9/11 Comission Hearing

Not that I am trying to make a joke out of a commission into the intelligence failure of one of the worst attacks on American soil. The committee members did that themselves today. It's just that I find that the entire process turned entirely too political. Who knows? I will wait until the final report is released to see what recommendations the committee gives.

But I have the feeling that the report will be high on volume and low on substance. Post 9/11, the administration and Congress moved quickly to try to resolve many of the short-comings in intelligence sharing that had led to us not connecting the dots in time. And through the hours that spent watching these hearings, very little time was spent looking forward and too much time was spent looking backward.

Last week the committee agrees that there was more than enough blame to go around. It's a big crap sandwich and everyone's got to take a bite. That is another reason why today's circus was so comical. There was little more to be gained from it in terms of providing additional recommendation for future procedural changes. The information provided in Rice's testimony was already available to the committee members. Today's questioning was purely political. Both from the Democratic side (which tried to paint the Bush White House as lackadaisical on terror) and from the Republican side (trying to show it has nothing to hide).