THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 64, March 30, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE HEARINGS OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS:
BIASED MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE & THE OLD POLITICAL GAME
OF TRYING TO TRANSFER & PLACE BLAME & THEREBY GAIN
POLITICAL ADVANTAGE IN THE COMING ELECTION
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
I watched as much of the 9-11 Commission hearings as I could. Early on, it occurred to me that it was a fairly useless exercise and one,
in an election year, that the mainstream media would degrade into the typical political game of trying to transfer and place blame.
Most of the questions seemed to be of the “could’a, would’a, should’a” variety, as if the participants in the events and years leading
up to 9-11 could have known more, would have done things differently, and should have saved the more than 3,000 who died that day.
Only life doesn’t work that way. The President gets briefed every morning by the head of the CIA and FBI. Others from the National
Security Council participate. He hears from the Secretary of Defense as well. The news is never good, and the news every day is filled
with all manner of potential threats. After a while, a President gets used to it. Yes, the threats are there and they are real, but they are
always there.
When a threat has been deterred, Americans are not told about it. Why let the enemy know that you know what he’s up to?
Moreover, it’s not like people in the Clinton administration or those coming into office in the Bush II administration weren’t fully aware
of the threats. They were. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “We didn’t arrive in office wrapped in cellophane.” Nor was
everyone in place on day one. The vetting and approval process for those serving the new administration took weeks and months.
If anything, those around Bush were among the most cohesive group of “neocons” to ever hold office at the same time. They arrived
thinking that the U.S. had to take a far more aggressive position regarding terror-sponsoring nations. By contrast, the Clinton inner
circle were far less inclined to take any kind of military action, no matter what the provocation might be.
9-11, however, could not be ignored. It literally changed all the rules of the game, and those rules were going to be written by President
Bush and his circle of advisors. The toppling of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon was no longer going to be
treated as a crime scene. It was a full-blown cause for war, and that’s what followed in short order.
Pakistan was told to cooperate. Or else. It cooperated. Afghanistan, home to the Taliban, mostly Saudi Arabians who had taken over
the nation under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, was attacked in order to either kill him or at least take away his base of operations.
Bin Laden has been on the run ever since. If this action had not been taken, he would still be directing new attacks on America, against
which he openly declared war.
You don’t have to listen to the 9-11 Commission hearings. All you have to do is read Breakdown by Bill Gertz. For a mere $15.00,
you get the softcover edition published by Plume, a division of The Penguin Group. When first published in 2002, it detailed the failure
of American intelligence to defeat the global terror campaign initiated by al-Qa'ida and the many other terrorist groups extant.
Despite the billions poured into the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency
and the other intelligence-gatherimg bureaucracies, they acted like all bureaucracies, i.e., they protected their own turf and did not work
well together. Since intelligence was their treasure, they often withheld it from one another or from military commanders and diplomats
in the field. The FBI, seeing itself as a law enforcement agency primarily, paid poor attention, if any, to the signals from its offices that
some very strange things were occurring. For instance, a lot of Saudis living here in the U.S.A. seemed to be very interested in taking
flying lessons.
In retrospect, this is significant NOW. It wasn’t then because bureaucracies are creatures of a political world in which their budgets are
subject to the oversight of members of the U.S. Senate and of the U.S. House of Representatives, some of whom routinely voted against
any increase to fund such things has hiring more Arabic-speaking translators. By the afternoon following 9-11, those agencies were
desperately trying to find anyone in their midst who could understand and read Arabic or Farsi, the language of Iran. You could have
counted them on the fingers of both hands.
Other factors were at work. George Tenet, the CIA chief, continues to have the confidence of George W. Bush, but before Clinton
appointed him, the CIA had seen five directors in six years! There was no continuity of leadership there and, as a result, no one at the
top had the ability to assess what had preceded him and was there so briefly that any decision was pure guesswork. Politicians even
meddled with the question of who the CIA could recruit. When you want to learn about terror groups, you don’t ask the local
equivalent of Boy Scouts to help you.
In sum, both the Carter and Clinton administrations are best remembered for being utterly feckless, non-responsive, and immune to
acuity, alertness and awareness, as regards the need to take decisive action against an Islamic revolution that demonstrated over
and over again that it regarded the U.S.A. as weak and indecisive. While Jimmy Carter and later Bill Clinton held the Office of U.S.
Presidernt, the Islamists had good reason to believe that America was weak and indecisive.
All that changed when Bush II became President. 9-11 occurred barely eight months into his first term. He told the world, “If you
aren’t with us. You’re against us.”
And ever since then, the French, the Germans, the Russians, and all the rest of the world’s hand-wringers and bed-wetters have
been telling us that all we’re doing is getting the terrorists mad at us for trying to capture and/or kill them.
However, Libya’s dictator has turned over his entire WMD program and wants to work with the US. Afghanistan and Iraq have
begun the first steps toward becoming constitutional democratic governments. Similar changes are occurring throughout the
Middle East.
It is particularly telling that the European Union has only now begun to discuss a coordinated effort to deal with terrorism on that
continent, fully three years since 9-11! If they couldn’t have figured out years ago that it would also arrive on their doorstep, why
should we expect our own people to know just when and how the terrorists would strike us?
The 9-11 Commission is just a typical, governmental exercise whose report will be ignored, like so many other commissions before.
Everyone who participates in it has their own agenda, so you might as well just pick a side and draw whatever conclusion you want.
You will probably be wrong no matter which side you pick.
Why? Because history is seen in a rear-view mirror, while the future is the dark, foggy road ahead, filled with unknown trouble.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Terrorism & U.S. Homeland Security
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past col- umns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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