http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0206/S00087.htm
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From Straits Times:
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/analysis/story/0,1870,142045-1031435940,00.html
Sept 11 due to government incompetence, not terrorists'
prowess
By RICHARD COHEN
THE WASHINGTON POST
NEW YORK - What should I write about Sept 11, I asked a former New
York City official. We were at a Labour Day weekend event and he
was munching on a hot dog. He suggested I choose four people,
firefighters or police officers, and tell their stories. I guess I
had disappointment written all over my face, because the former
official - in office back when the World Trade Center collapsed -
looked down, paused for a moment, and then said: 'Write that the
government let us down.'
Then he could not be stopped. He started with the first bombing of
the World Trade Center back in 1993 and what was learnt about
Al-Qaeda and terrorism then.
He went on to the bombing of the United States Navy warship, the
Cole, in the harbour at Aden, Yemen, and how that was for sure an
Al-Qaeda operation. He did not mention the 1996 bombing of the
Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a residence for American
servicemen, but he did mention the bombing of two American
embassies in Africa. Those cost 224 lives.
It has been almost a year since Sept 11, but still the anger was in
his voice. The government should have known something was coming,
he said. The government should have done something.
'I lost a lot of good men,' he said. 'The best men we had.'
Not a day goes by when I do not think of Sept 11. People talk about
'closure' - a silly, psychobabblish term - but there is no such
thing.
At whom should our anger be directed? Well, certainly at the
murderers and those who helped them. Kill them. Kill them
all.
But a piece of the anger - or maybe just outrage - has to be
reserved for the government, the federal government. It screwed up.
It screwed up bad. That was the message of a column I wrote shortly
after Sept 11. I called the terrorist attack a 'massive
intelligence failure', which it was on its face.
Back then, though, we knew little. I pointed out that there had
been ample warnings - including an article in The Washington Post
in which Mr William Cohen, then the Secretary of Defence, had
warned of the imminence of a terrorist attack. The Secretary of
Defence, for crying out loud.
Almost no one paid any attention. Now we know so much more.
We know that the Clinton administration was lethargic in trying to
nail Osama bin Laden. It mounted a missile attack on his Afghan
compound, but when that failed, nothing much more was done. We also
know, though, that government officials were growing increasingly
concerned.
The National Security Adviser, Mr Samuel Berger, told his incoming
replacement, Ms Condoleezza Rice, that the new Bush administration
would spend more time on terrorism and Al-Qaeda than on any other
subject. The new administration dawdled.
CLUES, BUT NO FOLLOW-UP
THE Federal Bureau of Investigation had warnings - tips about
shenanigans at flight schools. The memorandums were filed and
forgotten. The Central Intelligence Agency was on the case but
short on operatives who spoke either Arabic or Pashto. The airlines
were asleep.
A terrorist had been seized in the Philippines with a laptop
stuffed with airline timetables, but no one was putting two and two
together. Maybe in another column I will dwell on grief, mourn the
dead and salute the heroes.
But this one is a reminder that planes crashed into the Pentagon,
the World Trade Center and a Pennsylvania field not because the
terrorists were so awfully competent but because the government was
so awfully incompetent.
From the Oval Office on down the line, what should have been done
was not. The terrorists succeeded because the government
failed.
The former city official had one other thing to say. The people who
died - the firemen, the cops, the office workers - were often
brave. But to label them all 'heroes', while sometimes apt,
obscures the fact that they were also victims who were ill served
by their superiors, their equipment, their government.
The tendency now is to play the sad bagpipes, fly the glorious flag
and rally around those whose job it was to ensure that nothing like
Sept 11 ever happened. Yet it did. An accounting has yet to be
made.
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