Gold9472
08-08-2006, 07:52 PM
'Proof that the 9/11 Commission didn't do its job and evidence it doesn't care'
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=27159
Andrew Bard Schmookler
Thursday, August 03
Proof That The 9/11 Commission Didn't Do Its Job
I do not know what the truth is about 9/11. I don't know whether the official version of events is substantially correct or whether it's full of holes, whether it was basically an honest job or was a cover-up. I've studied the matter enough to know some subtantial points on both sides, but I lack the knowledge and the expertise that would be required to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions.
But now I do know something. I know that the 9/11 Commission has failed to do its job, and that it is not acting responsibly in view of that fact.
The job of a commission like that appointed to study and to report to the nation on the events of 9/11 is two-fold. First, it is to investigate the events and to draw valid conclusions about what happened. Second, it is to enable the American people to come to a common understanding about an important and sensitive part of our history.
Such consensus is vital because disagreements and suspicions about such national traumas are potentially poisonous to the body politic. (In Germany after World War I, for example, the belief that their defeat was due not to events on the battlefield against the enemy but to a "stab in the back" from parts of the German society helped to lay the foundations for the coming to power of the Nazis, and for all the nightmares that followed from that.) And the Commission certainly understood full well the centrality of this consensus-creating function.
Whether or not the 9/11 Commission fulfilled the first function -- to establish what happened -- some recent poll data prove indisputably that it has failed with respect to the second. A Zogby poll shows that more than 40% of Americans believe there has been a cover-up.
When nearly half of the population of the United States does not trust the truthfulness of the 9/11 Commission's Report, the Commission clearly has failed to do its job.
Evidence that the Commission Doesn't Care
The Zogby poll data presented, as I saw it, an opportunity. And I took steps to see if that opportunity could be seized.
What I thought the poll data might help to occur would be to have a real debate -- fair and rigorous -- between strong advocates of both the Commission's explanation of 9/11 and of the skeptics and challengers to that position.
That seemed to me important for the nation because up till now there has not been any such confrontation between the different positions, and such a confrontation would be the best way to get the truth to emerge. Just as in a courtroom procedure, different propositions can get clarified and tested, so also in a well-conducted debate.
I contacted some of the more prominent challengers to the official version and found them eager to participate in such a debate. They also indicated doubts that the people associated with the Commission would be willing to join in such a process, because they'd found those people unresponsive to previous invitations to engage with them.
But I hoped that, with the poll data indicating clearly that the Commission had failed pretty seriously to achieve the goal of resolving the uncertainties of the American people, the moment was propitious to try to enlist their participation in such a debate. So I wrote the following letter to members of the Commission, as well as (with slight variations) to others with technical knowledge who'd been associated with the Report.
Dear [Name],
As you probably know, a recent poll (conducted by Zogby in May) discovered that a substantial portion of Americans quite skeptical about the report of the 9/11 Commission, on which you served [or "to whose work you contributed"].
From Wikinews: "Forty-five percent of American adults surveyed in a Zogby poll think that the September 11, 2001 attacks should be investigated anew. Poll results indicated that 42% believe that there has been a cover up (with 10% unsure)..."
I hope you will agree that whether or not the skepticism is warranted, this is a dangerous situation for our country. If the skepticism is unwarranted, allowing nearly half of our countrymen to harbor needless suspicions about possible lies and crimes at the highest levels of our government needlessly corrodes the trust on which a healthy polity must operate. And if, on the other hand, the skepticism is justified, and the American people have not been given the truth about the events of 9/11, then surely the future health of our polity would need the truth to be told and dealt with.
It is the fact that –either way-we need to solidify the truth and dispel the falsehoods that now leads me to wish to convene a debate between the strongest and most knowledgeable possible advocates on each side of the issue. And it is to ask your help in convening such a debate that I am approaching you now.
At present the two sides of the issue –those who support the 9/11 Commission Report as essentially valid and satisfactory and those who doubt its validity and believe it fails to explain the evidence satisfactorily-propound their positions separately, but never confront the other point of view directly. There has been no rigorous debate of the kind that would enable sound arguments to prevail over bogus arguments.
The debate I propose would be conducted in writing and via email, and posted publicly. I would like to have at least three good participants from each side, perhaps more, especially where specialized expertise is relevant. The place on which the debate would be posted would be my own website, www.NoneSoBlind.org. I would serve as a moderator, seeking only to help make sure that each side dealt responsibly with the questions and challenges from the other. I myself am uncertain about which side is the more right, and am interested solely in helping the truth to emerge.
I will paste here a brief bio to introduce myself to you.
Would you be willing to participate in such a debate? And whether the answer to that is yes or no, can you recommend anyone else who you think might ably represent the 9/11 Commission Report in such a public forum?
