Sometimes You Gotta Pay

Not everything is available for free on the Internet. (Or, if you prefer, the Internets.)

Harper's Oct. issue has a cover story/essay on the 9/11 Commission Report that runs counter to most other opinions. It's well worth reading. Writer Benjamin DeMott argues convincingly that the Commission's report is a whitewash -- they decided that everyone would share blame and therefore no one must shoulder the blame, no tough questions are asked and no one is taken to task by them.

Specifically, he says that Bush lied to the commission and the nation. And they let him.

Bush lied when he said the August 6 Daily brief was "historical in nature" when in fact it detailed current, active threats. Bush lied when no one told him there were Al Quaeda cells in the US. The August 6 report says so specifically; the acting deputy director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, and deputy chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Ben Bonk told Bush in September of 2000 BEFORE HE WON THE ELECTION that Americans would die in an attack by or inspired by Bin Laden; and the Bush/Cheney transition team was told that Al Quaeda had sleeper cells in more than 40 countries, including the U.S. There is more, of course.

DeMott feels that the Commission felt the country couldn't handle a direct grilling of Bush, of watching the President called on his lies -- they feared being seen as partisan and perhaps having their suggestions which could make a difference being dismissed as partisan. And so they let Bush go unchallenged and let his lies stand.