Excerpts from Generic Template for 9/11 Hearings

Spot-on, Adam. Well done.

I keep expecting someone to blame the lack of a piece of critical information being passed on a problem with the mailserver.

Imagine that these 9/11 commission witnesses pulled into their drive way one night from an out of town trip only to find their garage in flames. Also imagine that although the house itself wasn’t yet involved their entire family ultimately perished in the flames. Now imagine how unacceptable it would be any one of them to explain their inability get into the house, let alone save their families, by stating:
“I just flew back into town and couldn’t be sure my family was in the house anyway.”
“I tried the front door, but it was locked.”
“I tried to call the fire department but the battery on my mobile was dead.”
“I called the fire department then waited on the lawn.”
“I don’t know anything about fighting fires.”
“I considered breaking a window, but I saw on TLC that breaking a window can feed the fire and make it worse”
“In the dark I couldn’t actually be sure it was my house. I’d been traveling so much that I kinda (giggle) have a hard time recognizing my own house anyway.”
“I thought it made more sense to put the fire out first then look for the family.”
“Believe me, if I had even the slightest bit of understanding that the fire could eventually spread to the bedrooms, I would have moved Heaven and Earth to save them.

thanks adam! this will be very helpful as i prepare my own testimony to the Commission…

“. . . would it have been too much to expect Bush to say . . .”

Yes, yes, it’s *always* too much to expect Bush to say anything that he obviously should have. I hate to reinforce low expectations and everything, but this is a man who lives in his own little world (remember Adam’s “Rough Justice: The Movie Playing Inside Bush’s Head” piece?)

To complete G-man’s list

I moved heaven and earth, spared no expense and rushed post haste to mail a very strongly worded letter to the fire department.

Adam,

You sure nailed this one.

Excellent piece Adam.
Condi Rice said that there was no actionable intelligence. Bush keeps saying, “Well, if we had known then blah blah blah…” (which has to be the dumbest thing he’s ever said.) And then they blame the intelligence community for not telling them what to do. Maybe I’m wrong in this, but I thought that it was up to the President and his Cabinet to come up with policy based on the info that is given them. This administration seems to work on the premise that policy should originate (at least when it concerns terrorism pre 9/11) from the various agencies.

Pesonally, I wish the commission would spend all this time and money investigating ways diffuse the hatred that radical Islamists feel toward the US. At least that would be something useful.

They way the system is supposed to work is that the intelligence is fed up to the National Security Council which is supposed to be coordinating it from all sources and then tasking specific types of intelligence it wants gathered.

As the NSC is the only place that all of the intelligence and action people get together, that is where the plans for action come from.

Apparently no one told Ms. Rice that it was her job to create the plan to deal with the crisis.

Thanks for the template Adam, it’s a much more efficient way of storing things than the transcripts.

This is brilliant, Adam. Bravo!

OK, Jerry, since both Clinton and Bush got it wrong, you gonna hold Bush responsible by NOT voting for him?

Makes me think these people grew up in my house, where none of my sisters or I would admit we put the empty soda bottle back in the fridge.

jerry

“This attack was planned and executed by animals.”

It is precisely this thinking that will insure we will be attacked over and over again. It is also the thinking of our administration and I’m sure that nothing will shake your faith in their judgment.

The perpetrators of 9/11 are religious fanatics with a ridged dogma that condemns their perceived enemies to God’s eternal wrath and justifies any means to achieve it.

The Bush administration on the other hand is filled with religious fanatics who have a ridged dogma that condemns their perceived enemies to God’s eternal wrath and justifies any means to achieve it.

As long as we think of our enemies as less than human, it is easy to commit genocide (they are only cockroaches anyway) or other atrocities. What looks like proper justice to us, is as reprehensible to them, as what they have done, is to us.

Israel and Palestinians are good examples of enemies who KNOW that they are doing God’s work, they are only victims, and any response is condoned by God.

So the atrocities from both sides go round and round. The same will happen to us unless the circle is broken.

So what should our response be? I believe in striking back at those who hit us as we started to do in Afghanistan. Unfortunately we diverted our attention and resources to invade a country that had done nothing to us in 8 years. By occupying sacred Moslem soil we have done more to explode recruitment of radical militants than anything else. We have, using the greatest army the world has ever seen, taken over a semi-destroyed 3rd world county, and tried to install a puppet (Chalabi). No wonder Iraqis are now fighting back. No wonder other countries have no trust in us. No wonder it is so easy for Osama to hide out.

If it were up to me, we would get the UN in, get us out as quickly as possible, and work with every Arab country to help their poor, with education, food and housing. This would replace the el Qaida breeding grounds with people who have a stake in the future and no axe to grind with us.

