Is It Time?

The President and his staff are quite vocal in their belief that now is not the time for "the blame game", nor for "pointing fingers" about who screwed up how on Katrina. There will be plenty of time for all that later, they assert. Because apparently, this administration can only do one thing at a time, and improving performance by learning from your mistakes isn't something you do while you are actually in the process of doing something.

Things didn't used to work that way.

The first hearings into the Pearl Harbor attack were the Knox Commission Hearings, December 9-14, 1941. That is to say two days after the attack, before the smoke had fully cleared on Oahu.

The second hearings were the Roberts Commission Hearings, December 18, 1941 - January 23, 1942. Four days after Knox's report, the major hearings started.

Admiral Kimmel and General Short lost their jobs. They were the head honchos. Their job description was pretty much "Protect the Fleet and Hawaii," and they hadn't.

Let me quote the first few paragraphs from the Roberts Commission report:

SIR: The undersigned were appointed by Executive order of December 18,1941, which defined our duties as a commission thus:

"to ascertain and report the facts relating to the attack made by Japanese armed forces upon the Territory of Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

"The purposes of the required inquiry and report are to provide bases for sound decisions whether any derelictions of duty or errors of judgment on the part of United States Army or Navy personnel contributed to such successes as were achieved by the enemy on the occasion mentioned, and, if so, what these derelictions or errors were, and who were responsible therefor."

The Congress speedily supplemented the Executive order by granting the Commission power to summon witnesses and examine them under oath.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.