Oh, the inanity!

I just saw Richard Ben Veniste pontificating on Charlie Rose. The problem on 9/11, he has determined, is that the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies weren't sharing information.

Oh, well done! No mention of the fact that left has been assailing the whole idea of intelligence, which after all means invading the privacy of others, for years. No mention of the fact that attack after attack throughout the 1990s the administration clucked unhappily and did little or nothing, while bin Laden built up al Qaeda and trained suicide bombers. The whole effort, if these hearings are any indication, has been to somehow pin the whole disaster on Bush.

What can you expect from people who think the way to fight crime is to outlaw firearms?

Lileks noticed pretty much the same thing but writes it better.

There were a bunch of wire stories in the papers today based on today's final hearing of the commission, which basically revealed what we knew on 9/12/01. The actual tapes that were released really are chilling, but of course newspapers can't convey that like TV and radio. They may think this is bad for the administration, but to me it was a reminder of how truly evil terrorism is and how truly unserious the left is about confronting it.

The most disgusting story of the day was this one, in which Rumsfeld admitted keeping the capture of a terrorist leader secret at the request of the CIA. This is being spun as a human rights violation because the Red Cross wasn't notified about this man, but the Geneva Conventions don't apply to terrorists. They aren't POWs because they are illegal combatants. I can think of a number of good reasons to keep such a capture secret, so why can't these elite folks who see themselves as the intellectual's alternative to the government?

The press is getting more and more arrogant all the time. The New York Times has lost its objectivity completely and the wire "services" sound more like Al Jazeera than news organizations.

Mickey Kaus apparently agrees, although he restricts his comments to Dan Rather's heir apparent at CBS News.