Warnings a poor cover up for Bush's past mistakes
Posted on Fri, May. 31, 2002
BY STEPHEN WINN
Commentator
Vice President Dick Cheney has been asking Americans to be on the lookout for "things that are out of the ordinary or unusual."
Well, Mr. Vice President, now that you mention it, something odd did happen recently: You and other high-ranking administration officials began frantically clanging the terrorism alarm bells
without offering any real evidence of an increased risk.
A lot of things, of course, might happen.
But the administration's high-profile worriers have not explained why their warnings suddenly became so shrill. In most cases, they are merely speculating; someone, somewhere, someday
might blow up an apartment building, for example.
Meanwhile, the government's official alert level on terrorism remained unchanged.
That oversight gave the game away. The recent Chicken Little routine was actually designed
to distract the public from the developing scandal over the administration's failure to better
protect the country against terrorism.
A great deal of information is now gushing forth about the administration's mistakes. But there are three basic categories:
Sloth and ineptitude before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Recent news stories have revealed many warnings inside the government last year - some more specific than others - about the approaching danger of al-Qaida attacks.
Last summer the FBI knew enough to warn law enforcement agencies of possible domestic
attacks by al-Qaida. Individual FBI agents raised alarming questions about students from Middle
Eastern countries taking flying lessons.
By early July, President BUSH was concerned enough to ask Condoleezza RICE,
his national security adviser, what government agencies were doing with intelligence
reports about al-Qaida threats. A month later the CIA, in a report to the president,
raised the possibility of al-Qaida hijackings.
The government took some preventive measures but obviously not enough. In many places,
there appears to have been little sense of urgency.
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein, alarmed by what she was hearing about near-term terrorist threats,
asked to meet with Cheney on the subject, the California Democrat was told that his staff
would need six months to prepare for such a meeting.
That was on Sept. 10, one day before the attacks.
Bush and Cheney take offense at suggestions that they be held personally responsible for the government's failure to respond more vigorously to last year's warnings.
If the blame rests with other high-level people, however, where are their resignations? Unless the top officials who made the mistakes leave the administration, how can the public know they
won't be repeated?
Or are we to suppose that only anonymous low-level bureaucrats were responsible for the government's fateful inertia?
Deception of the public after Sept. 11.
The administration's story line last fall and winter was that the terrorist attacks came without warning. As we now know, this was nonsense.
"America never dreamt before September the 11th anybody would attack us," Bush said on Dec. 21. And just a couple weeks ago, Rice told the country: "I don't think anybody could have
predicted these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center."
Terrorism experts, in fact, had long speculated about precisely this possibility.
And an FBI agent in Minnesota raised it in a memo last September. The administration's deceptions since last September have undermined its credibility at a critical time.
Bush and his aides have repeatedly asked for the public's trust in recent months. Yet they have sorely abused that trust.
Continued incompetence and inaction.
While the administration has effectively carried the battle to the enemy in Afghanistan, it has failed to fix many of the domestic security problems that have been revealed since Sept. 11.
Bush has failed to give Tom Ridge, his much-ballyhooed homeland security czar, the authority he needs over jealous rivals. Many security improvements need to be made.
Finally, the administration continues to hinder the congressional investigation of the Sept. 11 disaster and, even worse, to oppose an independent investigation.
Bush and his top aides have made plenty of mistakes already. They should at least drop their resistance to the inevitable and accept an independent investigation.
Winn (e-mail: winn@kcstar.com) is deputy editorial page editor of the Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108. Distributed by Knight Ridder News Service.
© 2001 pioneerpress and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
twincities.com
twincities.com |
