American Medias reaction to 9/11 Report

[Vanhalen 0]

Just a good little article, looking at the different networks and newspapers reactions to the report

 

The 9/11 commission report is careful to blame nobody in particular for allowing the devastating attacks on the US to happen.

But the US media are clearer on who was at fault - "they all" were.

 

After the Congressional commission released its long-awaited report on Thursday, the US press did not hold back.

 

"Failures in policy, management and imagination," were responsible, according to Peter Jennings on the ABC network.

 

NBC network presenter Tom Brokaw was more direct.

 

"[The report] was not meant to assign blame, but nonetheless, it was a sweeping indictment of government inefficiencies, political timidity, naivete or arrogance or a combination of the two, on the part of all of us," he said.

 

Commission co-chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean pleaded for common ground and political co-operation, he added.

 

"That may be as important as any of the recommendations that Hamilton and Kean made or the call for urgent action," he said, though the urgency did not stop the House of Representatives heading off for a six-week recess, he noted.

 

Todd S Purnum of the New York Times said the lapses detailed "amount to nothing less than the gravest dysfunctions in the national security apparatus... [since] the dawn of the Cold War".

 

And he does not think political consensus will be forthcoming.

 

"The partisan wrangling of a presidential election and the capital's entrenched resistance to change make swift action unlikely," he said.

 

Though the Los Angeles Times says the commission has "refused to go out of business", and "will spend the next 12 months travelling the nation" to make sure their recommendations are implemented.

 

"Only a small band of civilians, strangers to one another - without benefit of staff meetings, by-laws, uniforms or task forces... [managed] to thwart a guided-missile attack on Washington"

David Von Drehle, Washington Post 

 

On CBS, correspondent Jim Stewart said: "Not since Pearl Harbor has a president been presented with a report as damning in its detail or as sweeping in its reforms as this one."

 

In a further embarrassment for the White House, he says the commission "found no connection between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda and 9/11".

 

David Von Drehle in the Washington Post says only one aspect of the nation's defence worked well on 11 September 2001.

 

"It wasn't the FBI, CIA, FAA or Air Force," he says, or any of "the institutions charged with protecting our borders".

 

"Only a small band of civilians, strangers to one another - without benefit of staff meetings, by-laws, uniforms or task forces - communicating by cell phone with loved ones who happened to be watching TV - managed to figure out what was going on in time to thwart a guided-missile attack on Washington," he said, in reference to the hijacked airliner brought down in Pennsylvania before it reached its target.

 

In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette questions whether the recommendation for an intelligence-gathering supremo would improve matters.

 

There was more 9/11 footage on TV than for nearly two years

"Will it serve any purpose to put one more cabinet official between the president's desk - where the buck stops - and the responsible agencies?" it asks.

 

Newsday says the report calls for far more of the home-defence budget to be spent on New York and Washington, "the two biggest targets".

 

The New York Daily News online edition has pictures of some of the hijackers, captured on tape as they passed through security at Dulles Airport in Washington. It says they showed not a flicker of fear as they set off metal detectors and were searched.

 

The New York Post headline is perhaps the starkest.

 

"They all let us down," it says.

 

Although there was no finger-pointing, and neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations were blamed exclusively, "everyone took some heat", it said.

 

It quoted commission chairman Tom Kean saying: "Any person in a senior position in our government during this time bears some element of responsibility for our government's actions."

 

Most television news stations now show footage of the attacks and their aftermath at Ground Zero very sparingly, but BBC News Online's Washington correspondent Kevin Anderson says the release of the report saw those images repeated more than at any time since the first anniversary of 11 September.

 

After they were replayed CBS presenter Dan Rather closed by saying: "Lest we forget."

[Guest MikeSC]

Wow, they actually showed 9/11 footage?

 

I figured they lost the footage by now, seeing as how it never gets shown.

-=Mike