Bush, Cheney Prep For 9/11 Panel

Q. How can you tell when George Dubya Bush is lying?

A. Dick Cheney's lips are moving.

Closed-door session? Does that mean we the people won't get to see any video of the juicy details? Damn.

Do you think Barbara and George Sr are paying Cheney standard or reduced baby-sitter rates?

Bush-Cheney 9/11 Interview Won't Be Formally Recorded
April 28, 2004 - New York Times
Bush-Cheney 9/11 Interview Won't Be Formally Recorded
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, April 27 ?- The White House said on Tuesday that there would be no recording or formal transcription of the historic joint interview of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The interview, to begin at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday at the White House, will be recorded by two note takers, one from the White House. Under a pact with the White House that allowed all its 10 members in the interview, the commission is permitted to take a note taker, but not a recording device. The panel said it did not press for a formal transcription of the session, letting the White House decide.

The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the session would not be officially transcribed because the White House considered it a "private meeting" that would include highly classified information.

"Let's keep in mind that it is extraordinary for a sitting president of the United States to sit down with a legislatively created commission," Mr. McClellan said.

An adviser to Mr. Bush said a larger consideration was the concern that an official transcript would set a precedent for appearances by presidents before other commissions and create legal problems down the road.

Mr. Bush will not be under oath, and the White House has been adamant that what he says should not be considered official testimony.

"He is not testifying, he is talking to them," the adviser said. "A transcript implies testimony. This would open a Pandora's box of all sorts of precedent-setting and legal issues. We were reluctant for the president to do this, anyway."

Legal scholars said the lack of an official transcript would give the White House some deniability and make it more difficult to use the president's words as evidence in a future suit against the government.

"It gives them more maneuverability in case someone slips up or says something he regrets," Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have cleared much of their schedules to be ready for the session. Mr. Bush has prepared with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, as well as with the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, who will sit in on the interview. Mr. Cheney's office declined to give details of his preparations. White House officials would not say whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had prepared together.

Commission members say they believe that they are under no formal time limit for the interview. Although the White House had offered one hour each for interviews of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, they dropped that as part of an accord in which the president and vice president could be interviewed together.

The panel chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, a Republican, said White House officials had not told him that the questioning would have to be cut off at a specific time.

"The only thing they've told me so far," Mr. Kean said in an interview last week, "is to please respect the fact that this is the president of the United States, and I'm sure members of the commission will do that."

Former Representative Timothy J. Roemer, a Democrat on the panel, said: "I believe that it is very important that we get all 10 commissioners in the process. We should make sure that all 10 commissioners have ample opportunity to ask questions. I certainly have a lot of questions and probably not a lot of time to ask them."

Mr. Roemer noted that "we were able to get about four hours with former President Bill Clinton and three" with former Vice President Al Gore and that Bob Woodward spoke more than three hours with Mr. Bush for his Iraq war book.

"I don't know that the metric should be what Bob Woodward got on the Iraq war," Mr. Roemer said. "But certainly the seriousness of 3,000 people dying on 9/11 would suggest that we need ample time."

Mr. Kean said the panel would focus on Sept. 11, but he would not be more specific. Members have said they want to know about interactions among Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other officials on Sept. 11 and, specifically, when Mr. Bush issued an order letting military pilots down civilian airliners. The commission is investigating whether the order was relayed quickly to fighter pilots who might have had a chance to shoot an American Airlines jet before it struck the Pentagon.

Mr. Roemer said he wanted "to know about the sense of urgency in the administration in the summer" in dealing with a flood of reports about terrorist threats, "the time period when alarm bells were going off and people's hair was supposed to be on fire." He said testimony to the panel suggested that many people in the administration paid too little attention to terrorism that summer.

Mr. Kean said he was humbled to be part of the session. "This is real history," he said. "Presidents just don't do this. Presidents don't meet with commissions like this."

Mr. Kean added that the panel had no ground rules but was asking its staff to prepare essential questions.

Since almost all the Commission will get from them will be blatant lies, the risks of making testimonies matters of public record are too great.

Claims of national security are the oldest trick of lying political scum in the history of politicians.

Saddest of all, almost 50% of the public are brainless enough to vote for their re-election.

Good morning class and welcome to lying sack of **** 101. We'll start by taking roll...little georgie bush? dick cheney?

Do you have your pencils and paper? Please mr. bush, no chewing gum or napping in class......

!
These two are war criminals and cowards.

Do you think they'll hold hands?

"Cheney wows 9/11 commission by drinking a glass of water while
Bush speaks."

(Headline from the Onion)

It is comments like those on this thread that is the exact reason Bush and Cheney are appearing together. Some are not at all interested in the truth but are only interested in smearing the president in any possible way.

If Bush and Cheney in extemporaneous testimony misspoke in any tiny detail, it would jumped on it like vultures and the biggest possible deal would be made out of it. They are smart enough not to make themselves vulnerable to that kind of irrational attack.

Did you miss the part about it being virtually unprecedented for a vice president, let alone a president to testify before a fact finding commission? There are excellent reasons for this but you have to know the Constitution and at least some history to appreciate it.

Some apparently don't even trust their guys on the Commission to report their findings in the final report. Isn't that what it's all about? To find out anything that went wrong so that we will have a better chance to keep it from happening again?

