Friday, June 18, 2004

The Sequel to the Passion A Betty Bowers Production. [Via Bartcop.] 10:59:40 PM    comment [] Rumsfeld and 9/11 The 9/11 commission has been reviewing the failures in our air defense system the morning of the attacks. Gail Sheehy highlights two facts that deserve more attention. First, thanks to a terrorist attack drill taking place that morning, NORAD commanders didn't know whether the reported hijackings were real or simulated. So many unconnected dots, contradictions and implausible coincidences. Like the fact that NORAD was running an imaginary terrorist-attack drill called "Vigilant Guardian" on the same morning as the real-world attacks. At 8:40 a.m., when a sergeant at NORAD's center in Rome, N.Y., notified his northeastern commander, Col. Robert Marr, of a possible hijacked airliner -- American Flight 11 -- the colonel wondered aloud if it was part of the exercise. This same confusion was played out at the lower levels of the NORAD network. Yes, thanks to "Vigilant Guardian," we were unprepared for dealing with the hijackings. [By the way, quite a coincidence, eh? You know what they say about politics: "In politics, there are no coincidences."] Second, in June 2001 the authority to launch fighter jets had been transferred to the Secretary of Defense. However, Rumsfeld did not exert his newly won authority that morning (and, unsurprisingly, has yet to take responsibility for it): What's more, the decades-old procedure for a quick response by the nation's air defense had been changed in June of 2001. Now, instead of NORAD's military commanders being able to issue the command to launch fighter jets, approval had to be sought from the civilian Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. This change is extremely significant, because Mr. Rumsfeld claims to have been "out of the loop" nearly the entire morning of 9/11. He isn't on the record as having given any orders that morning. In fact, he didn't even go to the White House situation room; he had to walk to the window of his office in the Pentagon to see that the country's military headquarters was in flames. Mr. Rumsfeld claimed at a previous commission hearing that protection against attack inside the homeland was not his responsibility. It was, he said, "a law-enforcement issue." Why, in that case, did he take onto himself the responsibility of approving NORAD's deployment of fighter planes? [Gee, another coincidence. Amazing, isn't it?] As Atrios says, this alone should be sufficient to impeach Rumsfeld, despite the admittedly "fantastic job" he's done in other respects. [Link via Atrios.] 6:21:43 PM    comment [] The Mystery of Transubstantiation Tom Engelhardt and Michael Schwartz give their reasons for doubting that the June 30th transfer of "full sovereignty" to the Iraqi people will consist of the transfer of actual sovereignty. After weeks of contentious negotiation, the UN Security Council unanimously passed the fifth version of a U.S.-Great Britain resolution designed to confer legitimacy on the newly formed Iraqi interim administration, and declaring that its June 30th launch would involve a transfer of "full sovereignty." However, the notion of "Iraqi sovereignty" can't be anything but a fiction, not only during the interim administration, but well past the projected December, 2005 date when an elected government is scheduled to take over. In his new book Mission Improbable, sociologist Lee Clarke discusses what he calls "symbolic plans"-- programs of action that, as he said recently in an interview in the Harvard Business Review, "look good on paper but can be worse than useless when push comes to shove." Such plans, however carefully written and however sincere their authors, can best be described as "fantasy documents". The current commitment to give the Iraqis "full sovereignty" is, by Clarke's definition, a "symbolic plan," and the UN enabling resolution is a "fantasy document" of the first order. For a government to have sovereignty, it needs three things: a monopoly on the legitimate means of coercion; the material capacity to sustain a country's social and economic infrastructure; and an administrative apparatus capable of overseeing and administering policy. By these measures, the U.S. will retain sovereignty as long as the U.S. maintains its military, monetary, and administrative domination of the country. Clearly arguments aren't going to convince heretics like these. Perhaps a little time in Gitmo will help them see the light. [Link via Cursor.] 5:55:29 PM    comment []

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