Rumsfeld and Bush Failed Us on Sept. 11 (LA Times)

[Buck Turgidson]

By Gail Sheehy
Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief opponents of investing real power over purse and personnel in a new national intelligence chief, told the 9/11 commission that an intelligence czar would do the nation "a great disservice." It is fair to ask what kind of service Rumsfeld provided on the day the nation was under catastrophic attack.

"Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" asked Mindy Kleinberg, one of the widows known as the Jersey Girls, whose efforts helped create and guide the 9/11 commission. The fact that the final report failed to offer an explanation is one of the infuriating holes in an otherwise praiseworthy accounting.

Rumsfeld was missing in action that morning — "out of the loop" by his own admission. The lead military officer that day, Brig. Gen. Montague Winfield, told the commission that the Pentagon's command center had been essentially leaderless: "For 30 minutes we couldn't find" Rumsfeld.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-sheehy13aug13,1,571727.story

[Florida_Geek]

1. Power Nap Time

:evilgrin:

Oh welcome to DU

[cybildisobedience]

2. key graphs

"Rumsfeld is in charge of NORAD, which has the specific mission of protecting the
United States and Canada by responding to any form of air attack. The official
chain of command in the event of a hijacking calls for the president to empower the
secretary of Defense to send up a military escort and, if necessary, give
shoot-down orders.

Yet President Bush told the panel he spoke to Rumsfeld for the first time that
morning shortly after 10 a.m. — 23 minutes after the Pentagon was hit and
moments before the last plane went down. It was, says the report, "a brief call in
which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed."

As a result, NORAD's commanders were left in the dark about what their mission
was. When fighters were told to scramble from Langley, Va., they were sent not to
cover Washington but on a fool's mission to tail and identify American Airlines
Flight 11, which was already boiling the first Trade Center tower to the ground.

Why wasn't Rumsfeld able to see on TV what millions of civilians already knew?
After the Pentagon was attacked, why did he run outside to play medic instead of
moving to the command center and taking charge? The 9/11 report records the
fatal confusion in which command center personnel were left: Three minutes after
the FAA command center told FAA headquarters in an update that Flight 93 was
29 minutes out of Washington, D.C., the command center said, "Uh, do we want to,
uh, think about scrambling aircraft?"

FAA headquarters: "Oh, God, I don't know."


It appears one of the most significant tidbits to emerge from the 9-11 whitewash (or investigation, as they like to refer to it), is the fact that the rules were changed to make the final decision to scramble jets come only from Rumsfield. And the fact that Rumsfiled KNEW what was going on and failed to do that indicates either staggering incompetence or complicity.

[KoKo]

3. A little more snip from the article and praise for Sheehy who has been

tireless but little known reporting on this everywhere she can get someone to print an article mostly in the small circulation "New York Observer" and now here in the LA Times. Why isn't she on CNN, MSNBC, everywhere...I shouldn't even ask:

"How is it that civilians in a hijacked plane were able to communicate with their loved ones, grasp a totally new kind of enemy and weaponry and act to defend the nation's Capitol, yet the president had "communication problems" on Air Force One and the nation's defense chief didn't know what was going on until the horror was all over?

The failures of 9/11 were not inherent in the system; they were human failures. Yet, so far, no one has been fired, which leaves the 9/11 families — and all of us — in a conundrum.

[ljm2002]

4. It's gratifying to see this in the LA Times!

I mean, it's one thing to read it here at DU -- and I, like many others, count on DU to keep me sane -- but it's really quite another to read it in a major newspaper.

Well, I'm not particularly religious, but I'll offer up a prayer here anyway: Please God, let this story spread. Let the people begin to ask themselves, not "what might some Democratic candidate have done on 9/11?", but rather, "what did our so-called leaders actually do on 9/11?". And let them see, really understand, how deeply flawed those (non-)actions were on that morning.

[BridgeTheGap]

5. Rummy, Bush, Cheney, etc.

Did nothing because they knew it was coming...LIHOP
Otherwise, fire their asses for incompetence!

[Vitruvius]

6. Dupe -- but nice comments. Also see comments on original thread at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x67640 . And -- as Librechik pointed out on that thread, the article is available without registration at http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0813-08.htm

[Buck Turgidson]

7. Actually, I believe that the other thread is the dupe.

Vitruvius,

My original post was time stamped at Fri Aug-13-04 05:30 AM.
Papau posted the duplicate thread on Fri Aug-13-04 08:19 AM.

[Vitruvius]

9. Right you are. SORRY!!!

And :kick:

[Moderator]

8. Kick

:kick: