April 13, 2002 Deconstructing the 911 Coverup

Practically every act of the clowns who now control the White House is an outrage and an insult to intelligence, but Bush and Cheney's attempt to put the squeeze on the investigation of 911 is the most egregious of many loathsome acts. This may be even more outrageous than their thuggish seizure of the White House after losing the election.

CNN reported that both Bush and Cheney personally gave Daschle a leaden tap on the shoulder and warned him to back off. Daschle, wisely, made the requests public, saying, "The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism." Newsweek reported the incident too.

Investigating the attack would take resources AWAY from the war on terrorism?

This is such an affront to the most rudimentary logic it defies comprehension. The Bushes have gotten tremendous mileage out of being incomprehensible, but this may be beyond the limit of acceptability even from a previously docile public.

You have to stop still for a minute to appreciate the colossal arrogance of suggesting a limit to the inquiry into the most horrific assault ever perpetrated on U.S. citizens. How could anyone dare to suggest that an investigation into the failures that led that catastrophe would "divert resources from the war on terrorism"? It should be the foundation of that effort.

It is no use tiptoeing around it, these guys have manipulated 911 from Day One to push their same old agenda. "The war on terrorism," like everything else the Bushes claim disingenuously to be doing, is nothing more than a front for doing exactly what their corporate controllers want, no matter how detrimental it is to the vast majority. Any war on terrorism that does not incorporate a thorough public investigation is a fraud.

Ashcroft and George W. would say, "We didn't say no investigation. We'll have an investigation all right, but we'll be in charge of it. And we'll keep the information we uncover secret, for National Security, of course." This administration, which is transparently an extension of the old gang led by the former CIA director, is inherently anti-democratic, seeking at every turn to thwart democratic processes, to centralize, privatize and monopolize power and resources. Covert action is its stock in trade, a family tradition. The CIA cult of secrecy is the antithesis of democratic processes. The Bush administration maintains its assault on the rights of the majority at a furious pace on many fronts at once, but the Republican elite are always consistent in their preferences: all power and wealth to the richest one percent; let the rest make do with what trickles down, if we're feeling generous.

Since the idea that an all-out investigation would divert resources from the war on terrorism is a ludicrous, desperate ploy, we are left with the question: Why do Bush and Cheney want to limit the investigation? Why indeed? Logic leads inescapably to the proposition that they would not like what such an investigation would uncover. What then might that be?

Is it possible that when the disaster is closely examined, and Americans for the first time are able to soberly contemplate how such a mountain of simultaneous security breaches took place, they may cease to lionize the commander in chief who presided so gaily over the failure? To select one fact out of that mountain of dysfunctions: It was 35 minutes from the second crash at the World Trade Center to the attack on the Pentagon. Thirty-five minutes since millions of average Americans knew the crashes were no accident, and yet the nation's capital, the center of the world's most powerful military, only moments from Andrews Air Force Base where fighters fly in and out at all hours, was defenseless. We were sitting ducks. A quarter of a trillion dollars spent on the military every year and there was no defense of Washington. The first attack in New York may be called a surprise, even though air traffic controllers knew about the hijackings for a long time before the crashes. But the Pentagon attack was no surprise. The average 10-year-old knew by then an attack was underway and had known about it long enough for fighters to fly from Andrews to the Pentagon and back many times over.

Even in the absence of an investigation, basic logic leads to the conclusion that a great many things had to go wrong that day. Many of the reports that have come out raise more questions that the public needs answered, if we are to consider ourselves a democratic nation. Among the most intriguing of a myriad of disturbing reports were those of FBI agents complaining that the Bush administration took steps to limit investigations into Bin Laden before Sept. 11 too. (See The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald)

What can be said in the face of such an outrage? The time for talking is over. Let the investigations begin.

-- David Cogswell