Bloodless Coup

Wow. I find it astounding that the most vehement response from the White House was about this.

2. The strongest objection lodged by the administration was to the staff report (Number 17) about how the administration performed on the morning of September 11, which clearly suggested that Dick Cheney decided on his own, without first clearing it with the President, that the hijacked planes should be shot down.

...

In response to the staff report's suggestion that Cheney took command and made the decision to shoot down the planes on his own, the White House reacted in a lengthy letter to the commission, stamped "Secret" in red, from the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzalez. In the letter's last paragraph, Gonzalez proposed substitute language that portrayed the President's performance that morning in a more positive light. This was a blunder; the commissioners unanimously found the letter offensive. But the White House didn't leave it at that. Cheney, I was told, made a vehement phone call to the chairman, Thomas Kean, and vice-chairman, Lee Hamilton, protesting the staff report's implication that he had taken charge and ordered the planes shot down. But despite all the pressure, the staff report and the final report leave the clear impression that he did so.

I've tried to avoid reading and commenting on the report, because I would like to (and at the same time dread to) go through it in some detail, which I am unlikely to be able to do any time soon. This review is enough to make your head spin, and really want to dig into all the stuff that we aren't hearing about. In particular, I wonder what else the 9/11 Commission had to finesse in the face of blowback, and might come out of a careful reading.

While this part of the report (and article) are interesting, I wonder how important this is. At least to me, it really doesn't matter whether Cheney or Bush gave to order to shoot down planes. Cheney, arguably, was in a better position. He was closer to the information (in the White House, nearby to where all the information was coming in to), and Bush was dependent on that central location for whatever information he got. If Cheney felt the need to give the order, I'm OK with that. Of the two, he was better equipped to analyze the situation and give a "correct" order. Bush was dicking around in Florida on his way to Arkansas or Louisiana or some other useless location. Cheney was the man on the spot.

my first instinct is to inquire into the legality of it, but even then i'm tentatively inclined toward's baltar's position -- with caveats.

i mean, if it's legal, well then end of story.

and even if it's illegal, there are probably circumstances in which it's still appropriate (certainly there has to be some legal avenue for deviating from a superior's orders in a combat situation, which, at least arguabley, 9/11 was).

but then there's the question of whether cheney has any rank or military authority at all when bush is competent and available to fulfill his responsibilities.

when you're president of the united states, your staff and communications equipment basically put you on any "spot" you want to be.

It wasn't that I was shocked that he gave the order, but that it was this issue (as opposed to say, not listening to the "red flag" intel about impending attacks) that brought the "strongest objection lodged by the administration." The implication of the review is that the White House was so busy getting bent about this, that they didn't notice that the 9/11 commission report directly contradicted their stated position on the link between Iraq and Al Quaeda. It also suggests that the bipartisan Commission was very astute in their strategy of knowing that the facts would bring hellacious blowback from the administration, and that they would have to bury the facts and conclusions.

As to this incident - I've always wondered about the legality of this, and I've also always been perplexed as to why this hasn't been more prominently debated as a matter of policy (I'm talking about when it is, and isn't, appropriate to blow a commercial airliner loaded with American citizens out of the sky).

But I'm with you Binky - that the White House was most concerned about THAT (which had been widely reported before, though it never got much media attention) is really pretty strange. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder if you're missing some part of a larger story.

for some twisted reason, i've spent a hood part of this morning reading, instead of the partisan but i think down to earth sites i typically frequent, the more conspiracy-wary fringe.

naturally, i am officially convinced that there is much more to this story than has previously been let on.