Bureaucratic deception

It must be a banner day in the Loose Change 9/11 conspira-crowd today after this story broke:

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

Not to bust their bubble, but there is no bubble. No smoking gun. No smirking chimp. Not even a luke warm pea shooter. What's going on here is called bureaucratic CYA. It happens daily in the government, which includes the military, and none of it points to a conspiracy, it actually points away from one.

The reason is simple--there were just too many rank and file workers and bureuacrats involved. Consider the FAA. The controllers have a very strong union, and these "NATCA" guys can hardly be called Bush sycophants. Yet a conspiracy would have required a large swath of them to dilerberately act on hehalf of Bushitlerburton to bring down the towers. That's absurd on its face.

The story more punished NORAD than FAA, and admittedly NORAD is a bit different since it's staffed with military folks with top secret clearances. But a lot of lower level staffers are involved in day to day ops in different locations. To think that not one would come forward and spill their guts to James Risen or Dana Priest after all this time is hard to believe, especially after the release of those gut-wrenching 911 tapes.

But even if the NORAD commanders were involved they couldn't have ensured the operation without the FAA on board. There would be too much risk of the airplanes being unnecessarily delayed (flight 93 was) by traffic. Besides, earlier calls from the FAA control centers to NORAD would be harder to explain later. It's just too big.

What's going on here can probably best be summed up by former Secretary Lehman:

"My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don't know," Lehman said. "But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn't seem to make sense to me."

Maybe these folks should be looking at why Jamie Gorelick was on the Commission. Or why they demurred on the issue of terrorist funding. Or why both attacks on the WTC can be traced back to only two men from one family who weren't known as fundamentalists.

MORE 8/2/06

This clip seems pertinent here. Even a pea-sized brain is capable of shooting down most of these theories, but when the cloud of Bush hate rolls in, guess it's hard to see.

While I'm guilty of peddling a few conspiracies they usually come with a question mark. Debate is always welcome. Quite often things really ARE as they seem, much to our dismay.