by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright July 22, 2004
All Rights Reserved.

oth trying to score points, Republicans and Democrats jockeyed for position after the release of the 9/11 Commission's final report. Initially opposed by the White House because of its possible political fallout, the Commission's findings bent over backwards to appear bipartisan. But since its inception, the Commission was attacked by the GOP as a partisan witch-hunt, trying to embarrass the president during an election year. “We are not safe” was the stupendous conclusion contained in nearly 600 pages, running the gamut from intelligence failures to arcane legal arguments about the Geneva Convention. In politically sanitized language, the report blamed both the Bush and Clinton administrations for failing to take the Al Qaeda threat seriously—a fair conclusion considering former CIA Director George J. Tenet's toothless 1998 declaration of war on Osama bin Laden.

      After the 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es-Salam, Ethiopia, Bin Laden officially waged war on the United States. Clinton's response was a feeble Cruise Missile attack at Bin Laden's empty training camps, 200 kilometers from Kabul. Before that, the millionaire Saudi terrorist nearly blew up the World Trade Center in 1993, blew up Khobar Towers in 1996 and, only one 11 months before Sept. 11, blew a 20-foot hole in the guided missile frigate U.S.S. Cole in Oct. 2000, killing 17 sailors. Election-year politics apparently took precedence in Fall 2000. “We do not believe they fully understood just how many people Al Qaeda might kill and how soon it might do it,” said the bipartisan commission in its unanimous findings, admitting both Clinton and Bush underestimated the threat. Tenet didn't miscalculate the threat in 1998—he flat out dropped the ball.

      When the Cole was hit in Yemen's port of Aden, Clinton still smarted over his epiphany he wouldn't get the Nobel Prize for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. In their lust for victory in Fall 2000, neither traditional party spent much time on Osama bin Laden. If former terrorism czar Richard Clarke is correct, Bush became preoccupied with Saddam Hussein, diverting precious time and resources away from Al Qaeda. “To get unanimity, [the panel] didn't talk about a number of things . . . The controversial things, the controversial criticisms of the Clinton administration, as well as the Bush administration,” said Clarke, referring to (a) Clinton's ineffectual response to Bin Laden and (b) Bush's obsession with Saddam Hussein. While the Commission caved to partisan pressure, the facts speak for themselves and tell a different story.

      Spreading the blame, the Commission went after intelligence-gathering agencies, especially the CIA and FBI—two agencies with a known communication breakdown. While there's better airport security since Sept. 11, the panel concluded, “we are not safe,” citing experts predicting another major domestic terror attack. “Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now and even probable,” said Thomas Kean, co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Like forecasting earthquakes, predicting terrorist attacks is the latest platitude for bureaucrats to hedge their bets. It's utterly meaningless having experts speculate about future attacks, without pointing to specific intelligence. Whatever the government did after the bombings of U.S. embassies in 1998, it did virtually nothing to prevent Sept. 11. Left-wing paranoia still wonders whether Bush had advance warnings and did nothing.

      Calling “most important failure” as one “with imagination,” the panel concluded, “we do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat,” attesting, if nothing else, to the fact that both Clinton and Bush had bigger fish to fry. Whether the attacks could have been prevented, remains for the panel a matter of pure speculation. Yet beefed up airport security now prevents grandma's knitting needles or toenail clippers from boarding flights. On Sept.11, hijackers were screened by airport security prior to boarding Flight 77 at Washington's Dulles airport. They forgot about another foiled terrorist plot at New York's JFK airport, where astute security personnel chased away a potentially fifth hijacking. It's absolutely inexcusable that airport security on 9/11 permitted four simultaneous hijackings. Whether Al Qaeda plots or not, airport security today would stop terrorists dead in their tracks.

      Raising more questions than it answers, the Commission gives the Saudi royal family a pass on directly funding Sept. 11 hijackers. That tells you absolutely nothing because Bin Laden's assassins obtained funding from various non-profit organizations receiving money from the Saudi royal family. Perhaps most damaging of all is the Commission's repudiation of White House claims of a connection between Bin Laden and Saddam. To this day, Vice President Dick Cheney insists that a substantive relationship existed. While Iraq and Al Qaeda might have shared a common hatred of the U.S., the panel found “friendly contacts” but no collaborative relationship. For some in the GOP, it reveals evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy against President Bush. Together with Michael Moore's “Farenheit 9/11,” the Commission's report offers no rest for the weary at the White House.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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