BlogWood: MT Archives

911 Bombshell The Wicked Witch is Still Caught!

CBS News had a very interesting interview last night with Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the 911 Commission:

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration – that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on May 16, 2002.

"How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility," said Kristen Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the president to appoint the commission.

This sounds big, but the dominant headlines in the NYT this morning are all about the wicked witch. If we look carefully, we can find out that 199 soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since W declared “Mission Accomplished” back on May 1.

That’s the NYT spin. In reality, there have been 321 military fatalities during that period. The pentagon like to spin many deaths as accidents, thus lowering the “combat” death count. In reality, not very many of these soldiers would have died if they were not in Iraq right now.

W is responsible for every one of those deaths, and it now looks like his administration knew a lot more about the impending 911 attack than they are letting on.

911 led to the Patriot Act, the Afghan invasion, and the invasion of Iraq. The fear and confusion of most Americans immediately after 911 made an unelected and weak President extremely popular, as people naturally rallied around the only leader we had. Regardless of what W did or did not know before 911, he has cynically used the tragic events of that day to rape the constitution, enrich his friends, and enact revenge on the mean bully who tried to hurt his daddy, but who had absolutely nothing to do with 911.

Which is why we all feel so much safer now.