Expensive? Yup. But then how about the $200,000,000,000 we are spending on this war? Republicans always have infinite dollars for war and zero dollars for peace. Which insures that there will always be future wars.

So when, exactly, will the Bush Administration Mad-Libs book be coming out? If this is representative of the quality of the rest of the book, I will be first in line to buy a copy.

Dear Murray and Gobbles,

I love how certain people can find it logical to entertain fantastic conspiracy theories about Cheney/Bush and their secret government, Halliburton schemes, and other wild imaginative theories.

The FACT of the matter is that we have had US civilians/military inside the US and abroad killed by these “animals” and did absolutely nothing. Only now do all you demmi-crats and Liberals decide to crawl out of the woodwork and try to use and politicize 9/11. And why I wonder?….hmmmm… oh we are in an election year and you hate Bush. Where were you when the Embassy in Africa was hit be terrorists…where were you when the World Trade Center was bombed the first time. Does it take the murder of 3,000 people for your bleeding hearts to kick in? Wanna place blame, want some apologies then let us be true to that and bring everybody in that had any responsibility in this. Lets bring in Clinton/Gore for failing to attack Al Queer-da and Bin Laden when we had AMPLE opportunity, and if you call bombing an aspirin factory retaliation then your blind to the truth. Who did Clinton appoint as the head of airport security for the US…. oh thats right Gore; boy he really put into place some good security measures huh.

I love how people are so quick to blame EVERYTHING on bush, that memo that you democrats drooled to get your hands on was a history lesson from Clinton’s administration. Information he had for 2 YEARS. So information discarded by a former president for 2 years should automatically make a president in office for 200 days go to war in Afghanistan to prevent attacks. You would be crying and sayin bush is a warmonger just as you are now.

And the part where certain individuals feel that the Bush admin. is full of “religious fanatics who have a ridged dogma that condemns their perceived enemies to God’s eternal wrath and justifies any means to achieve it.” That is another hateful opinion backed by nothing but blind wrath for Bush, back it up with something….you can’t.

Bush says he is a Christian….point to me where in the Christian faith that christians are to condemn people for God and to where Bush has made any appearance of such a thought process. Be more informed before you make rash statements then hide behind freedom of speech like most of the rantings of Democrats and Liberals today.

Show some maturity and class and voice your opinions in ways that are constructive and helpful not simply to let it be known that you hate someone and you want them gone. State your opinion, back it up with facts if you can, then vote for the other guy and take the chance that he can do a better job, and in this case you know darn well he can’t.
I hate war, 2 uncles and 1 cousin and numerous friends of mine are in Iraq and i wish we weren’t there, but we are doin the right thing and if your opinion is that we aren’t fine you can say that, but don’t perpetuate anger and hate over it. Jerry i agree with most of what you said, hopefully this country will be in the right hands in the upcoming years.

I’d like to address the all to common claim that in order to support our troops you must support the war on Iraq. I have talked to over twenty fellow combat veterans, and everyone of them tells me the same thing. This war is a mistake in both conception and execution.

We were encouraged to go to war by a massive marketing campaign fueling the mob hysteria. I felt destroying WMD’s was not a valid justification since the elder President Bush set a precedent for nonenforcement of the UN resolutions. Addtionally, I didn’t believe they had the weapons, and prayed I was wrong. Sadly it doesn’t appear I was wrong, and the administration’s marketing campaign was executed with the same lack of veracity, ethics, and honor we accept and expect from corporate entities.

The new (backdated) justification we needed to free the Iraqi people is spurious and vicious. It is only intended as an argument that comapassionate or liberal people must go along with. Sadly I have yet to hear it from someone who actually values people of a different color, culture, or religion as equal human beings. Otherwise, we would be invading China which treats more people with more cruelty and injustice. Of course, the fact they have a functional military and stock the rapacious shelves of WalMart has nothing to do with our turning a blind eye towards the brutality of that regime.

From a combat veteran’s perspective, the overall strategy behind this war is inexcusable. A massive pre-emptive attack against someone who wanted to hurt us. What message does that send to would be terrorists? “We are coming to smash you, so you better hurry up and get us while you can.” On a strategic level we have encouraged terrorism against the U.S. in the most effective way imaginable.

Again as a veteran, think of all the pictures of “rogue” leaders. Amin, Hussein, Khadaffi, etc. One thing have in common is posing in uniforms, a privilege they assume with tenuous justification. Puts our current commander in chief in an interesting light.

It was well established that after the U.S., Al Qaeda hated nobody more than Iraq. The presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to our invasion, was to perform terrorist acts against Hussein’s secular regime. Using a strategic view, there is a disturbing appearance we attacked Iraq to placate and strengthen Al Qaeda, and absolutely no indication we were in any way weakening Al Qaeda.

