A short excerpt:

The commission is encouraging the country to consider questions the administration has never wanted asked. Why did these attacks happen on its watch? Could the government have done more to prevent them? Were intelligence warnings given short shrift? What was the administration thinking about on Sept. 10, 2001, and in the months before? And, yes, might the president not usefully express some remorse over any of these failures?

What's important is that the country is being pushed away from an empty debate over who is "tough" and who is "soft" to a substantive discussion of what our government might practically have done -- and can now do -- to stop terrorism.



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