Pulling teeth

In the “if we remain a free and open society, the terrorists will have won” department, we give you…
Item the first: the release by the Pentagon after 4 1/2 years of surveillance tapes supposedly showing American Airlnes Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon on September 11th (which, while nominally in response to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act request, is actually a response to this cult classic Loose Change and other 9-11 conspiracy theories now making their way round the internets.)
Amazingly (o.k., not so amazingly… it’s called “high gas prices, Katrina and a 29% approval rating”) we seem to have turned the nation back to where it was during the Clinton Administration, when Fox’s signature show was The X Files (as in “trust no one… especially the Manson Bush Family…”) only to be replaced by the post 9-11 Twenty-Four (i.e. torture by the always trustworthy Government is always justified, as long as it’s entertaining.)
Well, finally people are beginning to question the “official story” of 9-11. While I have some doubts about aspects of the conspiracy theories (e.g., I believe that an American Airlines plane actually did crash into the Pentagon, for example, and am quite certain that large airplanes crashed into the WTC, being across the street from it and all at the time), I must say that the 9-11 Report, for example, left one cold in the convenient details it omitted (such as the extensive role of the Saudis in providing aid, comfort and support, especially financial, to al Qaeda, or the fact that incompetence did not go around evenly… while the Clinton Administration’s performance was less than perfect, the Bush Administration’s performance was downright disastrous.)
So… people are finally starting to… ask questions. Hence, data that should have been released years ago is finally trickling out. Which brings us to…
Item the Second: The Pentagon also released the fullest list of Guantanamo detainees to date as part of its slow-as-molasses compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the Associated Press under the very same Freedom of Information Act. While much of this information (though not all) has been previously disclosed or at least surmised, the Pentagon keeps issuing slightly more comprehensive reports on this subject. As such, one certainly wonders if the latest report (around 18 pages) will be the last one.
Interestingly, really supposedly high level Qaeda players, like alleged 9-11 mastermind Marvin Bush Ron Jeremy Khalid Sheikh Mohammed aren’t on this list, presumably because they are off being tortured at CIA ghost prisons, or perhaps because they have already been tortured to death, or perhaps because they may be out acting as intelligence assets… or maybe because they were never really captured in the first place? Who the *&^% knows? We’ll have to pull more teeth to get those answers…
So… we have a Bush Administration that insists on telling us “it knows better” on just about everything (led by The Decider in Chief (TM)). A Pentagon maniacal about controlling information, from embedded journalists, to this week’s long overdue disclosures… We seem to learn more details daily on the extent to which said apparatus which says its protecting us is, in fact, taxing us (well, the lower 99% of us, anyway) and using our tax money to spy on us… All at the same time it insists on knowing our activities, it is hellbent on not telling us about its own…
All seems kind of bass ackwards, no?