Based on recent reports I apparently know more about the connections between various terrorist factions than the typical member of the 9/11 commission or their staff. I also know what I don't know and am willing to admit it, a serious defect on the part of the 9/11 commission as well as the mainstream media.
A really wonderful example of the knowledge that's available, without deploying the resources of the Federal Government and millions of dollars is illustrated by the following article by Mark Steyn, a Canadian who lives in the US and should be considered a national treasure.
How the Sept. 11 commission blew it
June 27, 2004
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Been following the 9/11 Commission? Me neither. But every so often I zap the remote and every third channel seems to be carrying Bob Kerrey or Richard Ben Veniste badgering some federal, state or local official about his or her agency's preparedness for the events of Sept. 11.
Well, the other week the showboating hacks of the Ben Veniste Anti-Social Club stopped preening themselves on Wolf and Larry and the other cable yakfests long enough to issue a 9/11 interim report. And for me it raises serious questions about whether America's commissions are ready for the challenges of this new war on terror. I'm tempted to call on the president to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to lead a thorough investigation into blue-ribbon commissions. Perhaps he needs to consider appointing a cabinet-level Secretary of the Department of Commissions to coordinate commission strategy.
The big news out of the report was, as the Washington Post headline had it, "Al-Qaida-Hussein Link Is Dismissed." As it happens, the report didn't "dismiss" anything, but you can't blame the media for rushing out special commemorative editions and sending out 11-year old newsboys to shout, "Uxtry! Uxtry! New Bush Lie! Vote Kerry!"
The actual report put it this way:
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States."
That means what it says: As intelligence types always say, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. And, insofar as there was a lack of evidence, it was only for specific links between Saddam and specific attacks against the United States.
But what nobody except Michael Moore and the rest of the conspirazoids would dispute is that there is a significant accumulation of circumstantial links between al-Qaida and Iraq -- including meetings between Osama bin Laden himself and Iraqi officials, the presence of al-Qaida operatives at Iraqi embassy functions, the presence of al-Qaida associates within Iraq, etc. The Czechs are sticking to their story that Mohammed Atta met with a big-shot Iraqi in Prague.
Meanwhile, the CIA is sticking to its story that Mohammed Atta was in America at the time of the alleged meeting -- the basis for this assertion being that his U.S. cell phone was used that day. That, of course, is no proof of anything, except perhaps of what's wrong with U.S. intelligence. Oh, and also of the inadequacy of U.S. immigration "records."
But, by now the New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the gang were in full "Bush Battered By Devastating 9/11 Report!" mode, even as the commission chairmen patiently tried to explain that, in fact, they largely see eye-to-eye with the battered presidential liar on this one. Well, they should have thought about that before they put their carelessly worded typescript on the photocopier.
A couple of days later, on June 21, commission member John Lehman went on "Meet the Press" and mentioned a lieutenant-colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen who had significant ties to al-Qaida, including sitting in on a three-day meeting in Malaysia in January 2001 with several of the 9/11 hijackers. This, said Lehman, is "new intelligence, and this has come since our staff report has been written."
Really? I mentioned the lieutenant-colonel in question in a column in the Australian a month ago. I first heard of it months before that. And I'm just a third-rate pundit, not a big commission with gazillions of dollars and unlimited access.
The reality is this: There are connections between Saddam and al-Qaida. A mere 14 months after the liberation of Iraq, we don't yet know enough to reach a definitive conclusion about those connections. The jury is still out, and so should the commission's camera-hoggers have been.
These poseurs have blown it so badly they've become the definitive example of what they're meant to be investigating: a culture so stuck in its way it's unable to change even in the most extreme circumstances. Take this example from their report on Sept. 11:
FAA Command Center: "Do we want to think about scrambling aircraft?"
FAA Headquarters: "God, I don't know."
FAA Command Center: "That's a decision somebody's going to have to make, probably in the next 10 minutes."
FAA Headquarters: "You know, everybody just left the room."
What's going on there? Well, the guys at HQ didn't understand this was their rendezvous with history, and they were unable to rise to the occasion. Isn't that just what the 9/11 Commission's done? They were appointed to take a cool, dispassionate look at the government's response to an act of war, but they were unable to rise above the most pointless partisan point-scoring.
But I'd go further. I'd say the underlying assumption behind all the whiny point-scoring is false, and deeply dangerous. Most of what went wrong on Sept. 11 we knew about in the first days after. Generally, it falls into two categories: a) Government agencies didn't enforce their own rules (as in the terrorists' laughably inadequate visa applications); or b) The agencies' rules were out of date --three out of those four planes reached their targets because their crews, passengers and ground staff all blindly followed the FAA's 1970s hijack procedures until it was too late, as the terrorists knew they would.
The next time a terrorist gets through and pulls off an attack, it will be for the same reasons: There'll be a bunch of new post-9/11 regulations, and some bureaucrat somewhere will have neglected to follow them, or some wily Islamist will have rendered them as obsolete as his predecessors made all those 30-year old hijack rules. That's the nature of government: 90 percent of its agencies just aren't very good and, if you put your life in their hands, more fool you.
Giving bureaucrats new acronyms and smarter shoulder insignia won't make America more secure. What makes America more secure is going to where the terrorists are, killing large numbers of them, and fixing -- or at least neutralizing -- the dysfunctional states in whose murky waters they breed. Remember Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr, the Khomeini-wannabe with the 10,000-strong Mahdi Army? He threw in the towel last week. And, of that 10,000, the 1st Armored Division estimates it killed "at least several thousand."
You haven't heard about that on the network news? Well, there's a surprise.
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