Live Thread - September 11 Commission, Day 2, Wednesday, March 24, 2004

CSPAN 3, CBS webfeed ^ | March 24, 2004

[TomGuy]

Live thread for Day 2 of the September 11 Commission Hearings.

CSPAN 3 seems to be the only CSPAN covering this in various formats. http://www.c-span.org/watch/index.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS3&ShowVidDays=30&ShowVidDesc=

Also CBS webfeed opens Real Player. http://cgi.cbs.com/video/video.pl?url=/broadcast/*/livenews.rm&plugin=1&proto=rtsp

CBS news website may have other feed formats.

[mass55th]

I thought I heard Rumsfeld or Powell yesterday make a comment about Clinton signing an order outlawing assasinations. Can anybody help on this?

[eleni121]

I get the impression in reading facial expression and voice spikes that they've worked together and whether they perosnally like each other or if not have a definite philosophical connection.

Tenet is a bumbler. If he had no confidence in the Clinton administration he should have resigned if he were a man of honor.

He talks the talk but has not a lick of substance.

[TomGuy]

They are acting like that book is the Bible, or at least the Cliff Notes for the things that happened.

Wanna bet that Hillary's ghostwriters might have had something to do with the contents of Clarke's book?

[Mo1]

Isn't it odd that the book isn't due to be released until when today? yesterday? Yet all the commission members had a copy of it to read beforehand. Well, at least there is not political agenda.

Yes it does

[Howlin]

Even Wolowitz said yesterday that he didn't have one as "it was given only to selected reporters."

[kabar]

Rather than presuming Ms. Gorelick's appointment was intended to permit her to be a continuing FOB or FOH ("Friend of Bill," "Friend of Hillary") on the Commission, Michel Chossudovsky speculates in the Online Journal that — based on Ms. Gorelick's "close working relationship with CIA Director George Tenet[, and] serv[ice] on the CIA's National Security Advisory Panel as well as on the President's Review of Intelligence" — she's intended instead to give the CIA its own "seat on the Commission" for whitewashing and coverup purposes

[BigSkyFreeper]

If the committee lays it in on Clarke, SeeBS will say Clarke got hammered unncessarily, and that it was uncalled for, because Clarke was doing his job. BLAH

[ohioWfan]

Good defense of the NEED of the Patriot Act.

[mass55th]

But basically, there was no law saying they couldn't kill him. They just didn't want to take the risk. Legacy you know.

[Howlin]

It's those bloodlust families. (Sorry, but that's my view.)

[Carolinamom]

"Selected reporters" and commission members were given copies before the book has been released to the public. Interesting, isn't it?

[freeperfromnj]

The damn book hasn't even been VETTED properly by the public!

Exactly. This commission has had well over a year to research and prepare for this and suddenly a large portion of these hearings are being conducted based upon a newly released book. If Clarke felt so strongly about the allegations in his book he should have been shouting it from the rooftops after 9/11 -- for free.

[Dr Snide]

The more Condi, the better as far as I'm concerned. She is a very impressive woman and her intellect is such that she would chew this panel and Clarke up within a couple of minutes.

[hoosiermama]

Why doesn't he just come out and say "we needed to have finacial backing that just wasn't there!"

[dogbyte12]

Yes, there was a jet nearby.

To be blunt, we have a big problem. Our "allies" are very squirmy. UAE is nominally our ally, except they have a huge royal family that is divided. It's even worse in Saudi Arabia. The politics stink. Even though these family members support Bin Laden, politically we can't do anything about them. It doesn't matter if it is Clinton or Bush, we just can not touch them. The one positive that I see the President doing on this issue, is getting our troops out of Saudi Arabia. We still can be blackmailed on oil, but not on needing Saudi soil as a launching point.

That is why we need such a holistic approach to everything. Energy policy is a big part of fighting terrorism. That is why the arctic drilling is so important as well. Hopefully, Kerry implodes, Bush wins in a landslide, and January 2005, we pass a comprehensive energy policy. Until that point, W is going to be as feckless as the sinkmaster, because we simply can not go after these rogue millionaire thugs.

[Howlin]

Do you take me for a fool? NO WAY. :-)


As an aside, why do people keep asking HOW this happened; why do they always look for somebody's head on a spike!

[Solson]

What really made me angry about her comments was the constant repetition about how this commission "was not designed to assign blame" but to "learn from the past and get better" or something to that effect. Then, she proceeds to assign blame ENTIRELY to the Bush Administration!

WTF??? Where was she when Osama was put on a silver platter? She was too busy playing footsie with North Korea.

I understand the current administration's attempts to be mature about not slamming the past administration but enough is enough. More than 3000 people died on 9/11 because of the abject awareness of terrorism and what to do about it. To listen to Albright yesterday talk all about the things they supposedly did really irked me. Every single thing they mentioned was about a "process" or a "committee" or a "discussion" or a "presentation."

Typical of the dot-bomb mentality the Clinton White House represented, they believed that by bullsh*tting long enough, making slick presentations, and engaging in endless meetings, the problem would go away.

Then she has the gaul to fault the Bush administration for TAKING ACTION to STOP TERRORISM, to DEFEAT TERRORISM, to KILL TERRORISM, rather than trying to negotiate a settlement with terrorism. Screw her and the last Administration.

The ONLY WAY this country will learn about how to really deal with the global stage of today is to acknowledge the mistakes of the Clinton administration and guard against the same mistakes happening again. Yet, we have the Dem nominee, the entire Dem party, as well as socialists worldwide wanting to go back to the negotiating table with terrorists.

GEORGE W. BUSH MUST WIN THIS ELECTION IF WE ARE TO SURVIVE AS A NATION.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Yep! It's those bloodlust families is right! CNN would occasionally show one of them during Rummy's testimony yesterday.

[Howlin]

PRECISELY!!!!!

[maica]

 March 24, 2004 
       

With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

John Dean Talks of Impeaching Bush

John Dean, whose testimony helped lead to Richard Nixon's resignation in the face of impeachment, is suggesting that President Bush should be impeached if it can be proven that he misled the nation about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Dean's last foray into the public eye was to say he would reveal the identity of Woodward and Bernstein's alleged Watergate source, a promise he failed to honor in his book "Unmasking Deep Throat."

Blithely skimming by the fact that the search for arms in a nation the size of California has barely scratched the surface, and that large amounts of gear and pharmaceuticals meant to protect Saddam Hussein's soldiers from the effects of their use of biological or chemical weapons, Dean concentrates on the failure to uncover large numbers of easily hidden WMDs as suggesting that the president has deliberately misled the nation.

In a lengthy article in FindLaw.com, Dean says: "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony 'to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.'"

Among those he cites as authorities for his views are such viciously anti-Bush columnists as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, now shown to have distorted a quote from the president drastically altering the meaning of his statement, and the vitriolic Bush-hating Paul Krugman, whose anti-Bush ravings suggest he's in the grips of a manic obsession.

Wrote Dean: "In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer."

Dean quotes Krugman as asserting that it is "'long past time for this administration to be held accountable ... The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat,' Krugman argued. 'If that claim was fraudulent,' he continued, 'the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra.'"




"Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate," Dean wrote.

John Dean helped bring down one president. It looks as if he wants to relive his moment of Watergate notoriety by joining the sleazy legion of Bush haters to drive another chief executive out of office for the crime of ridding the world of a genocidal dictator whose existence threatened the peace and stability of the