The Puppet Master

Many of us on the left have jokingly - and sometimes seriously - characterized Bush as a "sock puppet," and various other administration officials (mostly Cheney) as pulling the strings. It seems that - once again - we have been proved prophetic, in this case by the 9-11 Commission. Again from today's Wall Street Journal (subscription):

The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gave new details yesterday on the "shootdown" order passed from the White House to the military on the morning of the terrorist attacks, raising questions about whether Vice President Cheney issued the command without first getting the approval of President Bush.

I guess that clears things up for anyone who still had any doubt who was pulling aWol's strings during this whole crisis. It also does away with the mystery of why Bush didn't leap into action on 9-11 and continued reading at that school in Sarasota, Florida. He knew the President would take care of things...

But of course, nothing is that simple. Not that the fighters scrambled, eventually, to intercept the highjacked airliners would have ever caught up to them before the terrorists on board completed their mission, but even if they had, and if they'd have had the time to shoot them down, they wouldn't have been able to.

The commission also disclosed that the unprecedented order directing the military to open fire on hijacked airliners never was passed to fighter pilots who had scrambled aloft in response to the crisis.

Now, why is it that we're supposed to trust the competence of this misfit band of neo-con knuckleheads?