If you were ever interested in the 9/11 Commission's investigation read this new Vanity Fair article. Using newly released military tapes the author suggests a Pentagon coverup and lays out facts.  

The whole story about the Cheney/Bush decision process to shoot down Flight 93, if it happened, it happened after Flight 93 had already crashed.  From Page 5 of WaPo's Dan Froomkin Friday column:

Michael Bronner, in Vanity Fair, based on never-before-released tapes from the control room of NORAD's Northeast headquarters: "In his bunker under the White House, [VP] Cheney was not notified about United 93 until 10:02 -- only one minute before the airliner impacted the ground. Yet it was with dark bravado that the [VP] and others in the Bush administration would later recount sober deliberations about the prospect of shooting down United 93."

[Bronner was an associate producer on the movie United 93.]

It's the same solution, air power, for a comparably complex problem rooted in the local culture. 

Roughly same result too, some improvement but significant unintended and unforeseen consequences. 

Read Tony Blair's  foreign policy speech, along with Q&A, on the Middle East to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council (Aug 1).

I found a few things I disagreed with but if it were the basis of a foreign policy put forth by a candidate in the next couple of years that person would have my vote.

Some highlights: 

complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation... we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world. 

Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win ...  

strategy in the late 1990s ... A battle about Islam was just Muslim versus Muslim. They realised they had to create a completely different battle in Muslim minds: Muslim versus Western.  

[Lots about the Middle East and what it means, how to go about resolving the conflict and the impact on a wider world] 

final reflection about US policy... always be in the lead, always at the forefront, always engaged in building alliances, in reaching out, in showing that whereas unilateral action can never be ruled out, it is not the preference.  

balanced but effective framework to tackle: ... climate change ... low-carbon economy ...WTO ... Africa...

... message of moral purpose, that reinforces our value system as credible in all other aspects of policy. It serves one other objective. There is a risk that the world, after the Cold War, goes back to a global policy based on spheres of influence...

I believe all of these great emerging powers [China, India, Russia] want a benign relationship with the West. But I also believe that the stronger and more appealing our world-view is, the more it is seen as based not just on power but on justice, the easier it will be for us to shape the future in which Europe and the US will no longer, economically or politically, be transcendant. 

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan (Aug 3) for his attention to all that is British to bring this to my attention.