US Given Failing Grades By 9/11 Panel

The Washington Post reports:

The federal government received failing and mediocre grades yesterday from the former Sept. 11 commission, whose members said in a final report that the Bush administration and Congress have balked at enacting numerous reforms that could save American lives and prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The 10-member bipartisan panel -- whose book-length report about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks became a surprise bestseller -- issued a "report card" that included 5 F's, 12 D's and two "incompletes" in categories including airline passenger screening and improving first responders' communication system.

The group also said there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information and sharply criticized government efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction or establish clear standards for the proper treatment of U.S. detainees.

"We believe that the terrorists will strike again," the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, told reporters in Washington. "If they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuses be?"

I hope this isn't a surprise. Terrorism only seems to be a concern of this administration when it can be used to stoke fear and funnel anxiety behind certain policies that might have been politically untenable before 9/11.

Obviously, there are people in government and ancillary institutions that take the threat seriously and gravely lament the trajectory of current events, but these individuals, surely, are not the ones driving the bureaucracy.