911Gate, IraqGate: Coverup by budgeting and heel-dragging

[Jeff Bone]

Posted the Salon article the other day, encountered this excerpt  
elsewhere today.  Though it would be worth reiterating because it  
points out something very, very interesting.

	http://www.evandra.com/blog/archives/008459.html

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9/11 investigations

Salon (Premium) has a troubling front-page article [1] today about the  
delays involved in getting a national commission together to  
investigate the factors leading up to the World Trade Center attacks in  
2001. The Bush administration has been dragging its feet and  
re-exerting executive privilege to avoid an investigation. And, as  
usual, the media is complicit -- they allowed themselves to be  
distracted by the "war" in Iraq (post-hostilities death toll topping 50  
this week -- only counting American troops) and have utterly neglected  
this shameful suppression of the truth.

This passage compares the nearly two years it's taken to get the 9/11  
commission together with the speed other, similar commissions have been  
emplaced in the past -- and the funding. The 9/11 commission began with  
just $3 million.
For instance, on April 15, 1912, the Titanic sank after hitting an  
iceberg, killing approximately 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers. According  
to historians, Titanic survivors began disembarking in New York at 10  
o'clock on the night of April 18. The next morning at 10:30, a special  
panel of the Senate Commerce Committee was gaveled into session inside  
the ornate East Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

Last year, when Cheney called Daschle to urge him to limit any hearings  
into 9/11, the V.P. argued it would drain sources away from the war on  
terrorism. By contrast, just 11 days after Japanese bombers hit the  
U.S. with a sneak attack killing nearly 3,000 people, President  
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating a commission  
to "ascertain and report the facts relating to the attack made by  
Japanese armed forces upon the Territory of Hawaii on December 7, 1941  
... and to provide bases for sound decisions whether any derelictions  
of duty or errors of judgment on the part of United States Army or Navy  
personnel contributed to such successes as were achieved by the enemy  
on the occasion mentioned." It was the first of eight government-led  
investigations into the Pearl Harbor.

The Warren Commission, headed by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, was  
formed just seven days after President Kennedy was assassinated. Last  
February, after seven astronauts died when the Space Shuttle Columbia  
disintegrated 200,000 feet above Texas, NASA's Columbia Accident  
Investigation Board was created 90 minutes after the incident; $50  
million was immediately set aside for the probe. And in just four  
months, the board has already made public significant findings about  
the crash investigation.

By contrast, nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World  
Trade Center, the 9/11 commission only recently opened up its New York  
City office. The commission's budget has been increased to $14 million,  
but many experts say that's still far short of the sum needed to do the  
job right.

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What do you think the chances are of EVER having any legit  
investigation into "IraqGate?"
jb

[1] http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/06/18/911/index.html
[2]  
http://archive.salon.com/news/col/scheer/2002/05/21/executiveprivilege/ 
index.html