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Column: Does President Bush Really Want an Independent Investigation of 9-11?

by P.M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter is working on a book about American demagoguery. He is a columnist for HNN.

Oh my. At the eleventh hour Iraqi diplomats threw a wrench into United Nations negotiations over the wording of inspection terms while insisting they're in "100 percent accordance" with that global body's determination to find out what in hell is going on in Baghdad. Every Earthling of passable intelligence knew this would happen, of course, and it just goes to show you, said a U.S. spokesman, "once again the Iraqis want to delay and deceive."

True, delay and deceit are standard tools of the diplomatic trade, and thus, thankfully, far from authentic casus belli. Nevertheless Bush II has added their mealy-mouthed deployment by Iraq as yet another specific and reasonable reason to dispatch the Marines with the latest in guns blazing. Sadly, according to U.S. military officials they'll be blazing away with inadequate protection from Saddam's biological cookery, but best to skip over that for now.

None of this is extraordinary. Everyone expected Iraq to play duplicitous games; everyone expected the Bush administration to capitalize on them; and everyone absolutely knows that whatever transpires diplomatically, hundreds, maybe thousands of young Americans and even more innocent Iraqis--children, women, the aged--are about to die. Aside from habitual hawks, those of politically ambitious persuasions, and dropouts from Elementary Logic, no one is quite clear why these deaths are imperative. But off we'll march behind the exact thinking of George W. and invertebrate Senate Democrats. As columnist Maureen Dowd so eloquently framed our leaders' rationality, "Tom Daschle, Dianne Feinstein and other doubters came around … to the view that Iraq is an urgent threat after the C.I.A. director, George Tenet, sent Congress a memo … stating that Iraq is not an urgent threat." Unsettling? Yes. Extraordinary for Washington? No.

Also unextraordinary was that which occurred the very day before Iraq leveled its "delay and deception" at the ever-truthful world community. The loudest opponent of those scandalous tactics leveled its own delay and deception in investigating the rampant intelligence bumbling that preceded the slaughterous event now cynically used as a pretext for more slaughter. On the heels of a delicately reached bipartisan congressional agreement on the terms of an investigative commission, the White House--whose cooperation seemed assured--shut it down with "fresh objections." Oh my. And at the eleventh hour, no less.

Who ever could have imagined such betrayal coming from an ethically depraved band of former corporate cutthroats? Certainly not the chief dope of the congressionally bewildered, Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. He was "surprised" at the administration's underhandedness and openly pondered, "[Does the White House] really want to allow this commission to be created?" It's chumps like Lieberman who entice one to enter the swampland sales profession.

In most open societies, any equivalent display of such swaggering deceit would be scorned and condemned en masse: that sort of behavior is, theoretically, confined to the Saddam Husseins of the world. But not in W's happy little democracy. Rather, it is mostly left to family members of 9/11 victims to directly, straightforwardly express disgust. Despite administration officials' laughable posturing that they really, really want an independent investigation (which is to say, outside inspection), "They're doing everything they can to kill it," said Stephen Push, husband of an airliner-assault victim.

Mr. Push wasn't merely "disappointed," as Senator Lieberman so unctuously said he felt at the White House's flagrant delay and deception. He was supremely, justifiably, and pointedly livid. "We've been talking to the White House for months. They keep saying, 'We just have this one little thing to fix.' So we fix that, and they come up with three other things." It might be they're too busy pointing out it's "the Iraqis [who] want to delay and deceive." Other families in a prepared statement similarly bewailed that W's gang talks a good game "while apparently doing everything in its power to prevent the commission from being established."

Their frustration is heartbreaking--and the story warranted all of about 12-hours serious news coverage, barely a half-life cycle. The otherwise staggering duplicity of W and his imperial henchmen has become that routine, that little noticed or noticeable, that dismissive. Ho-hum duplicity, yes, but their reasons for a Just War are on the level--honestly.

This whole sorry mess of contemporary history someday will elevate to historic profundity Representative Pete Stark's recent words of caveat emptor over W's bill-of-goods militarism: "The bottom line is I don't trust this president and his advisors."

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.