Posted on 12/18/2003 4:39:17 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Sept. 11 Panel: Bush, Clinton Not to Blame Sept. 11 Commission Chairman Says There's No Evidence to Blame Clinton or Bush Administrations
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON Dec. 18 The chairman of a federal commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks said Thursday that mistakes over many years left the United States vulnerable to such an attack, but he resisted pinning blame on either of the last two presidential teams. "We have no evidence that anybody high in the Clinton administration or the Bush administration did anything wrong," chairman Thomas Kean said in an interview with ABC's "Nightline" taped for airing Thursday night.
Kean said the 10-member National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has not decided whether to ask former President Clinton or President Bush to testify. He also said that any conclusions about the performance of high-level officials "will be reached when we are finished with our job, not now."
Kean sought to clarify remarks attributed to him in a CBS News report that aired Wednesday.
In the CBS interview, Kean said the commission's report, due May 27, will detail "what wasn't done and what should have be done" to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He added, "There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed."
CBS reported that Kean's comments constituted "pointing fingers inside the (Bush) administration and laying blame."
On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark labeled Kean's statements "disturbing" and said they showed the Bush administration could have done more to protect America from a terrorist attack.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said Kean's comments meant "that Bush administration officials had valuable information that could have prevented the terrorist attacks."
But Kean said in Thursday's interview that he did not mean to suggest that certain federal officials should have been fired after Sept. 11. He said he was commenting on obvious mistakes that were made, such as letting terrorists into the country and letting dangerous items onto planes.
"There are a number of steps along the way, that if they had occurred differently, this event wouldn't have occurred," he said.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said he reviewed the CBS report and did not believe Kean leveled accusations against the Bush administration.
"There is nothing that we have seen that leads us to believe that Sept. 11 could have been prevented," McClellan said.
Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, was appointed by Bush to lead the bipartisan commission.
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I don't think he is either .. and we already know that many things could have been done differently.
What is going on now is a political game being played by the News networks with the help of Kean .. that by the time this report does finally comes out .. hardly anyone will be able to take it seriously
Clinton is being left alone because Bush doesn't want open partisan warfare in the middle of a military campaign. So he's letting sleeping dogs lie, which is a smart thing.
Every weapon the Democrats have dried has come up wanting. This will, as well.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
What act of war was ever perpetrated against the U.S. by nations in the Balkans?
What UN authorization did we get before we bombed them to oblivion from 30,000 feet?
Yes. For the reasons you state. Yes.
Agreed. However, Kean is an outright RINO (I know how overused that term is, but in Kean's case it fits perfectly), and if you look at the makeup of this "independent, bipartisan" commission he heads, you see that it's "bipartisan" only in the inside-the-Beltway elitist sense - that is, a bunch of hard-core, rabidly leftist hacks with a few spineless "moderate" Republicans thrown in for political cover, Republicans who are much more concerned with ensuring that the NYT and WP write only nice things about them than they are with finding out any truth.
I think Kean knew perfectly well what he was doing when he went to CBS; his mission was to plant a seed, and nothing more. I think he and his string-pullers on the Left would have preferred to wait for a more opportune time, but the capture of Saddam, with its inevitable accompanying surge in support for President Bush with the public (not to mention, the loss of a huge gun in the Rat propaganda arsenal), forced their hand.
Yes, I do think that this latest Rat attack will ultimately be about as successful as all their others have been, However, I'm afraid that a messy partisan finger-pointing game, the kind of thing that, as you pointed out, the President wanted to avoid in the middle of a war, is unavoidable now.
Unfortuneately it wasn't just Clinton. It was the American republic who chose to be apathetic.
Sinister chatacters come and go, watching friends and neighbors be too lazy to pay attention is actually heart breaking and very hard to understand.
Well, in this particular case, since it would be outrageous and obviously fraudulent to follow through with what Ben-Veniste and other Democrats on this commission want to do, namely blame Bush exclusively, they choose to blame no one. The facts be damned!
Clinton simply did NOTHING for 8 years about the mounting terrorist threat; nothing that had any hope of being effective, that is. In reality, he spent more time covering up evidence of Saddam's involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing, the Bojinka affair, his deceiving of arms inspectors and missing opportunities to nap Bin Laden, than he ever did in serious measures against the then unrecognized terrorist war on America.
Since the RINOs like Kean and the Clinton supporters can't bring themselves to face the truth, and they won't be able to get away with blaming Bush, then nobody is really guilty, just "mistakes were made". Nothing substantive will come from the final report of this commission, because political considerations long ago trumped national security concerns. Politics is our "Achilles Heel". If Bin Laden were smart, he would invest his millions in buying votes for Dean, and paying off Kean. But I don't think Bin Laden is subtle enough to figure out how to infiltrate out political process, but he could ask the Chinese for help. They would happily give it.
Bush and his circle had nothing to do with sending Wilson, nor were they ever briefed about his suspicious trip. His wife, the now infamous Valerie Plame, had a hand in it, and most likely her boss who just left his position at the CIA back this past September.
Of course, along the way, they will still find many stones to cast in GW's direction. The biased media will of course perform the full Clinton pleasure Monty, as usual. In the distant future, Clinton will be reviled as a pusillanimous criminal. Too bad I will not live long enough to witness it, as much as I would enjoy seeing him receive his just deserves this day.
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