• 9-11 Commission reports 9-11 Commission reports By St. Louis Post-Dispatch – August 15, 2004 The 9-11 Commission road show arrived in St. Louis last week in the 6-foot, 5-inch frame of former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson. Commission members are
• 9-11 Commission reports
9-11 Commission reports
By St. Louis Post-Dispatch – August 15, 2004
The 9-11 Commission road show arrived in St. Louis last week in the 6-foot, 5-inch frame of former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson. Commission members are traveling the country stirring up popular support to pressure Congress to pass a much-needed reorganization of the intelligence agencies. .
Judging by the sound of foot-dragging in Washington, Congress and the president aren’t in any red-hot hurry, and won’t be unless voters get angry.
There’s plenty of reason to be angry. Congress responded to the 9-11 report by going on vacation, calling a few hearings and rebuffing calls for a special session. President George W. Bush, who opposed the creation of the commission in the first place and cooperated fitfully, proposed the appointment of a new national intelligence director – but one with little real clout.
Mr. Thompson, a moderate Republican, acknowledged that it was politically far easier for Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., to embrace the commission’s report than for the president, who actually has to run the government and take the heat.
But asked if Mr. Bush’s idea of a national intelligence director was adequate, Mr. Thompson said, “I don’t think it goes far enough.” Mr. Thompson said the director must have control over budgets, hiring and firing and should be situated in the White House – attributes of power missing from Mr. Bush’s version. The intelligence director also must be subject to Senate confirmation so that Congress can call him or her to testify.
The Commission is right on all these points. Without control of money and people, the director would be emasculated; without congressional oversight, he would lack accountability.
Mr. Thompson said the Bush administration “should do away with this goofy” color-coded alert system that nobody understands. When the administration raised the threat level to orange earlier this month, it should have said at the time – not days later – that the action was based on three-year-old information, Mr. Thompson said.
Even with reorganization of the intelligence agencies, the nation – by virtue of its openness – remains vulnerable, he said. “We’re a lot safer than we were, Mr. Thompson said. “But we aren’t safe.” He said there may be other attacks, probably coordinated assaults on several cities at once: truck bombs timed to explode simultaneously in five cities; poison sprayed on lettuce in supermarkets; bombs detonated in shopping malls. More powerful than the direct damage will be the fear and panic they would spread.
The nightmare scenario of a small nuclear bomb exploding in a U.S. city in the next decade is plausible, he said, but less likely. But diminishing that threat requires more support for the Nunn-Lugar program for securing nuclear materials in Russia, he said. The Bush administration has inexplicably decreased its funding.
In the long-term, the commission calls for a global strategy that offers Muslims a more hopeful, secure future than Osama bin Laden’s obsession with destroying the United States.
“The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for,” the commission report said. “We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.”
Devising an effective global strategy based on such lofty rhetoric is easier said than done, as evidenced by the lack of detail in the commission report. Mr. Thompson says the United States must fund schools that can draw young Muslims out of madrassas, which are “assembly-lines” turning out new terrorists faster than we can arrest old ones. But he acknowledges it’s tough to argue for more money for Muslim schools abroad, when many of our own public schools are foundering. During the current election campaign, Americans should insist that candidates for Congress and the presidency say how and when they are going to fix the intelligence failures and enunciate a global strategy for winning the world to our side. This means getting beyond the sniping and bragging about Vietnam service records.
The American people must engage in a debate about our national character and safety in the face of a new breed of enemy: ubiquitous, patient and nihilistic. We ignore the urgent, chilling lessons of 9-11 at our peril.
To view the entire report, go to: http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf<</A>/i>
