a balanced and subtle dissent to the 9/11 Commission Report and subsequent praise for the document.
Much more troublesome are the inclusion in the report of recommendations (rather than just investigative findings) and the commissioners’ misplaced, though successful, quest for unanimity. Combining an investigation of the attacks with proposals for preventing future attacks is the same mistake as combining intelligence with policy. The way a problem is described is bound to influence the choice of how to solve it. The commission’s contention that our intelligence structure is unsound predisposed it to blame the structure for the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, whether it did or not. And pressure for unanimity encourages just the kind of herd thinking now being blamed for that other recent intelligence failure — the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Michael says
It’s a New York Times link, so you have to be registered to view the story. Sorry about that – they leave no choice in the matter (except to not refer to them, but in some instances there isn’t anything close to as good an option…