Posted on 05/02/2004 9:23:49 PM PDT by Elle Bee
Have you ever heard the phrase, "900 FBI files"?
It's remarkable the way they seem able to hold pretty much any "G"OPer in check, isn't it.
She did all she could to avoid giving your scumbag Ben-Veniste a soundbite for your Democrat Party to shamelessly use in political ads. As you clearly implied, there was no other point to even asking the question. Condi was masterful in playing the game and winning. Tough luck.
Are you a visitor from Planet DUh?
Absolutely nothing since he is sitting beside the MAIN person who should be testifying UNDER OATH IN THE OPEN in front of this so-called commission. If she doesn't NOTHING they say will be taken seriously.
I will decide for MYSELF who I think was to blame for 9/11. That would be someone who was more interested in Monica's underwear than this country. And someone aka "his wife" who was more interested in becoming a senator and eventually president.
They are the most arrogant, self-serving, ignorant, money hungry and power hungry people that I have ever heard of.
Why would ANYONE want to know what Madeline Albright THINKS about how the war is going or how she THINKS we should be running foreign policy (besides Greta)? She screwed it up while she was there, why would I care what she thinks now? If anyone else made such a total mess out of their job I doubt the former employer would call them and ask them how to fix the problem.
That would be what some call "his (Bill Clinton's) wife". She wants to be president some day. Jamie Gorelick was Hillary Clinton's "eyes & ears" at the Justice Dept. and is now her "wall" from blame for 9/11.
It was more important for Hillary's "husband" to get reelected than to protect this country from terrorism. That is also why Jamie Gorelick was involved in TWA 800, Oklahoma City Bombing and many other things that she SHOULD EXPLAIN UNDER OATH. Why does she turn up in everyone of these matters more often than FORREST GUMP?!
Exactly right. Not only would testifying "under oath" have no meaning for a Clintonite Democrat like Gorelick, but can you imagine the pandering tributes and softball questions that her "colleagues" would toss her way if she appeared before them in a witness chair?
Nah. Leave it alone. I'd prefer she NOT testify at this point. Let the whole "9-11 Commission" thing just fade away in ignominy. Gorelick's "testimony" would only serve to prop up the credibility of a coming report that won't deserve any.
Some other expletives would have been much more appropriate, but the WSJ doesn't print those.
Grow up.
How easy could Ben-Veniste have made it? His language was straight from the PDB. The answer was simple. It was YES. But Rice didn’t say “yes” to this question; instead, she did all she could to avoid the simple truth. Under oath, she kept avoiding the truth. And our transparently liberal press has no plan to say so.
The answer to Ben-Veniste's question was not "simple," as whoever authored this nonsense you cut-and-pasted wants us to believe. Ben-Veniste's obvious goal in his questioning was to lead Dr. Rice to a sound bite that would have been used by the liberal news media to batter her rhetorically, and she outfoxed him. (Click here for John Armor's excellent analysis of Condi vs. Ben-Ven.) That is why he mischaracterized the content of the memo in all his questions, and so did the person who "dowdified" this particular Ben-Ven question (my bold for the part YOU left out):
Here's Rice's answer, in full:
BEN-VENISTE: I am asking you whether it is not the case that you learned in the PDB memo of August 6th that the FBI was saying that it had information suggesting that preparations —- not historically, but ongoing, along with these numerous full-field investigations against al Qaeda cells -— that preparations were being made consistent with hijackings within the United States.
So was Rice being untruthful or deceptive? Let's examine the language of the PDB:
RICE: May I address the question, sir? The fact is that this August 6th PDB was in response to the president’s questions about whether or not something might happen or something might be planned by al Qaeda inside the United States. He asked because all of the threat reporting, or the threat reporting that was actionable, was about the threats abroad, not about the United States.This particular PDB had a long section on what bin Laden had wanted to do—speculative, much of it—in ’97, ’98, that he had in fact liked the results of the 1993 bombing. It had a number of discussions of—it had a discussion of whether or not they might use hijacking to try and free a prisoner who was being held in the United States, Ressam. It reported that the FBI had full field investigations underway. And we checked on the issue of whether or not there was something going on with surveillance of buildings, and we were told, I believe, that the issue was the courthouse in which this might take place.
Commissioner, this was not a warning. This was a historic memo—historical memo prepared by the agency because the president was asking questions about what we knew about the inside.
So, what do we have? After two years, a report that Osama wanted to hijack a plane COULDN'T BE CORROBORATED. The information suggesting that was indeed HISTORICAL.
(9) We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [REDACTED] service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.
Let's continue, this time with the part of the memo Ben-Ven DIDN'T quote, in bold:
Any honest and fair reading of this briefing shows that the most relevent portion regards the current field investigations that were NOT about chasing uncorroborated concerns of skyjacking, but the "other types of attacks" -- traditional explosive attacks on Federal land targets, with the aim of winning the freedom of Islamist icon Sheik Rahman.
(10) Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.(11) The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.
You can choose to make the argument that Dr. Rice's response -- which you didn't publish in your surrogate attack -- wasn't precisely accurate, but what she replied to a clearly partisan prosecutor -- oops, I mean "commissioner" -- was designed to protect the public from Ben-Veniste's attempt to back up Dick Clarke's shameless, bilious, self-promoting sideshow, smearing Rice and the President in the process.
Nice try.
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