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| The 9/11 Report is Hindsight Wisdom at its Most Fatuous |
| 2004-08-27 |
| From The New York Times, an opinion article by Richard Posner, judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and the author of the forthcoming book Catastrophe: Risk and Response. .... the 9/11 commission report is an uncommonly lucid, even riveting, narrative of the attacks, their background and the response to them. .... The prose is free from bureaucratese and, for a consensus statement, the report is remarkably forthright. Though there could not have been a single author, the style is uniform. The document is an improbable literary triumph. However, the commission's analysis and recommendations are unimpressive. .... The participation of the relatives of the terrorists' victims (described in the report as the commission's ''partners'') lends an unserious note to the project (as does the relentless self-promotion of several of the members). One can feel for the families' loss, but being a victim's relative doesn't qualify a person to advise on how the disaster might have been prevented. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #1 Mike, the judge knows what he is talking about. While the 9/11 Commission is overly political and the report is a nauseating exercise in 2nd guessing, the 9/11 event serves as a whetstone to hone our capabilities on. The exercise needed to happen but the country would have been better served is the grandstanding had been jettisoned. One qualification, if it turns out later that TWA-800 was downed in a terrorist attack, as has been alleged, then the US needs to review the grandstanding that has gone on in the last several years against who knew that we had been attacked and yet still allowed us to get attacked again. The Gore Commission was set up after TWA- 800 to make recommendations to improve airline security. The recommendations were then watered down and implementation dates were removed for items that we have implemented since 9/11. If TWA-800 was known to be a terrorist attack, then those that knew in Congress and the White House let us down. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-08-27 10:59:35 PM |