Why didn't George Walker Bush want the 911 Commission? Why was the evidence by the 911 Commission blunted in holding anyone responsible? The first act by any President is to protect the people of this nation. It is in the job description. When that fails and political positioning has a higher priority any assault on the best interest of the people of the USA is possible. George Walker Bush failed to protect the people of the USA from the attacks of 911 and resisted the reasons why. He engaged openly in promoting a war into a sovereign country when other avenues were available and it possed no threat to the USA. Iraq was an annoyance. The sequelae of issues that has resulted since the illegal invasion into Iraq due to Bush political prioritizing has brought the USA into opposition of Russia. We need to stop this and now.
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
The political dispute over whether to have an independent commission investigate intelligence and law enforcement lapses before Sept. 11 represents a reversal of normal form.
Usually, after a calamitous event or a political embarrassment, it is the White House that seeks a commission to investigate. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed such a commission after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. President Bill Clinton named one after the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800.
Hundreds of other commissions -- read on to learn why they are so often called ''blue ribbon'' -- were named in the years between, most on trivial topics like ''Americans outdoors,'' but some on matters as serious as terrorism, race riots and AIDS.
For presidents, ''it is a way to absorb political heat, to grind a subject into the ground'' before hostile members of Congress can weigh in, said James A. Thurber, director of the American University Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.
But the Bush administration adamantly opposes an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks last year. Democrats in the Senate, who might be expected to want to investigate the president without sharing the spotlight, are leading the charge for a bipartisan commission.
President Bush was asked at a news conference in Germany this week why he opposed a commission investigation. He replied: ''I, of course, want the Congress to take a look at what took place prior to Sept. 11. But since it deals with such sensitive information, in my judgment, it's best for the ongoing war against terror that the investigation be done in the intelligence committees.''
What the president was saying was that a Congressional investigation is inevitable -- the House and Senate intelligence committees have already begun one -- and that a separate commission investigation could only add to his troubles.
As for why the Democratic senators are willing to share the stage, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said that Congress was hampered by ''what I call the stovepipe syndrome.''
''The intelligence committee gets part of the information,'' Mr. Daschle said. ''Another committee gets another part of the information. A third committee gets a third or fourth part. The problem is, that information isn't shared to the extent it needs to be to get the full picture.''
What Mr. Daschle was saying between the lines was that Democrats in the Senate must share any investigation with the Republicans, who control the House, and the Republicans would squelch any material that could be embarrassing to President Bush.
''The White House somehow feels it can control a Congressional committee better than it can an investigative commission, and the senators are afraid that may be the case,'' said former Senator Warren B. Rudman.
Over the years, Mr. Rudman, Republican of New Hampshire, has led independent commissions and Congressional inquiries. He favors the creation of a commission on the events leading to Sept. 11, he said, because it would be less partisan than a Congressional investigation. He is a close ally of Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the few Republicans in Congress who support such a commission.
Sometimes commissions are created by presidential orders, sometimes by acts of Congress, but either way, they are generally composed of statesmen and experts as well as politicians, have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans and are ostensibly bipartisan. Congressional committees, by contrast, are invariably dominated by the majority party and rarely conduct thorough investigations of the executive branch unless Congress and the White House are controlled by different parties.
Often, commissions are called ''blue ribbon'' to denote exclusivity, according to Safire's Political Dictionary. The entry continues, ''The term comes from the ribbons worn by members of the Order of the Garter in Great Britain, and the cordon bleu of the ancient order of St. Esprit in France, as well as from the ribbons awarded to prize-winners, animal and human alike.''
A review of these commissions over the years shows that the ones examining the most politically charged questions tend to produce whitewashes or to reach conclusions that fail to settle once and for all the questions they were asked to answer.
Roosevelt's commission on Pearl Harbor, for instance, was created on Dec. 18, 1941. It reported to the president on Jan. 23, 1942, that the entire blame for the disaster lay with senior military commanders in Hawaii. Studies since have found that the fault was much more widespread, that the United States suffered from a general lack of readiness and that officials in Washington never shared with the commanders at Pearl Harbor solid intelligence suggesting that a Japanese attack was imminent.
The Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, found that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. No evidence has refuted that conclusively, but conspiracy theories have never been laid to rest.
In 1986, after disclosures that the United States had secretly sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance anticommunist rebels in Nicaragua, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to investigate the situation under the chairmanship of a loyal former Republican senator, John Tower.
The commission essentially exonerated Mr. Reagan and blamed his chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, for not keeping the president informed. Months later, House and Senate committees, controlled by Democrats, reported after an extensive investigation that the president had failed to ''take care that the laws be faithfully executed'' and bore the ''ultimate responsibility.''
Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, said that ideally a commission and the Congressional committees would investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.
''A little redundancy on something like this is a good thing,'' Mr. Betts said. ''A commission can act quickly and take a solid first cut, but it's not likely to get into as much detail as Congressional committees with big staffs.''
But as long as the president and the Republican leaders in the House are opposed to a commission, it is safe to bet that one will not be formed.
