Bush to 9/11 Families: 'Enough Already'

[reprehensor]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17717

After months of stalling on even having a commission, then appointing Henry Kissinger to head it (and having to withdraw that appointment), the administration threw every conceivable roadblock in the commission's path, including the withholding of significant documents. Despite the growing consensus among commission members that they need more time, the president and his congressional allies want to move on and shut the investigation down. The administration appears to be concerned that an ongoing investigation would bleed into the election season and hurt the president's re-election chances.


"With time running short," the Washington Post reports, "the 10-member bipartisan panel has already decided to scale back the number and scope of hearings that it will hold for the public.... is rushing to finish interviews with as many as 200 remaining witnesses and to finish examining about 2 million pages of documents related to the attacks."


As Joe Conason pointed out in his column in the New York Observer, during in an early-January interview with the New York Times Kean was asked whether 9/11 could have been avoided. "Yes, there is a good chance that 9/11 could have been prevented by any number of people along the way," Kean replied. "Everybody pretty well agrees our intelligence agencies were not set up to deal with domestic terrorism.... They were not ready for an internal attack." Then, Conason writes, the Times asked whether "anyone in the Bush administration any idea that an attack was being planned." Kean: "That is why we are looking at the internal papers. I can't talk about what's classified. President's daily briefings are classified. If I told you what was in them, I would go to jail."


There are a number of high-powered witnesses yet to be heard from, including key Cabinet members in the Bush and Clinton administrations such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, CIA Director George J. Tenet, former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, former defense secretary William S. Cohen, and the current and former directors of the FBI. Commission representatives are also negotiating to secure private testimony from President Bush, former president Bill Clinton, Vice President Cheney and former vice president Al Gore. None of the four would likely be asked to testify publicly, the Washington Post reported. (The next hearing "will focus on border and aviation security issues.")

[Arbustosux]

1. The last thing any Republican wants to do is testify under oath

THAT is how they distinguish Clinton's lie and all their lies- Clinton lied under oath.

The last thing any of them want to do is be put in the same position as Clinton..."do you swear or affirm....."

just mho