Posted on 06/05/2002 5:57:07 PM PDT by vannrox
May 29, 2002 BY CINDY RICHARDS
I'll admit I'm not George W. Bush's biggest fan. Nor do I believe he is the sharpest knife in the drawer. Nor do I think that American intelligence was as astute as we would have hoped in the days leading up to Sept. 11.
Having said all of that, I still have to wonder about this flap over what Bush knew and when he knew it.
Does anyone really believe that the federal government knew with certainty that a bunch of Middle Eastern yahoos were going to hijack a couple of airplanes and fly them into the very heart of American commerce and military power?
And, once they knew it, that they actually chose to do nothing about it?
Only the most rabid, government-hating conspiracy nuts could believe that.
Make that conspiracy nuts and congressional leaders.
That's right: Leading the charge to find out What Really Happened is Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota.
Democrats, led by Daschle, want to form a commission to look into the Bush administration's official handling of any pre-Sept. 11 intelligence reports.
They would investigate, for example, that widely publicized report about the FBI memo suggesting that someone check out all the Middle Easterners enrolled in flight schools.
The administration, led by Bush and Veep Dick Cheney, say they don't want a special investigation. They don't want to be distracted from the war effort.
Politicians have big mouths and might start sharing state secrets. And, besides, administration officials already are testifying before the congressional intelligence committees, so that investigation thing is covered.
Daschle is taking more than a little flak for his efforts. Some people even have suggested that it is somehow unpatriotic to ask tough questions while we're at war. But Daschle and other Democrats do not deserve to be called unpatriotic. Off-base, maybe. Politically motivated, almost certainly. But not unpatriotic.
Indeed, asking questions of our elected officials is a cornerstone of our democratic way of life. The problem, sadly, is that we no longer know whom to trust to ask the questions that need to be asked.
The sad state of affairs in Washington--just as it is in Springfield and at City Hall--is that it's all about politics. There is very little reason to believe that the goal is to get at the truth.
Virtually no one believes the Democrats want to convene a special commission in the hope of finding honest answers about what went wrong and why with an eye toward learning from our mistakes. Instead, there is a nagging suspicion that the questions are being asked with an eye toward placing blame and skewering a political opponent.
It certainly doesn't help that Daschle, the man pressing hardest for the special commission to investigate the administration, also is a possible Democratic challenger to Bush in the 2004 presidential campaign.
So, it becomes a matter of whom to believe: the Democrat who would be king or the Republican who already is? One has much to gain from an investigation; the other much to lose.
Meanwhile, we regular folks are bombarded with ominous messages about the virtual certainty of future terrorist attacks and are left to wonder: Is it more political bluster? An attempt to deflect blame? An effort to make us feel their pain as we try to decipher which warnings to take to heart and which to dismiss?
The terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11 did not succeed in their efforts to cripple our economy, diminish our military might or dampen our patriotic spirit.
But they may have exposed an innate American insecurity: Whose interests really motivate our elected officials, ours or their own?
'When he knew' getting old
And just who is the sharpest knife? Bubba? Al Gore? Hillary?
Believe me, you don't stop thinking about it even when you get old.
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