This 80s nostalgia crap has got to stop. It's bad enough seeing undergrads around campus sporting Transformers T-shirts and feathered bangs, but this latest move from Reagan Part III is just head-shaking stupidity. After putting John Poindexter (he of "convicted of lying to Congress during Iran-Contra" fame) in charge of the Total Information Awareness program — perhaps the first program, by the way, to lend credibility to Tim LaHaye and his brand of Millennarianist nutjobs — President Bush has entrusted Henry Kissinger of all people to investigate the security and intelligence gaffs that led to 9/11. Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger?
And Christian America thought that Clinton's Oval Office hummer evidenced a lack of moral judgment?
There's no shortage of commentary on the topic. Here are a few favorites:
The Bush administration has been saying in public for several months that it does not desire an independent inquiry into the gross "failures of intelligence" that left U.S. society defenseless 14 months ago. By announcing that Henry Kissinger will be chairing the inquiry that it did not want, the president has now made the same point in a different way. But the cynicism of the decision and the gross insult to democracy and to the families of the victims that it represents has to be analyzed to be believed.
— Christopher Hitchens
For many in the world, Kissinger is a symbol of US arrogance and the misuse of American might. In power, he cared more for US credibility and geostrategic advantage than for human rights and open government. His has been a career of covertly moving chips, not one of letting them fall. He is not a truth-seeker. In fact, he has prevaricated about his own actions and tried to limit access to government information. He should be subpoenaed, not handed the right to subpoena. He is a target, not an investigator.
— David Corn
If President Bush had set out to undermine the credibility of the commission charged with probing the intelligence and security flaws that allowed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to succeed, he would have begun by naming as the chair someone with a track record of secrecy, double-dealing and bartering himself off to the highest bidder.
And so the president, who has resisted the investigation for more than a year, did just that.
— John Nichols
It's an inspired choice. Bold, counterintuitive, edgy, outside the box.
Who better to investigate an unwarranted attack on America than the man who used to instigate America's unwarranted attacks?
Who better to ferret out government duplicity and manipulation than the man who engineered secret wars, secret bombings, secret wiretaps and secret coups, and still ended up as a Pillar of the Establishment and Nobel Peace Prize winner?
— Maureen Dowd
If Henry Kissinger had any shame he would decline his new appointment and, while on bended knee, also return his 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.
This is the blind hope of his critics, and perhaps a few of what is left of his supporters. The expectation, however, is that the man who once fancied himself the Metternich of U.S. foreign policy will reign as czar of the Sept. 11 probe. The gray eminence with much to live down will likely use his post to immunize himself against all further attempts to have him judged a "war criminal."
— Les Payne
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