partisan blame game as to who was at fault for the robbery."

That, in my opinion, is a very accurate analogy for what you and your rancor-averse committee have done.

May I further say that bad premises, in this case the premises that include "this was beyond anyone's imagination, no one was should suffer employment consequences for their failures and we must at all costs avoid the blame game," leads to bad conclusions, in this case that "simply rearranging the boxes on the organization chart will solve the problem of the pervasive individual and group malfeasance that accompanied 9-11."

I believe that it was the President's job to draw these threads together, along with the National Security Council and Condoleeza Rice, not another layer of bureaucracy. Richard Clarke documented just how unresponsive the Bush administration was to the terror threat. We certainly don't need another level on the org chart to solve the problems and as a matter of fact, another layer of bureaucracy wouldn't make a President pay attention to dire warnings or look beyond a well-documented obsession with Iraq (See O'Neill and Clarke) or make the FBI pay attention to memos written by a brave field agent or make the DCI tell the President that someone was learning to fly in order to crash a plane into a building.

In addition, the 9-11 families developed a very detailed list of questions that the wanted answers to and you failed to answer most of them. How unconscionable.

When I learned of your appointment to the Commission, I had great hopes that you would be a force for honesty and truth seeking. Instead, I feel that you let "The Republican Noise Machine" as David Brock so aptly calls it, intimidate you. Of all people who I thought would hold the Commission Report to a standard of truth and honesty, you were the biggest disappointment. Although your tough questioning in the public hearings was exemplary, by signing on to this report, you have brought great shame to your name and the reputation of the Commission and done nothing substantive to make America safe from new attacks. For that you will be remembered but not forgiven.

[Veggie Meathead]

4. Agree wholeheartedly.In my opinion, the only inquiry in our

living memory that was even able to tell the truth was Sen.Sam Ervin's Watergate Enquiry in the Senate.That was because the country was blessed to have a thoughtful and independent person of Senator Sam's calibre.In the age of Saxby Chambliss,and a commission cochaired by the notorious lackey, Lee Hamilton,truth can be expected to be the first casualty.

So another mythmaking event joins a whole list of previous efforts to firmly push back truth.The disease is now firmly embedded in the body of American politics.The only question is how and when this disease will manifest itself.

[WyLoochka]

5. Excellent, GR

Thanks for posting.