Here’s a heads up. Next week we’re supposed to get at least a partial look at the findings of the independent commission investigating the attacks of September 11th. If it weren’t for my job I’d head to a remote cabin in the mountains and hide out away from TV and radio and politicians for at least a month. All of this spinning has made me sick to my stomach.

Yes, it’s going to get real ugly. One of the members of the bi-partisan independent commission has already leaked a sound bite that’s being repeated by all of the media outlets. “Americans are going to be shocked by what we found?”

Sorry, don’t mean to steal any of the committee’s thunder but I can tell you what it’s going to say. It will say we should have seen it coming. It will say there was information available both during the Clinton and Bush administrations that could and should have been acted upon and could have prevented September 11th. There will be plenty of blame to go around and the commission doesn’t mind painting everyone with some of the “guilt paint” they’ve uncovered.

They will say the FBI and CIA weren’t talking to each other. They will say that during the Clinton years we allowed our intelligence gathering systems to fall apart. In my estimation the only thing “shocking” I expect to see is the detailed memos that will have surfaced during the investigation. Hindsight is always 20-20 especially if you can CYA with something in writing.

I also predict President Bush will end up catching a lot of the heat simply because he is the easiest target, and because he is the man now in charge. You can expect even more heat from the Democrats who are looking for fresh material for their otherwise bullet-less 2004 campaign. This report will be waded up and shoved down Bushes throat as far as possible and you and I will be asked to swallow it, too.

There’s a problem though with this 9-11 report and with the recent flap over the erroneous information President Bush used in his state of the union speech to help justify the war with Iraq. It’s called consensus. It’s something that every leader, that every manager, that every coach has to deal with. You have to be able to trust those people around you who are gathering as much information as possible on a subject, and bringing it to the table of discussion. If you don’t have consensus than you are tossed into that never land of trusting your instincts, trying to calculate the greater good or the greater evil. It happens to every President at some time or other.

When Bill Clinton was President he had a number of his advisors who were convinced Osama Bin Laden could posse a threat to US interests. But he also had a number of people around him who weren’t so sure. You will see this information in the 9-11 report. You will also see that a number of operatives in the FBI and CIA during the first year of the Bush administration were also concerned about Osama and Saddam Hussein. But as concerned as they were there was never a consensus that an attack of the scale of 9-11 was about to happen. Senator Bob Graham, democrat presidential candidate has admitted as much time and time again. There were pieces of the Osama puzzle all over the place but nobody could get any of the pieces to connect.

There were voices in the background in the Clinton and Bush administrations that were fighting to be heard but simply couldn’t cut through the noise of huge bureaucracies. Thing got even messier when those messages have to fight with the predispositions of the men in control: Clinton not wanting to do anything, Bush wanting to get rid of Osama and Saddam.

What’s lost here is the other operative word: leadership! What any good leader does is tell the troops to gather as much reliable information as possible. Next, the leader sits down with his advisors and asks them to help him assess the information. Finally, the leader has to make a decision about which policies to implement based on the best information. That decision isn’t hard to make when your information gatherers are in agreement, when there is consensus. When there is disagreement it gets very dicey. In this case, the consensus gap was huge.

Prior to September 11th, the United States and Bill Clinton and George Bush tended to believe those who said Osama and Saddam were troublemakers but were not likely to do any major damage. A decision was made based on the best available information. It turns out to be the wrong decision. After September 11th there was still no absolute consensus on Saddam, though the evidence collected by the United Nations clearly in the minds of nearly every world leader pointed to links between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden. Those links are now proven to be true. There was also evidence collected and verified by the United Nations that Saddam was up to something and, that in fact, he had already used chemical and biological weapons on his own people. Those are undisputed facts.

There was also information presented to the President by his staff that Saddam may have attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, presumable to be used for nuclear weapons. The President believed those who had gathered the information. The consensus at the time of the President’s State of the Union was that this information was reliable, though there were some in his administration, including an envoy to Africa, who thought the information gathered by British Intelligence agents might be wrong.

The President made a judgment call because, when there is no consensus, that’s what a leader does. No doubt he was steered on by what he called his biggest nightmare that someday he would be awakened and told someone had unleashed a nuclear weapon on some American city. He could live with making a mistake about intelligence but not with making a mistake that could cost the lives of potential hundreds of thousands of Americans.

So what are we to do? Do we hang him because he made a mistake by believing the intelligence communities assessment of the situation? Do we say that all the other information he presented was wrong? Do we say the entire justification for the war was also flawed? Do we sluff off all the horror stories Iraqis are now telling us about life under Saddam. Where those mass graves just filled with theatrical dummies? Do we say the President blatantly lied just to get us involved in a war with Iraq? Only those filled with hatred for Bush can make that grand leap of absurdity.

When there is no consensus somebody has to make a decision and take the heat if the decision was wrong. Fine. That’s what Bush has done. And now he takes responsibility for believing one group of his advisors over another group. Give me a flipping break!

To quote Colin Powell, “the President ran the speech through the grinder of the CIA to see if it was factually correct. If they had no problem with it why should the President. But if you think the President deliberately lied you are dead wrong. The Democrats need to get over it and move on.”

Mere mortals are allowed to make a mistake in judgment or believe an erroneous report. But if you are the President of the United States and elections are coming up you are “damned if you don’t and damned if you do.”

Al Ruechel, Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved

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