So Condi Rice won't appear before 9-11 commission??

[theHandpuppet]

WTF?!!

I heard this on a political roundtable discussion show today which aired in D.C. (NBC4) early in the a.m.

How can it be that the supposed NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR will not appear before the 9-11 Commission? Is this true? And if so, what could possibly be her reasons for refusing to testify?

She should be subpoenaed and be required to testify under oath! Where do I sign a petition?

[roscoeroscoe]

1. this is the kind of link you need

http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1

[theHandpuppet]

2. Thanks very much!

This is exactly the kind of site I was looking for.

[burythehatchet]

3. She could appear

but then she'd have to kill ya

[GreenArrow]

4. what's the point of this commission anyway?

except to waste a whole lot of time and money.

[seemslikeadream]

8. Yes what is the point when Philip D Zelikow - Executive Director 9/11 Comm

Consider this passage from a piece in today's Times ...

They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.
One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton's counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led.

At the time of the briefings, there was extensive evidence tying Al Qaeda to the bombing in Yemen two months earlier of an American warship, the Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed.

"It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush's counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president's cyberterrorism adviser.



Now we know about Rice and Hadley, her deputy. But how about Zelikow? He's a former NSC official from the first Bush administration and a close associate of Rice's. The two of them even wrote a book together.

He was in the key meetings where the warnings -- seemingly ignored -- about al Qaida came up. He seems like someone you'd want to talk to to find out what they were warned about and why they didn't take the warnings more seriously.

Well, you don't have to look far to find him. He runs the 9/11 Commission. Zelikow is the Executive Director of the Commission, which means he has operational control of the investigation under the overall management of the two co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com /

Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda


Mr. Zelikow, the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a co-author of a 1995 book with Ms. Rice, has been the target of repeated criticism from some relatives of Sept. 11 victims. They have said his membership on the Bush transition team and his ties to Ms. Rice pose a serious conflict of interest for the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement actions before the attacks.

Mr. Clarke said if Mr. Zelikow left any of the White House intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 without understanding the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda, "he was deaf."

Mr. Zelikow said in an interview that he has recused himself from any part of the investigation that involves the transition, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He said his participation in the Qaeda intelligence briefings was already well known. "The fact of what occurred in these briefings is not really disputed," he said.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0320-07.htm



Philip Zelikow is the executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the "9/11 Commission." He is also the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. After serving in government with the Navy, the State Department, and the National Security Council, he taught at Harvard before assuming his present post in Virginia to direct the nation's largest research center on the American presidency. He was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford, as well as the executive director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. Zelikow's books include The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May), Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice), and the rewritten Essence of Decision (with Graham Allison). Zelikow has also been the director of the Aspen Strategy Group, a policy program of the Aspen Institute.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/about/bio_zelikow.htm

[pansypoo53219]

5. so much

for george's full co-operation to get the bottom of how 9/11 happened.

[jpgray]

6. I think they may be grooming her for another political office

Therefore she doesn't want to testify outright lies before the 9/11 commission.

[Kadie]

7. Maybe her reason for refusing to testify is

that her voice shakes and crackles a lot more than usual when she isn't telling the truth. Maybe? :shrug:

[gulliver]

9. It's the separation of powers. Didn't you get the memo?

Condi can't testify before the commission because of a "longstanding tradition." Under Bush, longstanding traditions matter more than terrorist attacks on American soil.

[fknobbit]

10. At the time she was made NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

The plot was apparent she was made NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER because the position is immune (due to national security) to questioning from any source at all with the exception of *. I thought it a clever trick then, as her truthful testimony would burn the Shrubster and herself, as well.

[RedSock]

11. she has met with some of the commission in private

but she still refuses to answer any questions in public -- as other Clinton and Bush people will do this week.

[theHandpuppet]

13. Good Lord -- is this true?

There is no legal way she can be forced to testify?

[fknobbit]

16. You got it

NONE whatsoever.

[nostamj]

12. well, she should have been asked one simple question:

Ms. Rice, shortly after the attacks you stated that 'we could not have imagined using planes as weapons'. Why did you lie?

[ljm2002]

15. I agree, but...

... I would ask the question differently, since "why did you lie?" would be seen as an attack question (don't get me wrong, she thoroughly deserves any and all attack questions, I'm just thinking about how to be effective).

I would ask her why she said "we could not have imagined using planes as weapons", when we did not *have to* "imagine" it at all: it had already been threatened explicitly and was explicitly defended against at Genoa just a few months before, at a conference of world leaders attended by Mr. Bush.

But then, it looks like no one will get to choose what questions to ask her. She'll get asked none at all, at least not publically, and that is a shame. Because she was the top official whose specific job it was to assess threats and protect the nation, and she failed miserably at that task, and should be held accountable.

There are other lies: she stated not long after 9/11 that she "didn't remember" any briefing with Sandy Berger -- even though he said that he made it a point to attend the briefing with her re: Al Qaeda, because he knew it to be the most serious threat we faced and he wanted to drive home that fact.

Not to mention the Iraq lies. She admitted that they had known about the bogus claims of Niger uranium being purchased by Iraq, but that in the two months between those reports and Bush's SOTU, she and everyone else in her department had simply "forgotten" about it. The most thoroughly vetted speech of the year for any sitting President and they "forgot" this rather important fact...

The bottom line of all her defenses boils down to "we didn't lie, we're just incompetent". Sadly, people seem to buy it and don't get that *if* it were just incompetence, that would be just as bad and perhaps more dangerous than if it were just lies. And those are really the only two possibilities.

Finally. We all say "she's such a bad liar". Maybe, to those of us who know what the lies are. But that really isn't the point. The point is, she is *willing* to get out there and lie. She's willing to help her side win at any cost, the truth be damned. And because she -- like the others in the cabal -- is never fully called out on her lies, she is a very able champion for their side. Don't forget it -- it's another way of misunderestimating this crew, who while not particularly bright, are definitely shrewd where their own interests are concerned. And their own interests are give to the rich, take from the poor, strengthen the multinationals at the expense of the nations (including our own), and loot the treasury for as much as they can get each time they're in office.

</rant>

[Catherine Vincent]

14. Had 9/11 happened on Clinton's watch (which it didn't),

Sandy Berger would have been forced to testify. But because Condi Rice doesn't want to, the media sits back and not say one word about it? What bullshit!