I look forward to hearing back from you. And thank you for your consideration.
I sent out more than a dozen of these invitations, and the answer I received was completely consistent: absolute silence. Not a word of response from a single person.
What is one to make of such a failure to respond?
The sheer uniformity of the response suggests that some explicit policy to stonewall has been handed down from above. If some of the invitees had sent some sort of refusal while others had simply ignored the invitation, this inference about a general policy would be harder to draw. But when a substantive invitation like this elicits not a single word of response from more than a dozen people, it seems hard to believe that each recipient is making his own decision about how to respond.
Which leads to the question: why would there be such a policy of stonewalling?
If it were not for the Zogby poll results, one might imagine that the forces behind the Commission Report might have decided that the Report is so persuasive and valid that it can stand on its own, with no need for further defense, that the challengers are so off-the-wall that it would be a mistake to dignify their claims by bothering to refute them.
But in view of those poll results -- cited in my invitation, of course -- showing that 42 % of the American public believes there's been a cover-up, and in view its being one of the Commission's responsibilities to produce a national consensus and leave the matter unresolved, this policy of not "dignifying" the skeptics seems unsupportable.
The committed challengers whom I invited offered a different explanation. The Commission, they maintained, knew that in a fair and rigorous debate the findings of their Report would be ripped to shreds. Thus they are stonewalling in order to avoid having the Report fully discredited in the eyes of the rest of the American public.
That explanation is plausible, and if it were true it would mean that the Commission failed to do BOTH aspects of the job it was supposedly charged with, i.e. that it had not only failed to produce the national consensus the country needed nor had provided the country with a valid account of the events of 9/11.
On that point -- on whether the official version is basically valid or full of holes -- I remain uncertain, still wanting the kind of rigorous encounter of ideas that would enable non-experts like me to see which notions survive scrutiny and which do not.
But the refusal of the creators of the 9/11 Commission Report to take to the field in its defense does measurably increase my suspicion about that official version.
And even if the challengers are not correct in their interpretation of this refusal -- even if it isn't because their position is indefensible -- it would seem to indicate clearly at the very least that the Commission does not much concern itself with the fact that almost half the American people believe their Report is a cover-up of the real truth about 9/11.
That in itself is a disturbing and disreputable state of affairs.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website -- www.nonesoblind.org -- is devoted to understanding the roots of America?s present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Schmookler can be reached at andythebard@comcast.net
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=27159
Andrew Bard Schmookler
Thursday, August 03
Proof That The 9/11 Commission Didn't Do Its Job
I do not know what the truth is about 9/11. I don't know whether the official version of events is substantially correct or whether it's full of holes, whether it was basically an honest job or was a cover-up. I've studied the matter enough to know some subtantial points on both sides, but I lack the knowledge and the expertise that would be required to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions.
But now I do know something. I know that the 9/11 Commission has failed to do its job, and that it is not acting responsibly in view of that fact.
The job of a commission like that appointed to study and to report to the nation on the events of 9/11 is two-fold. First, it is to investigate the events and to draw valid conclusions about what happened. Second, it is to enable the American people to come to a common understanding about an important and sensitive part of our history.
Such consensus is vital because disagreements and suspicions about such national traumas are potentially poisonous to the body politic. (In Germany after World War I, for example, the belief that their defeat was due not to events on the battlefield against the enemy but to a "stab in the back" from parts of the German society helped to lay the foundations for the coming to power of the Nazis, and for all the nightmares that followed from that.) And the Commission certainly understood full well the centrality of this consensus-creating function.
Whether or not the 9/11 Commission fulfilled the first function -- to establish what happened -- some recent poll data prove indisputably that it has failed with respect to the second. A Zogby poll shows that more than 40% of Americans believe there has been a cover-up.
When nearly half of the population of the United States does not trust the truthfulness of the 9/11 Commission's Report, the Commission clearly has failed to do its job.
Evidence that the Commission Doesn't Care
The Zogby poll data presented, as I saw it, an opportunity. And I took steps to see if that opportunity could be seized.
What I thought the poll data might help to occur would be to have a real debate -- fair and rigorous -- between strong advocates of both the Commission's explanation of 9/11 and of the skeptics and challengers to that position.
That seemed to me important for the nation because up till now there has not been any such confrontation between the different positions, and such a confrontation would be the best way to get the truth to emerge. Just as in a courtroom procedure, different propositions can get clarified and tested, so also in a well-conducted debate.
I contacted some of the more prominent challengers to the official version and found them eager to participate in such a debate. They also indicated doubts that the people associated with the Commission would be willing to join in such a process, because they'd found those people unresponsive to previous invitations to engage with them.
