Understanding the 9/11 Commission Report

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It is depressingly predictable that the mainstream media have picked out a single message from the Commission's report-- a message they wanted to find-- and have now reduced the report to that message. What is wrong with these people?

The New York Times pretty much sums up this simplistic view in its lead editorial yesterday:

"It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.

"Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different."

If you have 5 minutes, we recommend you read this summary in the superb political blog, RealClearPolitics (which every conservative should have bookmarked).

Vice President Cheney sums up the matter, and the administration's position, very well in an interview on CNBC that we'll wager you will not see quoted on the Today Show:

"But it's very important that people understand these two differences. What The New York Times did today was outrageous. They do a lot of outrageous things but the headline, 'Panel Find No Qaida-Iraq Tie'. The press wants to run out and say there's a fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said. Jim Thompson is a member of the commission who's since been on the air. I saw him with my own eyes. And there's no conflict. What they were addressing was whether or not they were involved in 9/11. And there they found no evidence to support that proposition. They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida in other areas, in other ways."

The single-mindedness of the news media is overwhelming. We hope that people like us, who read blogs like this and the ones cited at RealClearPolitics, will do our best to spread a truthful version of the facts.