THAT REGRETTABLE LITTLE 9/11 THING | 2004-09-11
In my articles on and right after September 11, 2001, I made several predictions.
First, I said no one in the intelligence community who let this happen would even be criticized for it. They would just be given bigger budgets and more power and promotions.
This is the third anniversary of 9/11. Everybody in the intelligence community has been given more money, more power - the Patriot Act, for instance - and the commission on 9/11 seriously criticized nobody. All the experts who let 9/11 happen, ALL of them, have been living in Fat City ever since.
The INS, FBI, and CIA committed criminal neglect, not to mention treason, when they withheld information from each other that could have prevented 9/11. Well, we are told, that is just a regrettable little drawback of "the culture of the intelligence community."
I guess we can all kick back and say 9/11 was a regrettable little drawback of "the culture of some Moslem groups."
Do we all feel better now?
I don't. The INS people who let the mass murderer John Malvo immigrate into the United States illegally should be in prison. The INS or FBI agents who did not communicate to the CIA or other agencies that they had the 9/11 terrorists under surveillance should be in prison. But I am willing to bet most of them have been promoted by now.
If you want to end those "regrettable little drawbacks of the intelligence culture," put some people in the slammer. If agents were afraid to share information because their higher-ups wouldn't let them, put their higher-ups in prison. This is not a "regrettable incident." This is criminal negligence.
The point is, somebody goes to jail for a long stretch. We can let the courts sort out who goes to prison.
If you do something driving your car that gets somebody killed, nobody will tell you it was "a regrettable incident." You will be in court and you will be in deep, deep trouble.
But when someone in government gets 3,000 people killed, they say "Let's not play the blame game."
Try that line the next time you are in court on a charge of vehicular homicide.