No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Barnie Day

The System Was Blinking Red

Read the 9/11 Commission report and feel the rage. There were warning signs aplenty, but our leaders failed us.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Presidential daily briefing, Bin Laden determined to strike in U. S., dated August 6, 2001.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2004 —If the Bush Administration were held to the same level of accountability that the average toll-booth operator is held to, every one of its members would be tarred, feathered, and run out of the country on a rail. Their failure on this matter of terrorism has been catastrophic, total, and complete.

Here we are, three years after the attack, three years after hauling what was left of some 2500 Americans to a landfill on Staten Island — that’s right — to a landfill. Most of the victims were pulverized beyond recovery and were simply buried in the Fresh Kills landfill. 

Here we are, three years later, and where are we?

Bin Laden is still on the loose. We’ve burned a couple hundred billion dollars in borrowed money. We’ve sacrificed the lives of more than a thousand brave American soldiers on the field of battle. And we’ve added tens of thousands to the rolls of the permanently  maimed and injured. And we’ve done this all in the wrong war. 

And there has been no accountability for any of it.  None whatsoever. The same people we hired, during the last election, to protect us are the same ones who failed us. The people who failed us are the same ones who are still there!

What are they asking us to do now? Give them four more years? I don’t think so.

If you don’t read but one chapter of the Final Report, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, more commonly known as the 9/11 Commission Report, let that be Chapter 8, "The System Was Blinking Red."

No wonder this Administration opposed creation of this commission.

The attack on the World Trade Center three years ago could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. There is blame to place. There is responsibility. We had warnings. The system was screaming them to us. Indeed, the system was blinking red.

The key findings of the report?

• The 9/11 attack was driven by Osama Bin Laden who built over the course of a decade a dynamic and lethal organization in al-Qaeda

• What we can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the US government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al-Qaeda plot.

• The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.

• At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al-Qaeda, even thought it was perhaps the most dangerous foreign enemy threatening the United States.

• The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities.

• The terrorist danger form Bin Laden and al-Qaeda was not a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 presidential campaign.

• No single individual was to blame, but both individuals and institutions had to take responsibility for failing to stop the attacks.

• No single individual was to blame, but both individuals and institutions had to take responsibility for failing to stop the attacks.

The full story of this tragedy, the events that led up to it, the missed opportunities, the failures, will be a long time in seeing daylight — if ever. But this commission report is a good starting place. I would recommend it to you. But know this: It is going to raise up some rage in you.

-- September 20, 2004