9/11 Body Attacks White House

By Ben Bain
The Financial Times

Monday 14 November 2005

The US commission that investigated the attacks of September 11, 2001, warned on Monday that the government was failing to move quickly to isolate terrorist groups and discourage weapons proliferation.

The report gives failing grades of "insufficient progress", "minimal progress" and "unfulfilled" on US efforts to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD), better defining the US message to the Muslim world, and establishing clear standards for terrorist detention among all members of the US-led coalition fighting the war on terror.

"Those grades are failing grades," said Tim Roemer, a former Democratic US congressman and one of the 10 commissioners. "That is an unacceptable response that is unresponsive to the needs of our people."

Since issuing the reports last year the commissioners formed the not-for-profit 9/11 Public Discourse Project as a way to keep pressure on Congress and the administration to implement their original recommendations. The first report card on homeland security and preparedness, and the second on reforming governmental institutions, were also highly critical of the US government's progress to date.

The status report called on President George W. Bush to "maintain a sense of urgency" in making non-proliferation, securing nuclear material and preventing terrorists from acquiring WMD his top national security priority, as well as demanding that Congress provide the necessary resources for the effort.

"The most striking thing to us is that the size of the problem [proliferation of WMD] still totally dwarfs the policy response," said Thomas Kean, former commission chairman.

The report also raises concerns over the US's image in Muslim countries.

Noting that public approval ratings of the US remained at or near all-time lows throughout the Middle East, the commissioners emphasised the importance of public diplomacy. However, despite efforts to beef-up international broadcasting and the appointment of Karen Hughes as a new public diplomacy czar, the report card only gave "minimal progress" to efforts in defining the US message.

Much of the problem, it said, related to the treatment of detainees. Detainee abuse at Abu-Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and resistance to following the Geneva Conventions on prisoner treatment only damaged America's reputation as a moral leader and made it harder to build diplomatic, political and military ties.

"These excesses are un-American, they reflect a significant departure of how we define ourselves as a fair and humane nation," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat on the commission.

The only areas that received the grade of "good progress" in the status report were US efforts on economic policies, including newly reached trade deals and efforts against terrorist financing.