Thursday, October 21, 2004
The one that "names names"
Rat weighs in on the latest suppressed 9/11 report:
Because it's an internal CIA report, Bush likely isn't implicated directly. The L.A. Times article- says the report examines "whether agency employees should be held accountable for intelligence failures." The political advantage Kerry derives from people calling for the report's release may be greater than the fallout from the report itself. "Bush suppressing CIA report" fits in nicely with the reality-based community / fantasy world meme: Kerry believes "that solutions emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality," while Bush attempts to create his own reality. Kerry wants the facts; Bush discards, denies, and suppresses facts that are inconvenient.
The "pre-9/11 mindset" debate presents another possible angle. If Bush is unwilling to read, and unwilling to let Congress read, a report detailing the intelligence failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the executive and legislative branches can't adequately design changes in the intelligence community necessary to avoid the dangers of the "pre-9/11 mindet" that Bush finds so dangerous. As Cheney is so fond of pointing out, we are "faced with the possibility that terrorists could smuggle a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon into the middle of one of our own cities." Surely we want to have as much information as possible about what went wrong the last time to ensure that there's not a next time.
posted by Blicero : 10/21/2004 08:32:00 PM
Because it's an internal CIA report, Bush likely isn't implicated directly. The L.A. Times article- says the report examines "whether agency employees should be held accountable for intelligence failures." The political advantage Kerry derives from people calling for the report's release may be greater than the fallout from the report itself. "Bush suppressing CIA report" fits in nicely with the reality-based community / fantasy world meme: Kerry believes "that solutions emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality," while Bush attempts to create his own reality. Kerry wants the facts; Bush discards, denies, and suppresses facts that are inconvenient.
The "pre-9/11 mindset" debate presents another possible angle. If Bush is unwilling to read, and unwilling to let Congress read, a report detailing the intelligence failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the executive and legislative branches can't adequately design changes in the intelligence community necessary to avoid the dangers of the "pre-9/11 mindet" that Bush finds so dangerous. As Cheney is so fond of pointing out, we are "faced with the possibility that terrorists could smuggle a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon into the middle of one of our own cities." Surely we want to have as much information as possible about what went wrong the last time to ensure that there's not a next time.
posted by Blicero : 10/21/2004 08:32:00 PM
