Split Thread Criticisms of 9/11 Commission Report

[DGM]

You're kidding, right?

No.

Who disagrees with the findings?

 

[WilliamSeger]

The two apparatchiks Kean and Hamilton have expressed discontent to an unusual degree, not only in the interview Hamilton granted to "idiot" Ryan linked above. They''re certainly far away from claiming that they succeeded in their mission , which was your claim Jango picked up.

You are completely wrong: http://www.c-span.org/video/?193800-1/words-thomas-kean-lee-hamilton

 

[Jango]

No.

Who disagrees with the findings?

9/11 Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton recalled in 2006: "We had a lot of trouble getting access to documents and to people. We knew the history of commissions . . . nobody paid much attention to 'em. So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602657.html

Set up to fail.

 

[beachnut]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602657.html

Set up to fail.

OMG, how did they finish? guess the people who set them up, failed

Quote mining, 911 truth's weapon against reality

 

[WilliamSeger]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602657.html

Set up to fail.

From the "Set Up to Fail" chapter:

"What we could not have anticipated were the remarkable people and circumstances that would coalesce within and around the 9/11 Commission over the coming twenty months to enable our success."

 

[Jango]

OMG, how did they finish? guess the people who set them up, failed

Quote mining, 911 truth's weapon against reality

How in the **** is that a quote mine?

 

[LSSBB]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602657.html

Set up to fail.

Did he say "We failed"? That statement could also very well mean " We had to overcome a reluctance to turn over documents", especially when you quote it in full: "We had a lot of trouble getting access to documents and to people. We knew the history of commissions . . . nobody paid much attention to 'em. So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail."

 

[WilliamSeger]

How in the **** is that a quote mine?

Um, by definition: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quote_mining

(ETA: definition)

Quote mining (also contextomy) is the fallacious tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don't in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize.[1] It's a way of lying.

 

[pgimeno]

I know indeed. Chapters 5-7 are the core of the narrative. Before and after are tales of history and recommendations of how to proceed.

Ok, let's start from the beginning.

Do you have anything to object about the reliability of chapter 1 (“WE HAVE SOME PLANES”) and its numerous footnotes detailing the corroborative evidence it's based on? ETA: That chapter alone has 241 footnotes, most of which are references to the evidence it's based on, some of which in turn have been made available through NARA.

 

[Jango]

Um, by definition: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quote_mining

(ETA: definition)

I didn't ask for the definition. Try again.

 

[Jango]

Ok, let's start from the beginning.

Do you have anything to object about the reliability of chapter 1 (“WE HAVE SOME PLANES”) and its numerous footnotes detailing the corroborative evidence it's based on? ETA: That chapter alone has 241 footnotes, most of which are references to the evidence it's based on, some of which in turn have been made available through NARA.

Key point there. 'Some' is not 'all', which is what the commission wanted.

Another failure.

But not an important one, right?

 

[WilliamSeger]

I didn't ask for the definition. Try again.

Try again to do what? You took "set up to fail" out of context to create the false impression that Hamilton and Kean agreed with your own opinion that they had failed. I gave you a quote from the same chapter that shows they do not share your opinion, and a link to an interview in which they confirm that they believe they got the story basically right, despite the "set up." If you don't see why that's quote mining, then perhaps you do in fact need to read that definition.

 

[Jango]

Did he say "We failed"? That statement could also very well mean " We had to overcome a reluctance to turn over documents", especially when you quote it in full: "We had a lot of trouble getting access to documents and to people. We knew the history of commissions . . . nobody paid much attention to 'em. So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail."

Not satisfied with the quote I provided? Fine. Here's some more to contemplate (and for beachnut to butcher the English language in response to):

Hamilton: The 9/11 Commission was created by statute. We had two responsibilities - first, tell the story of 9/11; I think we've done that reasonably well. We worked very hard at it; I don’t know that we’ve told the definitive story of 9/11, but surely anybody in the future who tackles that job will begin with the 9/11 Commission Report. I think we’ve been reasonably successful in telling the story.

Hamilton: I cannot answer every question with regard to 9/11. I can answer a good many of them, but I can't answer them all.

Hamilton: I don’t believe for a minute that we got everything right. We wrote a first draft of history.
We wrote it under a lot of time pressure, and we sorted through the evidence as best we could.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070108233707/http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html

Then there is this Op-Ed by Kean and Hamilton in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html?

Commissioner Kerrey said this:

There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version.

http://www.salon.com/2006/06/27/911_conspiracies/

Commissioner Roemer said this:

We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/9-11panel.pentagon/index.html

Which piggybacks onto this:

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

"I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. "The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. . . . This is not spin. This is not true."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html


There's more to read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/politics/08CND-TERR.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=new
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/national/06CND-TAPE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/us/tape-of-air-traffic-controllers-made-on-9-11-was-destroyed.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/16/politics/16TERR.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/us/9-11-panel-issues-subpoena-to-pentagon.html


https://richardlaw.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/94694_lhfievvxymq42bd.jpg

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited to turn hotlinked image into link. Do not hotlink unless the site specifically allows it, see rule 5.

