Date Posted:05:24:21 08/31/06 Thu Author: Rebel Subject: 9-11 commissioner assails lack of progress
A Sept. 11 commissioner is sharply critical of the progress made by the Bush administration in securing the nation against terrorist attack.
In an article to appear in the September issue of the Naval Institute's "Proceedings," former Navy Secretary John Lehman says U.S. President George W. Bush "befuddles" the country and Congress by calling the struggle against Islamic jihadists a "war on terror."
"We are not at a war against terror anymore than World War II was a war against kamikazes," writes Lehman.
Lehman says reforms to the FBI have not yielded an organization capable of stopping the "Islamist infrastructure" in the United States, which he says is largely supported -- unchallenged by the U.S. government -- by Saudi money.
"Five years after 9/11, nothing has been done to materially affect this root source of jihadism," he writes.
"Our attempt to reform the FBI has failed," he asserts. "What is needed now is a separate domestic intelligence service without police powers such as the British MI-5."
Leham also criticizes the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, calling it a "bureaucracy" that recruits people from the "failed" intelligence agencies -- "the exact opposite of what we had recommended."
He writes that Congress is "dithering" over implementing changes to emergency preparedness, transportation and border security, immigration and congressional reform.
"While all of these universally acknowledged vulnerabilities remain unfixed, Congress continues to dither," he writes.
He also criticizes Congress for applying human rights protections to prisoners taken in the war on terror.
He criticizes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for "grave blunders" after the successful invasion of Iraq, and writes that the Army and Marine Corps should both lower their recruiting standards to expand their ranks.
