Power: corrupting

"The system was blinking red."

Would George W. Bush have been re-elected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?

The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot. Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 Commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.

What a tangled web these megalomaniacs weave, when they try to hang on to power.