Powell and Albright Defend Records
NYT: Powell and Albright Defend Records During 9/11 Hearing
We’ve learned nothing new from the televised hearings of the 9/11 Commission. Given that the principals are all public figures who’ve given hours of public testimony on this issue for years, this is hardly surprising. Indeed, public hearings like this almost never uncover anything new. They wind up either being opportunities for the questioners to grandstand before the cameras or for those being questioned to repeat, one more time, what they’ve already said. That goes double in an election year.
Ironically, the commission released a preliminary report (see Panel Releases Initial Findings on Antiterror Efforts) this morning and the news summary of it and the Powell-Albright testimony are virtually interchangable.
How much you want to bet you’ll never see this printed on the TIMES editorial page:
“The report affirmed what some terrorism experts have said before — that high-level government officials were slow to realize that terrorists were more than just “criminals” and that, in fact, they were at war with the United States. In other words, going after them is, or should be, more a military action than a police investigation.”
Does anyone really think we’re going to learn anything new from this commission?
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