9/11 Report
I have just taken a few minutes to read the executive summary of the 9/11 report. The report weighing in at almost 600 pages means that chances are, I won't be reading the whole thing. Maybe I'll use it for some light nighttime reading when insomnia hits ;-).
The thing the report makes clear is that we were unprepared. We didn't have the governmental structure in place to effectively combat and prevent terrorist attacks especially of the caliberof 9/11. It didn't blame any one person or administration. It placed blame on organizations. More specifically, it blamed the structure of the organizations. The CIA wasn't organized effectively to combat terrorism. The FBI did a better job at focusing legal prosecutions after the fact. The military didn't really even have terrorism on the radar. The legislative and executive branches were treating it more on a case by case basis instead of the whole thing as a whole. In short, the government is structured to combat the cold war, not terrorism.
Many of the recommendations, I would agree with. It's biggest recommendation was to essentially create a new department that combats terror as its only function. They want an intelligence Czar where terrorism is concerned.
I was happily surprised that the report seemed to make a concerted effort to not be partisan. During the hearings, it seemed to be behaving partisan enough to cause me concern as to the usefulness of the resulting report. Cheers to actually trying to make things better instead of pushing your political agenda!
Oh, and hopefully this will put to rest the rumors that the Berger incident was only set up by Bush to cause a smoke screen for the supposedly bad report!
The thing the report makes clear is that we were unprepared. We didn't have the governmental structure in place to effectively combat and prevent terrorist attacks especially of the caliberof 9/11. It didn't blame any one person or administration. It placed blame on organizations. More specifically, it blamed the structure of the organizations. The CIA wasn't organized effectively to combat terrorism. The FBI did a better job at focusing legal prosecutions after the fact. The military didn't really even have terrorism on the radar. The legislative and executive branches were treating it more on a case by case basis instead of the whole thing as a whole. In short, the government is structured to combat the cold war, not terrorism.
Many of the recommendations, I would agree with. It's biggest recommendation was to essentially create a new department that combats terror as its only function. They want an intelligence Czar where terrorism is concerned.
I was happily surprised that the report seemed to make a concerted effort to not be partisan. During the hearings, it seemed to be behaving partisan enough to cause me concern as to the usefulness of the resulting report. Cheers to actually trying to make things better instead of pushing your political agenda!
Oh, and hopefully this will put to rest the rumors that the Berger incident was only set up by Bush to cause a smoke screen for the supposedly bad report!
posted by Josh Ferguson at 7/22/2004 12:16:00 PM
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