Right?

 

[WilliamSeger]

Not satisfied with the quote I provided? Fine. Here's some more to contemplate (and for beachnut to butcher the English language in response to):

Hamilton: The 9/11 Commission was created by statute. We had two responsibilities - first, tell the story of 9/11; I think we've done that reasonably well. We worked very hard at it; I don’t know that we’ve told the definitive story of 9/11, but surely anybody in the future who tackles that job will begin with the 9/11 Commission Report. I think we’ve been reasonably successful in telling the story.

Hamilton: I cannot answer every question with regard to 9/11. I can answer a good many of them, but I can't answer them all.

Hamilton: I don’t believe for a minute that we got everything right. We wrote a first draft of history. We wrote it under a lot of time pressure, and we sorted through the evidence as best we could.

http://web.archive.org/web/200701082...1hamilton.html

How odd; every one of those quotes shows that they believe they got the story basically right, contradicting your assertion that they disagreed with the Commission's finding.

Then there is this Op-Ed by Kean and Hamilton in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html?

... in which they describe how they dealt with one of the obstacles to getting the story right, which certainly doesn't support your contention that they "disagreed" with their own findings.

Commissioner Kerrey said this:

There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version.

http://www.salon.com/2006/06/27/911_conspiracies/

... which is straight up, unadulterated quote mining. Of course, in that quote Kerrey did not say that he disagreed with the Commission findings, but what he was actually getting at requires the context: http://other.skepticproject.com/art...ommission-member-said-there-may-be-alternati/

Commissioner Roemer said this: com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/9-11panel.pentagon/index.html

... which is yet another account of how the Commission dealt with obstruction, and Ramos implying that he believes that they eventually got the true story.

Which piggybacks onto this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html

If you mean that it piggybacks on the previous quote mining, yes it does; it's another account of how the Commission believes they were initially mislead, and not that any Commissioners disagreed with the final report.

I suspect that perhaps you've simply fallen victim to the quote mining that you've picked up from other "truther" propaganda, but the point is you've failed to make your case that any Commissioners disagreed with the final report. Given that consensus was one of their main objectives, that shouldn't be surprising.

You're welcome to your own opinion of how successful they were in getting the story right, but trying to buttress your opinion by putting it into their mouths is disingenuous.

 

[funk de fino]

At least I know my time machine is working again. Thanks Jango.

 

[Jango]

At least I know my time machine is working again. Thanks Jango.

You're welcome.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

"What we could not have anticipated were the remarkable people and circumstances that would coalesce within and around the 9/11 Commission over the coming twenty months to enable our success."

Can you read, Jango?

 

[Childlike Empress]

Ok, let's start from the beginning.

Do you have anything to object about the reliability of chapter 1 (“WE HAVE SOME PLANES”) and its numerous footnotes detailing the corroborative evidence it's based on? ETA: That chapter alone has 241 footnotes, most of which are references to the evidence it's based on, some of which in turn have been made available through NARA.

No, we were at the point where you read and understand the information I provided in return to your question. Next is your comment on that, not hand-waving.

My comment that K+H were "far away from claiming that they succeeded in their mission" might have been an overstatement, but it's been ten years and it seems their tone has changed over time, and my other statement that they "expressed discontent to an unusual degree [for apparatchiks]" certainly stands.

btw, none of the commissioners had direct access to the guys in the Gitmo hellhole. I found an article that states that Zelikow later on became a critic of the torture methods. To his small credit. I guess it was like "why do you throw those guys against the wall, this is really not necessary. I had already written up everything, you don't have to make them repeat it."

 

[WilliamSeger]

Speaking of "overstatement":

"The commission"? They didn't look into any collapses. It was just myth making based on "evidence" derived from torture and a vivid fantasy sharpened by earlier projects.

Detainee Interrogation Reports
Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these "detainees" have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot.

Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses-sworn enemies of the United States-is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.

We have nonetheless decided to include information from captured 9/11 conspirators and al Qaeda members in our report. We have evaluated their statements carefully and have attempted to corroborate them with documents and statements of others. In this report, we indicate where such statements provide the foundation for our narrative. We have been authorized to identify by name only ten detainees whose custody has been confirmed officially by the U.S. government.2

 

[LSSBB]

Not satisfied with the quote I provided? Fine. Here's some more to contemplate (and for beachnut to butcher the English language in response to):

Before inundating me with mass linkage, please address why you think the quote I responded to, that you provided, supports whatever it is you are trying to say.

In fact, what exactly are you trying to prove?