I haven't finished the entire 9-11 Commission Report yet. I have always been enjoyed reading these types of reports. I remember practically salivating over the "Tower Commision Report", when it became available.
Here are some thoughts in no special order.
- It was reccommended that the U.S. government sponsor public education in muslim states to replace, or at least compete with the religious madras, which have become the only alternative to no education in some poor rural parts of the islamic world. This seems like a really sensible long term strategy. Unfortunately, no one is really talking about this idea much. This policy also has a high political risk as opponents could charge "They're funding education in Pakistan, why won't they spend money here in the U.S?"
- Evidently, no is responsible. This, of course, grates on me a bit. i know the commission probably had to approach things this way in order to get broad cooperation, but still it seems like a lot of government entities got a "get out of jail free card."
- Although it only appear obliquely in the report "The only information that actually referred to a hijacking in this period was a walk-in at an FBI office in the United States who mentioned hijackings among other possible attacks. The source was judged to be a fabricator.", p. 535, para 2"This guy walks into the FBI office and tried to confess, but no one believed him. I don't know why this story didn't get more press.[Links CBS, uktimes, MSNBC, ]
- It's apparent that there isn't a very nimble infrastructure for communication between government agencies. I think if they all had access to some sort of secure irc the coordination could have been much better.
- Making this document available electronically is fantastic. The effort that people went to to remix the report, make it searchable, or reformatting it was very cool.