The notion we are in a new period of history, which justifies first strikes and sacrificing the ethics and freedoms we built our country on is a nasty bit of repeating history. The same justification was used for Vietnam, Japanese internment camps, and the House Committee on Unamerican Activites to name a few recent examples. We do not shine as a nation when we sacrifice our principles and decency to cope with a changing world.

If Ben Franklin saw us now would he say we deserved liberty or safety? It takes courage and sacrifice to maintain freedom, prices we now seem unwilling to bear. For example, if you don’t have the courage to send your children to the front line or to even let your six year old see news footage of the war you righteously send your neighbor’s eighteen year old to fight, you deserve neither freedom nor safety.

In conlcusion, as a veteran when you tell me you support the war I wonder if you are cowering in fear or just thick, as there is no sound moral or strategic justification for this war. Believe me, I have struggled to find something. As opposed to most of the war proponents, our warrior’s blood has personal meaning to me. I do indeed believe there are times when force are necessary, and was proud to serve in the first Gulf War. I am proud of our men and women in uniform today. I am grateful they are willing and able to carry out national policy, and I apologize to them for my country which is all too willing to abuse their trust and sacrifice their lives and health irresponsibly.

My mother dress ME funny. She does not dress my funny. Not at all.

HAHA, the whole mother dressing me funny thing was a nice touch but i don’t get where you found that in any way shape or form. Yes the Bleeding heart liberal thing i apologize for…alittle harsh. I am offended by the religious idealogue line but that is a different type of converstation. And please don’t feel that me thinking these people are animals justifies slaughtering them as you would like to think that i do. But when radical people hate you for simply being who you are then yes i would rather have them stopped by any means necessary. If you want to say that it’s our policies and such, yes, that is part of it but not the root of the problem. Take for instance those poor hamas terrorsists that are just trying to survive, as you pointed out tess. Read about the history of Palestinians and Isralies, there will be no peace cause Israel occupies land that the palestinians believe is theirs. It’s been goin on for centuries due to Zionist policies that wanted a whole jewish state and they drove the palestinians out. Now they are fighting to get it back instead of trying to live with the isralies. Sounds alot like….well…America don’t you think. We came in and took over land of the indigenous people. One HUGE difference though, they aren’t now strapping bombs to their children and sending them onto busses full of other children and blowing them to pieces. It’s a religious battle and if the isralies gave them equal rights and all that I don’t think that hamas would be any less of a threat, though you do and that is a matter of opinion. And where do you get your information about no schools being built and the idea that we basically came in and didn’t help the iraqis? Agreed if all you listen to is the mainstream media thats all you will get is doom and gloom, look alittle further and you will find the real news not being covered that has proven FACTS that the iraqi people are doing better. Who was rebuilding their water lines and power lines for the iraqi people? US. Who was trying to destroy them….insurgents and saddam loyalists, it wasn’t us. We aren’t just occupying the country we are helping them.

Afghanistan….I totally agree that we should have made sure that our job there was totally done before we went into Iraq. The policies of past years of supporting people when it suits us is MORONIC and we have done so to many dictators as someone pointed out. But all that just goes to prove that these things have come to a point and are boiling over from past abuses of power by us, into the Lap of Bush and people want him to take responisbility and that it is all his fault. Former presidents and administrations all could have done more. And now we are saying that when hussein, Amin, and Khadaffi posed in uniforms that when Bush does it it puts him in an “interesting” light….wow we are really streching for that one aren’t we?

Anything that happens in the world it’s bushes’ fault. The plan for iraq was horrible, do you think bush, ashcroft, and rumsfeld sat in an office and developed it by themselves? Or do you think that the joint cheifs of staff had just a little to do with that. The president doesn’t design and do everything, he is the finalizer and decision maker, oh accept when it comes to war. He had to get approval didn’t he….i forget if he got that approval or not. Oh he did and all those people that voted for it had the same information that bush did, but he “sexed” up the info so he could make tons of money with haliburton. Ok..look i am not sayin that all you guys feel that way but I get in conversations with people who say these things, and it’s frustrating. You say that you countered my points and you have but mine counter yours just as much cause we aren’t the ones over there to say with difinitave proof that things are as they are.

The sad part about all this conversation is that it will solve nothing. You will still feel the way you do no matter what facts or opinions from other people you hear. We hear a new poll every stinkin day tellin us that it’s bad then it’s good then it’s bad again. Lets all take a field trip over to iraq and see for ourselves so we don’t have to hear it from a talking head on a TV screen or out of a radio. Cause if everything about us screwing the iraqi people and how they were better off under sadam IS right then damnit i will be right with you, but as for what i know and believe at this moment i won’t be persuaded either way just as you won’t.