I think, generally, the 9/11 commission is a pretty good idea.

It's good to look back and see where government failed or had shortcomings in the wake of something so jarring as the 9/11 attacks.

I think some good can come out of the investigation. I think we can improve our efforts with respect to thwarting terror.

We already have improved our anti-terror efforts. If all the terror safeguards in place today would have been in place on 9/10, 9/11 never would have happened.

Ah, the advantage of crystal-clear 20-20 hindsight.

Which is what bothers me about the Richard Clarke testimony. I think he mainly has a political agenda.

He was a terror adviser in the Clinton and W administrations. Before that, he worked in various government jobs. Overall, he was a 30-year government employee.

He started out as a senior adviser in the W administration but was demoted.

I think that kind of miffed Clarke a little bit.

So now he's got the tell-all book deal and it seems to me he's out to make W look just as bad as possible.

And that's OK. That doesn't mean everything he says is untrue, by any means. I think he probably has some pretty good insights.

But to say he's just a stand-up guy without any political motivation is a bit of stretch, too.

The fact that he was - as recently as 2002 - praising W's handling of terrorism and now is skewering W for the same thing gives me pause.

And his apology to 9/11 victims was a bit much for me, too. The whole "Your government failed you, I failed you" thing was a little contrived.

I mean, really. Did the government fail the victims of the Columbine shootings?

For that matter, does the government fail the victim of every criminal act?

Government is charged with keeping its citizens safe, right? So if some psycho kicks in your door in the middle of the night and shoots you while you lie in your bed sleeping, does the government owe you an apology?

I mean, the government should have known the guy was nuts and stopped him, right?

Basically, I think what Clarke is trying to do is advance the public perception that if W would have done his job a little better, 9/11 could have been prevented.

Now, he doesn't come right out and say that. In fact, he says quite the contrary. Under questioning by former GOP Sen. Slade Gorton, Clarke said nothing he proposed to Bush officials would have prevented 9/11.

That's pretty much the truth of the matter.

Now, I have no doubt that the W administration could have done a better job, could have done more. But you know what? I truly believe that in the pre-9/11 era - with the mindset we had about terrorism - there was little if anything government could have done to prevent it.

Now we've had the paradigm shift. Now we're all clued in on terrorism. Before 9/11, terrorism was something that happened somewhere else.

We had this mindset even though there had been a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center before.

Remember Feb. 26, 1993? Probably not. That was when The World Trade Center was bombed.

And there was April 19, 1995. That was when the Alfred Murrah Federal Center in Oklahoma City was bombed - by an American.

That was our terror mindset. Bombs.

The whole "airplanes as weapons" idea slipped completely under everybody's radar.

The government was most concerned about bombs back then and was probably doing a pretty good job of tracking fertilizer sales and Ryder Truck rentals.

Now - in the post-9/11 world - the government is doing a good job of tracking airline passengers.

That's the way things generally work. Something happens and government responds.

It would be wonderful if government could be more proactive with regard to terrorism, and maybe it can.

Maybe these hearings are just the ticket to improve communication between government agencies and the ability to gather intelligence and fight terror.

That is a good thing.

But I think those goals can be achieved without playing the blame game. [[In-content Ad]]