Why am I not surprised? The Pentagon lied to the 9/11 Commission about their military response on 9/11. Check this out.

“I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described,” John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. “The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. . . . This is not spin. This is not true.”

In fact, the lies were so blatant that the 9/11 Commission debated sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department. As if John Ashcroft would have had any interest. Of course, having no balls whatsoever, the commission didn’t bother Ashcroft after all.

John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member and former Navy secretary, said in a recent interview that he believed the panel may have been lied to but that he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to support a criminal referral.

“My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don’t know,” Lehman said. “But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn’t seem to make sense to me.”

John Lehman, a typical Republican lickspittle. Perjury about a blow job…impeachable. Perjury about the worst domestic disaster in American history…of no magnitude.

In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

So, what did they lie about?

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD’s Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft — American Airlines Flight 11 — long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said. The agencies’ reluctance to release the tapes — along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence — led some of the panel’s staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.

Who knows what to believe? They are now telling us that the military was unaware of Flight 93 until it crashed into the ground? How does that jibe with this?

Before 9:36 a.m.: Officials Claim NORAD is Monitoring Flight 93

According to one account given by NEADS Commander
Robert Marr, some time before around 9:36 when it changes direction,
while it is still flying west, Flight 93 is being monitored by NEADS.
Marr describes how, “We don’t have fighters that way and we think
[Flight 93 is] headed toward Detroit or Chicago.” He says he contacts a
base in the area “so they [can] head off 93 at the pass.” Not only does
NORAD know about the flight, but also, according to NORAD Commander
Larry Arnold, “We watched the 93 track as it meandered around the
Ohio-Pennsylvania area and started to turn south toward DC.” (This
change of direction occurs around 9:36 a.m.) [Filson, 2004]
This account completely contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s later claim
that NEADS is first notified about Flight 93 at 10:07 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]

Or this:

(9:41 a.m.): FBI Agent Already Aware of Flight 93 Hijacking

Newark, New Jersey, flight controller Greg Callahan is
talking on the phone to an FBI agent. The agent says about Flight 93:
“We suspect that this aircraft has now been taken over by hostile
forces.” The agent describes the sharp turn it has made over eastern
Ohio and that it is now heading back over southwestern Pennsylvania.
Callahan says he could tell the plane is on a course for Washington. [MSNBC, 9/11/2002]
The FBI has been in contact with Deena Burnett and informed of what her
husband, Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett, has been saying since at
least 9:34 a.m. (see 9:34 a.m.) [Longman, 2002, pp. 110]

You should read the whole timeline. The whole farce is ridiculous. There is no way to make heads or tails of it. Everyone says NORAD was not told about Flight 93, except NORAD. Everyone knew about Flight 93, except NORAD. NORAD lied to the 9/11 Commission by falsely claiming they were informed. That’s not how I would cover my ass. Therefore, I have no idea what happened. All I know is that Cheney cowered in a bunker and refused to get authority to shoot down the planes from the pet-goat reading President until it was too late (if ever).

And he’s been cashing checks ever since.