--Perhaps nothing perturbs Farmer more than the contention that high-ranking officials responded quickly and effectively to the revelation that Qaeda attacks were taking place. Nothing, Farmer indicates, could be further from the truth: President George W. Bush and other officials were mostly irrelevant during the hijackings; instead, it was the ground-level commanders who made operational decisions in an ad hoc fashion. The memoirs of the White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke, which Farmer credits with good faith, make it sound as though a dramatic videoconference that Clarke led played a crucial role in organizing a response to the hijackings, but Farmer says that “this account does not square in any significant respect with what occurred that morning.”
To bolster such contentions, Farmer focuses minutely on newly available transcripts from the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad). He shows that, perversely enough, the one defense agency that had suffered draconian budget cuts was Norad, which had seen its alert sites reduced from about two dozen to a pitiful seven and, in any case, was unable to view large areas of the continental United States owing to its antiquated radar system.
In addition, local commanders bypassed established protocols for reporting and requesting assistance for a hijacking, in part because they had so little time in which to act. Farmer superbly renders the knuckle-biting tension and confusion engendered by the hijackings, and says the leadership of the F.A.A. and the Defense Department “would remain largely irrelevant to the critical decision making and unaware of the evolving situation ‘on the ground’ until the attacks were completed” — thereby making it close to impossible for the military to intercept any aircraft.
Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed. Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad records to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that “fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.”
Farmer further observes that the Bush administration wrongly asserted that the chain of command functioned on 9/11; that President Bush issued an authorization to shoot down hijacked commercial flights; and that top officials at F.A.A. headquarters coordinated their actions with the military. Farmer’s verdict: “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.”
Sunday, November 15, 2009
National Security... Republican ineptitude...
In a two party system you have to choose between one of the two major parties. When it comes to the national level I have leaned Democrat for many reasons--one of the biggest deciding factors has been on the question of national security.
The nature of political bureaucracies and patronage means that no matter who is on top--the bureaucracies are filled with insiders who have worked their way up the political chain. My distrust of the Bush Administration and their internal apparatus means that Republican administrations for a number of election cycles will be filled with appointments and insiders that come directly out of the Bush machine.
A senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, John Farmer, has written a book on the 9/11 aftermath. Todays New York TImes book review gives a good overview of the ineptitude of the Bush Administration....
James A. Nichols IV
cell: (770) 312-6736
"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." ---Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)
"I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians." Charles De Gaulle (1890 - 1970)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment