Big Lies

I haven't read the entire 9/11 Independent Commission report, but I did read the first chapter, which deals with the key events of 9/11. Frankly, I am not so interested in the legend building around Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda that occurs in the rest of report.

Mostly, the 9/11 commission fails by omission-- they just left out anything they didn't want to talk about (and you can imagine the things this covers). Bob Kerrey even admitted this is what they did with Paula Zahn on CNN, as well as on The Daily Show with John Stewart.

However, there are some big lies even in the first chapter that I read.

For instance (page 21:

In summary, NEADS received notice of the hijacking nine minutes before it struck the North tower. That nine minutes' notice before impact was the most the military would receive of any of the four hijackings.

While I understand that this is the position the commission takes, overall it is preposterous.

But to me, the most offensive and egregious lie was at the end of chapter one, the third to last paragraph:

NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on Septmeber 11, 2001. The struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet.

(Emphasis added) This of course is a monumental lie, since there were several previous hijacking drills/simulations run before 9/11. While one could technically parse the statement and say the precise events of 9/11 were not drilled before, but the glaring fact remains that this statement is a grandiose statement meant entirely to mislead. It is meant to make people think the US military had never thought of terrorist hijackings before, when this is clearly not the case. It is an outrageous and disgusting attempt at disinformation.