John Kerry gave a big speech Saturday about the Iraq war:  “It has divided and pushed away our traditional allies.”

Still upset that France and Germany hate us?

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit judge Richard Posner gets a nice plug in the Sunday Washington Post. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick calls him “a welcome voice in the national debate about freedom vs. security.” And Glenn Reynolds has been giving Posner thorough coverage at Instapundit (here and here).

Good to see. Since the fifth anniversary of 9-11 is all about memory, it’s worth remembering one of Posner’s greatest pieces on terrorism. In the August 2004 New York Times he reviewed the 9-11 Commission report.

Two stinging — albeit delightful — points from Posner’s mostly thumbs-down review:

“The United States remains readily penetrable by Islamist terrorists who don’t even look or sound Middle Eastern, and there are Qaeda sleeper cells in this country. All this underscores the need for a domestic intelligence agency that, unlike the F.B.I., is effective.”

“The reader is treated to a barrage of bromides: ‘’the American people are entitled to expect their government to do its very best,'’ or ‘’we should reach out, listen to and work with other countries that can help'’ and ‘’be generous and caring to our neighbors,'’ or we should supply the Middle East with ‘’programs to bridge the digital divide and increase Internet access'’ — the last an ironic suggestion, given that encrypted e-mail is an effective medium of clandestine communication. The ‘’hearts and minds'’ campaign urged by the commission is no more likely to succeed in the vast Muslim world today than its prototype was in South Vietnam in the 1960’s.”

(graphic from Slates

Actor Harvey Keitel, who plays an FBI agent in the ABC film “The Path To 9/11,” “has joined the critics,” according to Saturday’s Washington Post,

…telling CNN’s “Showbiz Tonight” that he has had arguments with the filmmakers over elements that were “wrong.” “You can’t put these things together, compress them and then distort the reality. . . . You cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event,” Keitel said. “Where we have distorted something, we made a mistake, and it should be corrected.”

But Keitel says the opposite in Sunday’s Washington Post:

Filming the story behind the attacks “evoked in all of us . . . a sense of responsibility to the heroes of that day, to be as truthful as is humanly possible to honor them,” Keitel said. “There isn’t anyone from the top on down to the caterer and prop master who didn’t have it in their bones to get it right.”

So, Harvey Keitel, is “The Path To 9/11″ movie “wrong” or “right”? You’ve said both.

One of the media’s many angles immediately after 9/11 was: How would comedians react? What would they say about the attacks in their aftermath? Could they make 9/11 funny? The answer, mostly, was they tried, and they failed.

So what are the pro’s up to now, on the eve of 9/11’s fifth anniversary? Judging by The Onion’s feeble attempts this week, they’re still pitching 9/11 jokes — and faring no better.

The Onion offered two 9/11 entries this week.

Here’s the first, headlined: “Five Years Later: NYC Unveils 9/11 Memorial Hole”:

NEW YORK—Days before the fifth anniversary of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center by terrorists, city officials gathered on the site where the Twin Towers once stood to dedicate the newly completed 9/11 Memorial Hole. “From the wreckage and ashes of the World Trade Center, we have created a recess in the ground befitting the American spirit,” said New York Governor George Pataki from a cinderblock-and-plastic-bucket-supported plywood platform near the Hole’s precipice. “This vast chasm, dug at the very spot where the gleaming Twin Towers once rose to the sky, is a symbol of what we can accomplish if we work together.”

It just drags on from there, a boring and quite unfunny take on an obvious observation. A big thud. Crickets.
Then there’s this “American Voices” entry: “On the fifth anniversary this month, CNN.com will be streaming footage all day of the network’s televised coverage from Sept. 11th, 2001, enabling viewers to relive it as events unfolded. What do you think?”

A sample response:

Considering I was in a coma at the time, this will certainly help me fully assimilate to the scarred, paranoid society into which I awoke.

Funny? Hardly.

The Onion is nearly always hilarious. But having swung twice at 9/11 anniversary humor and missed wildy, they’d be better off not swinging again.

DC’s Fox News channel 5 last night showed great footage of bikers participating in Lessburg-based America’s 9/11 Foundation massive ride from Somerset, PA, past the Pentagon, then up to the World Trade Center site in NYC.