LAST FRIDAY, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., reversed ground on his opposition to efforts to extend the deadline of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, or "9/11 Commission" as it's also known, and will now allow the commission to continue its work through July 26. All it took was Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., threatening the furlough of 5,000 federal highway workers by not passing the highway appropriations bill.
Speaker Hastert's opposition is just the latest instance of high-level GOP hostility to the bipartisan commission. President Bush, who, to his credit, supported the 60-day deadline extension, originally opposed its creation and has been less than forthcoming in his willingness to testify in private meetings.
If the Republican leadership is truly trying to show the American people that they are most fit to wage the war on terrorism, they must show stronger support for vehicles which will improve our ability to fight that war, including the 9/11 Commission.
As with a good deal of heel-dragging in government, electoral considerations are a concern. President Bush and Speaker Hastert are both publicly worried that the commission could become captive of partisan concerns interested in trumping up scandal in the hopes of throwing a wrench into the president's re-election campaign and Republican strategy overall.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, however, were an event of such magnitude that they must transcend the political. To give anything less than full disclosure and openness in good faith is to do a disservice to national security.
What's more, the so-called concerns over extending the deadline for the commission lack logic. Before caving to pressure from within Congress, as well as from the public and press, Speaker Hastert expressed concern that the commission's recommendations should be received by Congress sooner than later to justify curtailing the investigation.
It's not as if Congress lacks for material on which to base changes in our intelligence structure. In December 2002, the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence released their 435-page report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. It contains a flood of factual findings on how poorly the intelligence community was prepared to face the threat of international terrorism.
Indeed, many of the problems are so obvious that Congress need not wait for a report to justify reform. Intelligence agencies need to be far better networked and integrated with each other and with law enforcement. This is just one issue with which Congress can take action to remedy the problems of the Sept. 10 world.
This aside, the 60 additional days that the commission requested is a meager price to pay for the completeness and additional comprehensiveness of the final work produced.
The support by the president and other Republican higher-ups of the commission is necessary not just for intelligence experts or historians to better understand what happened or didn't happen to lead up to the most devastating attack on the United States.
It's also necessary because families, loved ones, friends and co-workers of the thousands who died that day deserve to have a government that follows through on its promise to never let such a catastrophic event happen again.
Consider this hypothetical: The 9/11 Commission is not allowed the additional time to collect the information necessary for a full report. Witnesses wishing to stay outside the scrutiny of the commission wait for the clock to run out. Then, due to further intelligence failure, the American homeland is again struck by terrorism.
The thought alone of another attack on America is chilling. But what is even more chilling is the thought that the government didn't fully support efforts to find out where it went wrong in similar situations in the past.
The country suffered an intelligence failure leading up to Sept. 11. Let's not suffer another such failure at the hands of partisanship.
Jim Prosser's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jprosser@cavalierdaily.com.