The testimony of the president and vice president before the 9/11 commission was a unique historical event, and because of that alone it demands extra attention, regardless of any new information that might be released in the session. And it was almost certainly the only opportunity the commission will ever have to question the top dogs.
But two of the commissioners had “prior commitments” requiring an early departure from the White House meeting. At the bottom of this AP story it’s mentioned that Bob Kerrey and Lee Hamilton left early.
"Fuck you guys! What is more important than investigating the largest single disaster in living American memory? Not to mention getting a clearer picture of the road that led us through two wars to the mess we have now in Iraq.
You’re both Democrats, which is too bad because I’m much more in line with Democratic positions on policy issues than Republican, but still – Fuck you guys!"
Kerrrey might conceivably have a critical vote that he must make, but as the Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the most serious commitment Hamilton has is to post-colloquium cocktail parties.
Then double fuck Kerrey! Now that I’ve looked him up, he’s president of a University. More cocktail parties with Academia! I’ve spent most of my professional career as a technician among academics, and by and large they are not overwhelmed by professional commitments. I also worked at many Wilson Center events, but years ago, before before Hamilton was there. It is inconceivable to mr that they had prior commitments more important than questioning the president of the United States.
I missed Kerrey departure. Did he lose, or burn out and stop running?
Maybe they got bored.
Was it I nice day in Washington? I hear it’s pretty in the spring.
I think we should cut them some slack.
If the president said anyting important, they can just read it from the transcript.
It’s not testimony. The Emperor and Vader, I’m sorry Cheney and Bush are not under oath, and what they say to the commission should not in any way be considered the truth.
They are not recording the session, only two note takers are allowed. One for the White House and one for the commission.
Bob Kerrey released a written statement saying he had to leave the meeting because he had a previously scheduled meeting with Senator Pete Domenici.
Y’know, I’m sure ol’ Pete would have understood.
Lee Hamilton left to meet with Canadian priime minister Paul Martin. While this is more defensible, it is a horrible political move, especially in light of the Kerry “foreign leaders” flap.
Actually, Zebra, federal government employees aren’t allowed to lie to Congress or to investigative bodies. Oaths are extraneous.
Bush and Cheney are bound by law to tell the truth to the commission. Until evidence is found to the contrary, their testimony should be considered factual.
Why should their testimony be “considered factual”? They lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to start a war. They are liars. They’ll say anything.
and exactly how can one prove what they said at a later date? I doubt that there’s any worry anywhere that they’ll be held accountable for what they said, since their testimony isn’t public. So the question of oath/not oath, accountable etc is, IMHO moot.
Probably, but if Bush or Cheney made some claims that later turn out to be proven untruths, the commissioners could certainly be witnesses during impeachment proceedings. Not that I’m saying that’s likely The commissions final report will no doubt contain a a hefty summary of their claims, and it could cause political damage.
My personal feeling is that US intelligence staff performed better that I would expect and better than they are given credit for in terms of the 9/11 attacks. Some of them managed to get reports into the hands of high level people that were fairly realistic appraisals of a threat, i.e., hijacking an airliner within US airspace. For instance when Moussaui(sp?) was arrested by the FBI in August, the CIA Director was briefed within a few days. Someone, at least, understood the implicit threat and got it out.
It is the upper and highest levels of the government who failed so miserably, who treated what information they received as of mere academic interest, instead of threats they had countermoves to thwart. It seemed that every agency had someone in the chain of command who made a decision along the lines of, “Unless you can tell me that x event will happen on y day, there’s nothing I can do.”
Hell, I’m no expert on the pre-9/11 movement of terrorists, but I understand that at least a few of them were on various watch lists. Maybe an emergency push at the airports might have picked up one of them before 9/11, or even stopped one of the group ON 9/11. THAT would have been great, as they weren’t heavily armed to cause a lot of damage AT the airport, and we could have got them alive.
Kerrey was one of the commissioners complaining earlier that Bush wasn’t giving them enough time to ask all the questions they needed to ask. Then he walks out an hour early?
Kerrey has been behaving like a total dickhead through this whole thing. Badgering Rice, using up his questioning time to lecture her on Iraq, yucking it up on The Daily Show about how their witnesses were attacking each other in private while the hearings are still going on, and then walking out on the President of the United States as a gesture of disdain. He’s a one-man commission credibility destruction machine.
Or he simply realizes what a farce the testimony was – Cheney with his hand up Bush’s ass, answers rehearesd and practiced for weeks, no transcribing or recording allowed (all the easier to disavow anything later)… why, you’d almost think they had something to hide!
Good lord. The choice has now come down between those who will erode our civil liberties and those who don’t care. No wonder liberal has become a dirty word.
The other two. Cheney and the sockpuppet stayed for the whole thing. And shame on you, Desmo, for not giving a shit. Now, I realize that you’ve already gone into automatic and are formulating your searing response, but this is your opportunity to make something besides me a target. Why don’t you care that the Democrats walked out on this? And more importantly, why is it that were they Republicans, you would?
At the moment I don’t care, because I don’t know why they walked out.
I admit that I followed the press conference a couple of weeks ago with a sort of horrified fascination. But even that gets a bit lame. If the testimony today followed a similar format, i.e., Bush scratching his head and saying “terrorism” over and over again, I probably would’ve walked out too.
