Nightline Last Night - Feedback

[montanacowboy]

I am hearing and reading that Tom Kean really backtracked last night on everything he said before - guess he is just another GOP slime ball too. Nothing to see here, move on.
I would like to know what DUers thought about it.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

1. yeah i missed it too

thought it came on at 11:00. i would like to hear what people think.

[peekaloo]

2. rolled over for Rove tummy rub

It was the border patrol folks, and the airline counter people who are to blame. :puke:

He did seem kind of shaky, but maybe that's how he normally is. Seems the anchor of Nightline wanted some hard answers but Mr. K. retreated into his spider hole. "Ongoing investigation........" :eyes:

[htuttle]

6. If he at least admitted that it could have been prevented...

... as opposed to the official line of "there's nothing that could have been done," then that is a big step in itself. In a way, that assertion alone changes the character of 9/11 as far as it's usefulness as a political tool for Bush.

They can start with putting the blame on airline counter clerks and border patrol officers, but once blame starts getting set, I think it's a lot more likely to spread. At least a lot more likely than if the story continues to be "it was an Act of God that nobody could stop."

[kentuck]

3. He could see it was like a snowball rolling downhill...

it was gathering momentum very quickly and he did not wish for the story to turn into a scandal, which it will be once the people know the truth.

[ameriphile]

5. Bingo.

n/t

[Skittles]

7. and thousands of dead people don't compare

to protecting Bush Inc.

[KoKo]

4. I read the "edited" transcript on the ABC site. It did seem he'd

backtracked from earlier comments in the newsreports. He seemed to be saying that no "Senior Officials" were involved in the Nightline Report.

The transcript link is up on the ABC Website.

[KoKo]

8. Here's a snip and the link from ABC. Had to get it off other browser.

In his interview for Nightline today, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, suggested the commission would not assign blame to senior officials in either of the last two administrations.

"We have no evidence that anybody high in the Clinton administration or high in the Bush administration did anything wrong," he told Nightline's Chris Bury.

However, he said that could change as the panel wraps up its work. "A lot of the conclusions which we will reach having to do with higher officials are going to be reached when we've finished with our job, not now …. It's too early at this point for me or anybody else to say these are the conclusions," he said.

No Rush to Judgment

While the commission's goal is not to point fingers, Kean said those who were to blame were "not necessarily the top people in government."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Nightline/kean_sept11_031218-1.html

[jbfam4]

11. Thanks for the link

I really like the first paragraph:

"I think that there are materials that we've found that will change some of the story that the public now knows about 9/11, in some important ways," Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the 10-member National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, told ABCNEWS' Nightline in an interview airing tonight.

I just hope there won't be a lot of empty pages called classified.

Classified in this administration means cover up or CYA

[Bozita]

12. Kean's nervous state doesn't come across in a transcript

He was sweating bullets.

[Jack The Tab]

9. Funny how not only does he back of Chimpy, but has to throw Clinton in...

It was all about this misadministration's dropping the ball before, but now that he has to deny, he also throws in Clinton's name.

It's truly despicable. This country is going to hell in a handbasket, carried by the American media.

[kentuck]

10. No rational person thinks Clinton Administration had anything to do with

it...They had been out of office for 8 months! How many were still linering around the executive offices??

[KoKo]

13. Has anyone seen anything about MaxCleland's resignation? Bush

appointed him to head "Import/Export Bank, or Commission" or something.

I haven't seen anything on DU about it. It seems almost like he was "bought off." What does he know about Banking?

I'm interested because I gave money to support his campaign even though I'm in NC and he was running in GA. I was disappointed when he lost, but glad to hear he was on the 9/11 Commission. But, shortly after he spoke our supporting Bush's release of the WH Briefings it was announced he would be leaving. Why does no one find that odd? Or, maybe they have and I missed it. I don't trust Kean to be totally forthcoming given his links to Bush/Oil. And Lee Hamilton is a sneak who would stonewall anything coming out. With Cleland's leaving we don't have much left there to trust, I fear.

[htuttle]

14. Another point on that

The US 'import/export' bank is the entity that is currently insuring all of the Iraq reconstruction and privatization contracts -- no other insurer would touch them -- not even Bremer's former firm.

They are also going to be the ones stuck holding the bag (and paying out BILLIONS of our tax dollars), once a future government takes over in Iraq and nullifies all the contracts.

How convenient that a Democrat has now been put in charge of it.

And how idiotic for Cleland to take the job! He couldn't have been that hard up for money, could he? Fool!

[althecat]

15. Much more on this here... older thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=938861&mesg_id=938861

Including links to Wonk versions of the Press Conf.