But I hoped that, with the poll data indicating clearly that the Commission had failed pretty seriously to achieve the goal of resolving the uncertainties of the American people, the moment was propitious to try to enlist their participation in such a debate. So I wrote the following letter to members of the Commission, as well as (with slight variations) to others with technical knowledge who'd been associated with the Report.
Dear [Name],
As you probably know, a recent poll (conducted by Zogby in May) discovered that a substantial portion of Americans quite skeptical about the report of the 9/11 Commission, on which you served [or "to whose work you contributed"].
From Wikinews: "Forty-five percent of American adults surveyed in a Zogby poll think that the September 11, 2001 attacks should be investigated anew. Poll results indicated that 42% believe that there has been a cover up (with 10% unsure)..."
I hope you will agree that whether or not the skepticism is warranted, this is a dangerous situation for our country. If the skepticism is unwarranted, allowing nearly half of our countrymen to harbor needless suspicions about possible lies and crimes at the highest levels of our government needlessly corrodes the trust on which a healthy polity must operate. And if, on the other hand, the skepticism is justified, and the American people have not been given the truth about the events of 9/11, then surely the future health of our polity would need the truth to be told and dealt with.
It is the fact that –either way-we need to solidify the truth and dispel the falsehoods that now leads me to wish to convene a debate between the strongest and most knowledgeable possible advocates on each side of the issue. And it is to ask your help in convening such a debate that I am approaching you now.
At present the two sides of the issue –those who support the 9/11 Commission Report as essentially valid and satisfactory and those who doubt its validity and believe it fails to explain the evidence satisfactorily-propound their positions separately, but never confront the other point of view directly. There has been no rigorous debate of the kind that would enable sound arguments to prevail over bogus arguments.
The debate I propose would be conducted in writing and via email, and posted publicly. I would like to have at least three good participants from each side, perhaps more, especially where specialized expertise is relevant. The place on which the debate would be posted would be my own website, www.NoneSoBlind.org. I would serve as a moderator, seeking only to help make sure that each side dealt responsibly with the questions and challenges from the other. I myself am uncertain about which side is the more right, and am interested solely in helping the truth to emerge.
I will paste here a brief bio to introduce myself to you.
Would you be willing to participate in such a debate? And whether the answer to that is yes or no, can you recommend anyone else who you think might ably represent the 9/11 Commission Report in such a public forum?
I look forward to hearing back from you. And thank you for your consideration.
I sent out more than a dozen of these invitations, and the answer I received was completely consistent: absolute silence. Not a word of response from a single person.
What is one to make of such a failure to respond?
The sheer uniformity of the response suggests that some explicit policy to stonewall has been handed down from above. If some of the invitees had sent some sort of refusal while others had simply ignored the invitation, this inference about a general policy would be harder to draw. But when a substantive invitation like this elicits not a single word of response from more than a dozen people, it seems hard to believe that each recipient is making his own decision about how to respond.
Which leads to the question: why would there be such a policy of stonewalling?
If it were not for the Zogby poll results, one might imagine that the forces behind the Commission Report might have decided that the Report is so persuasive and valid that it can stand on its own, with no need for further defense, that the challengers are so off-the-wall that it would be a mistake to dignify their claims by bothering to refute them.
But in view of those poll results -- cited in my invitation, of course -- showing that 42 % of the American public believes there's been a cover-up, and in view its being one of the Commission's responsibilities to produce a national consensus and leave the matter unresolved, this policy of not "dignifying" the skeptics seems unsupportable.
The committed challengers whom I invited offered a different explanation. The Commission, they maintained, knew that in a fair and rigorous debate the findings of their Report would be ripped to shreds. Thus they are stonewalling in order to avoid having the Report fully discredited in the eyes of the rest of the American public.
That explanation is plausible, and if it were true it would mean that the Commission failed to do BOTH aspects of the job it was supposedly charged with, i.e. that it had not only failed to produce the national consensus the country needed nor had provided the country with a valid account of the events of 9/11.
On that point -- on whether the official version is basically valid or full of holes -- I remain uncertain, still wanting the kind of rigorous encounter of ideas that would enable non-experts like me to see which notions survive scrutiny and which do not.
But the refusal of the creators of the 9/11 Commission Report to take to the field in its defense does measurably increase my suspicion about that official version.
And even if the challengers are not correct in their interpretation of this refusal -- even if it isn't because their position is indefensible -- it would seem to indicate clearly at the very least that the Commission does not much concern itself with the fact that almost half the American people believe their Report is a cover-up of the real truth about 9/11.
That in itself is a disturbing and disreputable state of affairs.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website -- www.nonesoblind.org -- is devoted to understanding the roots of America?s present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Schmookler can be reached at andythebard@comcast.net