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Asleep at the Wheel
Also in Election 2004
How Bush Won
Mark Danner
Not Your Grandfather's Anti-Semitism
Tony Judt
The Myth of the Exurban Voter
Ruy Teixeira
Back to Bush's Regularly Scheduled Problems
David Corn
Will the GOP Nuke the Constitution?
Arianna Huffington
My Holiday Gift List
Jim Hightower
It has taken three years for the details of the terrorist plot of 9/11 to emerge. The fateful turns that led to the attacks have finally entered the public discourse. Their lessons, however, have yet to be learned.
The first lesson is that the highest officials in government did not want us to know the truth.
They already had the story they wanted Americans to believe: Nearly 3,000 people had died, we were assured, because the terrorists turned our liberties against us, had brazenly exploited our open society. According to this official view, the atrocities were inevitable, the plot so diabolical and its execution so precise that only a superhero could have prevented it.
It sounded right. For the American people, the terror seemed to have fallen out of that near-perfect September sky, out of the clear blue.
We now know otherwise. The report of the 9/11 Commission lays the story bare in exhaustive, forensic detail:
This commentary is associated with "9/11: For the Record" a one-hour documentary by Bill Moyers, Andrew Meier, and Sherry Jones which airs on PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers, on Friday, September 10 at 9 PM (check local listings).
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