It’s been over a year since I wrote my last column on the commission that was supposed to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And even then, I thought the whole thing was some kind of a sick joke. You had Dick Cheney proclaiming that those who asked too many questions were “unpatriotic,” and worse, you had President Bush thinking that the American public would be stupid enough to settle for that as an answer to 3000 people dead.

Unfortunately, all the made-in-China flags and sweatshop “God Bless America” T-shirts that Sept. 11 profiteers gorged the public with were still no match for the “unpatriotic” demand for the truth. And eventually Bush put on his “hero-of-the-people” face, gave into pressure, and set up a commission to investigate what rationally should have been investigated since the day it happened.

This commission, of course, was not meant for anything more than public appeasement; it was never supposed to be taken seriously. Not by Bush anyway. The investigation into Sept. 11 is yet another red herring to the truth that Bush and his White House cronies are obviously trying to hide. In fact, I’m going to go even further and say that this whole thing is a setup – a cheap scam to wire shut the mouth of rationality.

To show you how concerned Bush was with investigating 9-11, he had actually given this commission less time and even less money than what Ken Starr had spent to investigate Monica’s Lewinsky’s sex life. According to CNN, the Bush administration had allotted $14 million dollars for the “independent” commission. (The original budget was only $3 million!) Starr, on the other hand, had spent over $40 million in his vendetta toward Bill Clinton. Basically, more priority was put into a stained dress than was put into four hijacked planes and thousands dead. I said it before and I’ll say it again: I’ve seen car accidents with longer investigations than 9-11.

To really make sure the investigation would be sanitized, Bush picked a commission that was full of conflicts of interest. Either that or it’s a ridiculous coincidence that over half of the commissioners represent airline companies, some of which were involved in the hijackings. Last March, CBS news reported that “at least six [out of 10 commissioners] represent the very companies they’re now investigating.” And if you think that such conflicts of interest are bad enough, just keep on reading. Let’s take a look at who’s in charge of this “investigation.”

After Henry Kissinger steps down as head of the commission due to – what a surprise – a conflict of interest, Thomas Kean, former governor of New Jersey, takes the helm. Both Kean and Bush have something in common: they have both been in business with Khalid bin Mafhouz, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. That’s right: John Ashcroft can arbitrarily arrest anyone he wants for associating with Al Qaida, not even requiring evidence, but it’s totally kosher to have a guy with two degrees of separation from Public Enemy No. 1 on the panel.

And just when you think this was enough to really screw things up, our crafty little cadres in the White House actually had the foresight to even plan in the event of these guys actually taking their jobs seriously. Such an unfortunate development for the Bush Administration had left them with its final contingency plan: stonewall like you’ve never stonewalled before. Control the clock until a win is imminent.

According to the New York Daily News, one commissioner is already threatening to step down. The commission was lucky enough to have an extension until late July to pour through literally “millions of pages, from 16 government agencies,” reports CBS. Nevertheless, former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb) told reporters this week, “I am no longer … feeling comfortable that I’m going to be able to read and process what I need in order to participate in writing a report about how it was that 19 men defeated every single defensive system the U.S. put up to kill 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11.”

In order to keep the mainstream media off his back, Bush did make some token moves as a show of good (but not good enough) intentions. News24.com reports that that the administration had allowed only three commissioners to read Bush and Clinton’s CIA briefings on the days leading up to the attacks. Other commissioners were barred from even looking at the notes taken by the three.

From the start, Bush’s vision of this investigation was one of two things: either the concoction of a blithering idiot or an intricately planned scheme, solely designed to collapse in on itself. Either way, this investigation has been going nowhere fast.

So where does this joke go from here? Come late July, this investigation will come to a close. And with that, documents, testimonies, and any other relevant paths to the truth about the most tragic day in modern American history, will be put exactly where Bush wants them to go.

Many will be lost in the incessant buzzing of paper shredders in government basements, while others go under the lock and key of the government’s most secured secrets – parts of American history better left unsaid.

Mark Ostroff is a Collegian columnist.