Bust-a-gut funny!

Hey, Deny, just take the initiative and float a bill in the House that requires “A COMPLETE, FULL, AND EXHAUSTIVE INVESTIGATION THAT SHALL PROVIDE AN UNFLINCHING ASSESSMENT OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF ANY AND ALL PARTIES REGARDING THE GRAVE ATTACKS ON AMERICA ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, AND WHOSE COMPLETE, FULL, AND EXHAUSTIVE ACCOUNTING WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED COMPLETE, FULL, AND EXHAUSTIVE UNTIL THE FIRST WEDNESDAY IN NOVEMBER”

Nah, not this group. Unlike Nixon, these people are totally corrupt. That’s the last thing they’d want. Never thought I’d say that abut Nixon, but if you live too long, you know things can get worse.

Bush as Chiron and Cheneyburton as Demetrius? Kerry as Titus?

They did it again. MPR pre-empted “WWDTM” for a special fund-raising edition of the “The Splendid Table” This time, they’ve gone too far. If they wanted to have a fund-raiser, could’ve hay just put in the tape of the fund-raising edition? I suggest direct action. Withhold donatons until something gets done about “WWDTM”. (People in the ND or SD Border Regions: Give Money to the public broadcasters in your states with the intention of getting “WWDTM” of their schedules.) Protest at your nearest MPR affilate. Write editorals. Minnesta Public Radio is now, to quote Education Secretary Rod Paige, “a terroist organization”.

Or you could spend your time doing real things.
You have the Power!

Or we were somehow supposed to know that the next group of plane hijackers was going to fly planes into buildings so our longstanding policy of saving lives by cooperating with hijackers was wrong…

Oh I know, the crime was that the wrong president was in office when something bad happened and we need a way to pin it on him.

If there honestly isn’t anything to investigate, exactly how do you stay on your high horse about keeping the circus running?

You raise a pretty good point, so I’m gonna lay my cards on the table.

I think that the whole investigation thing is NOT going to prove that the 9/11 attacks were avoidable, for the simple reason that I don’t believe that they WERE avoidable.

But the administration’s reluctance to let the investigation happen tells me that the results will probably be fairly damning from a political standpoint. there’s a lot of evidence that the outgoing Clinton administration was trying really hard to convince the incoming Bushies that Al Qaeda was the biggest single threat to America, and that the Bush administration chose to disregard this and focus instead upon Iraq and missile defense and whatnot.

Had the Bush administration listened, I think they’d probably still have failed to prevent 9/11: It was an outrageous and unprecedented mode of assault. But my guess is that they’re trying to quash or minimize the political fallout from the disclosure of further evidence of what we already know: The enmity and disrespect between the incoming and outgoing regimes resulted in some very important things getting shelved, sidelined, or ignored.

This isn’t all idle speculation - there have been many journalistic explorations of the mutual contempt that marked the roughest, angriest transition in the history of the White House, and more than a few specific pieces about how this relates to the Islamist threat (Sidney Blumenthal wrote some fascinating things about it in The New Yorker, if memory serves).

So it’s not the non-existent possibility of shielding ourselves from the 9/11 disaster that incites my ire, it’s the administration’s clear desire to shield themselves from a political disaster. Unlike the Iraq war, I don’t think there’s anything ’shady’ in the administration’s pre-conflict conduct; it’s the rather desperate desire to whitewash it afterwards that gives me pause.

When did we as a nation decide that there honestly isn’t anything to investigate? How’d I miss something like that? Perhaps I forgot to tune in to Rush that morning?

Take a look at Maureen Dowd’s column in this Sunday’s Times, and read how George Tenant testified before a Senate Intelligence Committee that German intelligence had given the CIA the first name and phone number of one of the 9/11 terrorists, but how that wasn’t enough information to follow up on. (Dowd’s follow-up comment: “For crying out loud. As one guy I know put it: ‘I’ve tracked down women across the country with a lot less information than that.’ “) Not very interesting? Well, this happened 30 months before 9/11, during the administration of the, uh, previous president. Now, that’s fascinating, right? Well worth an investigation!

How could we possibly justify not investigating everything that led up to 9/11, in hopes that we find something that puts us in a better position to fight terrorism in the future, even if we end up concluding that 9/11 itself was not preventable? How could we not thoroughly investigate that, but think it OK to investigate Whitewater, Filegate, and Monicagate for seven years? What’s the higher principle that would motivate such a decision?

By the way, we agree on one thing: the wrong president was in office on 9/11. Here’s hoping you’ll help the rest of us rectify that little oversight in November.