We caught some but not all of the hearings today. We've read hundreds of comments posted here and elsewhere about them. Kevin Drum, formerly Calpundit, now writing for Washington Monthly's Political Animal, says:

Terrorists hijacked a bunch of planes and killed 3000 people on 9/11. In retrospect, of course we didn't do enough before then to stop al-Qaeda, and it's hardly shameful to say so. But none of these guys have the self-respect to admit it. I'm all for point scoring, but I just don't think all this blather about whether we took al-Qaeda seriously before 9/11 is meaningful.... It's what happened after 9/11 that should be getting more attention.

Kevin also notes that so far, the only one to apologize for the pre-9/11 failures has been Richard Clarke. Good points. But we remain troubled by the allegations that Bush was told of an Al-Qaeda threat and didn't deal with it, preferring instead to concentrate on Iraq. A President who disregards the advice of his top counterterrorism official is not a wise leader in our book.

We saw an old friend on the panel today, former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste. We hadn't realized he was on the Commission, and now that we do know, we have a lot more faith in it. We liked that he and Bob Kerrey both knocked the Administration for not allowing Condolezza Rice to testify.

Our last open thread on the topic is getting too long, feel free to continue it here.

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