That's why the president and vice president agreed to talk with the commission. They did not have to.

But I guess that's irrelevant to some.

Seems to me foxy, that if they weren't appearing together there would be no comments like these.

Sure there would be ebrown. It gives the irrational haters some ammunition, but less ammunition than if they can be picked apart separately.

Foxfyre's history lesson
Foxfyre wrote: "Did you miss the part about it being virtually unprecedented for a vice president, let alone a president to testify before a fact finding commission? There are excellent reasons for this but you have to know the Constitution and at least some history to appreciate it."

Apparently, Foxfyre doesn't know his history as well as he thinks he does. After Richard Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached, President Gerald Ford (formerly Nixon's vice president) testified before a congressional investigative committee regarding his pardon of Nixon. And Ford testified in public, not in private as Bush-Cheney are going to do.

Gerald Ford was and is an honorable man. Bush and Cheney could learn from his example. ---BBB
-------------------------------------------

Holtzman to Bush: Testify!
04/21/2004 The Nation

History usually provides a roadmap for the present. Unfortunately, leaders fail to consult the map. That's certainly been the case as the 9/11 Commission has prepared to hear behind-closed-doors testimony from Vice President Dick Cheney and President George Bush at the same time.

Members of the commission and, for the most part, members of congress, have accepted the secret-testimony arrangement. But why?

Presidents have testified before investigatory committees before. And they have done so on comparable issues. Former US Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman reminds us that in 1974, amid the national firestorm that followed President Gerald Ford's pardon of former President Richard Nixon, Ford voluntarily appeared before a House subcommittee that was reviewing the pardon.

"The President came before the subcommittee, made an opening statement and was questioned by the House members. Although each of us had only five minutes, I was able to ask the President directly whether there had been a deal with Nixon about the pardon. The public could determine by Ford's demeanor and his words whether to believe his emphatic denial of any deal," recalls Holtzman, who as a young member of the House was a key player in the Judiciary Committee's investigation of the Watergate scandal.

"The fact that important questions could be posed directly to the President and the fact that the President was willing to face down his severest critics in public were healthy things for our country. And, not even the staunchest Republicans complained that the presidency was being demeaned."

By recalling the history, Holtzman reminds us that President Bush could, and should, simply appear before the 9/11 Commission. There is no Constitutional crisis here. There is no dangerous precedent that could be established. And there is no question of proportionality--certainly, the intensity of the demands for an explanation of the Nixon pardon can appropriately compared with those for an explanation of how the current administration responded to terrorist threats before and after the September 11, 2001 attacks. "As with the Nixon pardon, the events of 9/11 have caused huge national concern," explains Holtzman. "The victims' families--as well as millions of others--have asked why it happened and what if anything could have been done to avert the tragedy. These are simple, reasonable questions."

The best response to those simple, reasonable questions, Holtzman argues, would be for Bush to volunteer to testify in public and under oath to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States.

"Bush would be wise to take a page out of Ford's book. Americans could then decide themselves whether to agree or disagree with Bush's pre-9/11 conduct. They want to trust their President. They want to know that he acted with the best of motives, that he used good judgment and that he is a leader--in other words, that as chief executive, he knows when and how to mobilize the government to take action," Holtzman asserted, in an opinion piece she wrote this week for the New York Daily News.

"If Bush refuses to answer reasonable questions in public, the indelible impression is left that he has something to hide. That impression is reinforced by the White House's insistence that Vice President Cheney sit with Bush at the hearing. The President cannot afford to convey the image that he is afraid to appear on his own. And neither the 9/11 Commission nor the public should permit a behind-closed-door session for anything except national security information. The same principle should have applied to the testimony of former President Bill Clinton. "

Holtzman's wise comments beg one question: Why didn't anyone think to put this former member of Congress and native New Yorker on the 9/11 commission? There are a number of commissioners who share her experience--including, of course, Richard Ben-Veniste, who headed US Justice Department's Watergate Task Force from1973 to 1975. But it would seem that the commission could use someone who recognizes, as Holtzman does, that: "There is no better crucible than a public hearing to help ensure that the truth will come out."

And history will show that Ford's testimony did become the subject of conversation and speculation and his truthfulness was seriously questioned. No new information was forthcoming in the exercise and the result? I believe he holds the dubious honor of being the only U.S. president to have never been elected to the office as president or vice president. It was no doubt at least partially due to that experience that has prompted no President since that time, other than in very selective circumstances, to put themselves in that position.

Not sure many draft-dodgers would have the courage to face public criticism?

How exactly does joining the AF Reserves constitute "draft dodging"? It's not like he went to the UK and hid from service or anything.

I am not one to use the "what if" arguement, but if his unit had been called up to active duty he would have went...

McGintrix
McGintrix wrote: "I am not one to use the "what if" arguement, but if his unit had been called up to active duty he would have went..."

McG, how much money would you be willing to bet that if Bush's unit had been called up for active duty he would have "went"? Your life savings? One dollar?

I would put my money on him not going---and who knows if his unit could even find him. Even if they found him, he wouldn't have been fit to go because he was a drunk and using drugs at the time. He didn't take his physical exam because he knew he couldn't pass it and would have been found out.

BBB

Based on what his superiors write about him, I would risk a month's pay that he would have gone.

What have I written that makes you willing to risk your hard earned pay?