9/11 Commission Report Under Attack

Okay, this’ll prob­a­bly start the polit­i­cal argu­ments again, but anyway:

Will The Com­mis­sion­ers Cave?
Appear­ing Sun­day on ABC’s This Week, Sept. 11 com­mis­sion chair­man Kean fell in line, say­ing repeat­ed­ly that the staff report is only an “inter­im report.” Not only did he note it is “not fin­ished,” the com­mis­sion­ers them­selves have not been involved in it so far and the final report will include what­ev­er “new infor­ma­tion” becomes available.

It is not hard to see what is com­ing. On Thurs­day Cheney told the press that he “prob­a­bly” had more intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion than had been made avail­able to the com­mis­sion. Com­mis­sion­er John Lehman, anoth­er Repub­li­can stal­wart, told Meet the Press Sun­day “the vice pres­i­dent was right when he said that he may have things that we don’t have. And we are now in the process of get­ting the lat­est intelligence.”

Flash back, if you dare, to oth­er “intel­li­gence” pro­mot­ed by Cheney: the alu­minum tubes that turned out not to be suit­able for fash­ion­ing nuclear mate­ri­als after all; the mobile “bio­log­i­cal war­fare labs” that pro­duced noth­ing more lethal than hydro­gen for weath­er bal­loons; the infa­mous report, based on forged doc­u­ments, alleg­ing that Iraq was seek­ing ura­ni­um in Africa.
…
On March 19, 2002, the day the war [against Iraq] began, Pres­i­dent Bush sent a let­ter to Con­gress in which he said that the war was per­mit­ted under leg­is­la­tion autho­riz­ing force against those who “planned, autho­rized, com­mit­ted, or aid­ed the ter­ror­ist attacks that occurred on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.” If the staff’s find­ing that there is “no cred­i­ble evi­dence that Iraq and Al Qae­da coop­er­at­ed on attacks against the Unit­ed States” is allowed to stand, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will be shown to have gone afoul of the Con­sti­tu­tion yet again.