Say “just answer the fucking question asshole”. Listening to the hearings on the Blackwater stuff yesterday was interesting yet frustrating. I didn’t hear too much of Erik Prince but what little I did hear was all over the place.
The State Department officials who were grilled later in the day had a real hard time giving a straight answer to the simplest of questions.
Asking an official in this administration to give a straight answer is like asking a vampire to juggle sharpened stakes that were pressure-infused with garlic and holy water…
I watched it for close to an hour on CSpan.
Prince came off much better than Congress. Not necesarily my opinion on the matter, but certainly on the debate.
Many of the congressional questioners were absolutely retarded in their ability to create cogent and incisive questions, and everyone of them used an initial block of their time delivery incoherent grandstanding statements instead of focusing in on a point.
There is clearly no base IQ requirement to serve in a public office.
Beautifully put!
You’re kidding, right? I haven’t heard a politician yet (in any administration, in either party) who wasn’t guilty of the same thing, and with many more opportunities to demonstrate it. You could ask them what the weather will be like tomorrow and get a prepared speech about taxes and our children’s children.
I always wonder why the hell they do this. It doesn’t make them look good, and it helps the eprson they’re questioning figure out how best to be evasive.
I agree. And keep in mind that none of these Congresscritters is going to suffer any consequences for throwing BS out there. If one of the folks being questioned slips up, he can find himself in legal trouble later on-- you’ll have all kinds of people combing over every word of their answers to find mistakes. As much as I like to have the cameras there so I can see what’s going on, they do turn this process into a 3 ring circus more often than not.
I’m not kidding although the time wasted in self aggrandizing opening remarks by polititians in every hearing I’ve ever bothered to listen to is equally irritating. Some of them do appear extremely stupid as well.
However they’re not all stupid and David Satterfield’s refusal to answer Stephen Lynch on whether there had been a Department of State investigation of the al-Hilla incident when he himself was the the No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy says to me they didn’t.
This administration? If you believe the problem is only eight years old, I believe that you are more than slightly naive.
No, I recognize that giving slippery answers is what politicians do, but I also recognize that this administration has a special sort of talent for it, and a special sort of obsession with keeping everything they’ve ever done, are doing or plan in the future to do (or have planned in the past to do but never did) completely secret and out of the public spotlight.
The Bushian ideal is to have a black-box presidency. I wonder how the Republicans will like that when it’s a Democrat sitting in the big chair again?
First of all, the entire concept of “just answer the question” is anathema to any elected official. You don’t want that phrase maintaining any sort of currency in relation to your job. The real answers are very bad news to Congress, on both sides of the aisle. Blackwater exists to allow political estimates of human cost of the war to be under reported, and to allow the government to do things that real soldiers are not allowed to do. Just answering the question would be very inconvenient to those elected officials who either actively supported the concept of America creating a Mercenary Army, or stood aside and dithered until it was accomplished. Getting the questions answered at all is dangerous, you don’t want to start a habit of looking for the truth.
Tris
“…Blackwater exists to allow political estimates of human cost of the war to be under reported, and to allow the government to do things that real soldiers are not allowed to do.”
I’m not so sure about that. But as far as the State Department goes it seems a situation that might better be served by a return to the use of the USMC. Every Westerner in Iraq appears to need security though. So, the situation being what it is there is going to be a need for private security in some fashion for the forseeable future.
I know if I were there right now I wouldn’t feel comfortable with the Iraqi police force or Army as my only means of protection.
Bingo
In that way, a politician is pretty much the same thing as a beauty pageant contestant, except the politician doesn’t look as good in a swimsuit and knows nothing about world peace.
I don’t think their presence is the big problem - it is that they are above the law. One of them got drunk, shot the bodyguard of a high official, and got spirited home. Oh, he got punished all right - he lost his prepaid ticket home, and he might have not gotten his bonus. :eek:
I disagree. This administration is as incomptetent at weasely answers as they are at everything else. What they basically say is, “Fuck you. You don’t need to know.” And until the last election, they got away with it because of a Pub congressional majority.
NOW the story is, “Saying this in public will hurt the war on terror.”
Really, very little subtlety involved.
What, and establish a precedent that would turn around and bite them in the butt?