The ignored nonanswer from last night.

[GumboYaYa]

Many media outlets today are focusing on Bush's failure to answer the question of why he and Cheney must appear together in front of the 9/11 Commission. IMO there is a far more telling non-answer that has gotten little attention thus far.

One reporter asked Mr. Bush that given the warnings of traditional hijackings in the 8/6/01 PDB, what steps had Bush taken to protect Americans from traditional hijackings. To all but the most braindead Freepers, it is obvious that stopping a traditional hijacking would have stopped 9/11.

Bush meandered for a while and ended with his much expected "if someone would have told me..I would have moved heaven and Earth."

Well someone did tell him and he did nothing and that is the answer to the question he was asked and of course never gave.

Is the press to scared of the consequences of exploring this question more? Why did GWB do nothing? Is it incompetence or intentional? Either way GWB is a failure as a President.

[Vickers]

1. Good point!

:toast:

[fryguy]

2. but he wasn't told the right things

no names
no places
no methods of attack
no flight numbers
no seat numbers
no bank account information
no blood type
no DNA sample
no mother's maiden name
no first pet
no street where the terrorists grew up on

so, without the PROPER information, how could we possibly be expected to stop a terrorist attack?@?@?!?!

[GumboYaYa]

3. I know you are joking about this, but even Bush's weak

arguments fall apart on this issue. All he had to do was give the airlines a list of the known Al Qaeda operatives in the US and tell them not to let these guys buy plane tickets without first being interviewed by the FBI. According to the 9/11 widows, this step alone would have identified all of the hijackers on the plane that hit the Pentagon plus a few of the others.

[opihimoimoi]

5. Yup, no warning to the airlines and no warning to the passengers too

He took the warning(S)and ran away to Crawlford and slithered among the vegitation.

[damnraddem]

14. Now, now, he was off doing work --

clearing Bush, ....... err clearing brush.

[AndyTiedye]

24. Ashcroft Took The Warning and Requisitioned a Private Jet

and appears to have perjured himself about that yesterday.

[agingdem]

4. Why is the press scared?

Are they afraid that Bush won't answer their servile questions? He doesn't answer their questions anyway...all that comes out of his moronic mouth is drool and drivel.

[Jane Austin]

10. No kidding!

I think their deal with the White House to give them prime time was that he'd call on their correspondents.

Well, he did call on them but he didn't answer their questions.

Boy, if I were those networks I'd be pissed off.

They were duped again!

[damnraddem]

15. 'Oh, please, Dubya -- do it again!'

'I just love it when you treat me rough.'

[GumboYaYa]

6. Well, it looks like at least one media type noticed the evasion..

here is a link to Michael Tomasky's analysis of this telling nonanswer: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/04/index.html#002826

[OhioArtist]

7. Didn't watch it, just skimmed through the transcript...

and one thing I caught that stood out to me was when he said "--a country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught."

[GumboYaYa]

9. That was quite a laugher.

The Repukes project like nobody's business. It's amazing, they are doing everything they accuse others of doing.

In my job I see corporate fraud frequently. One common characteristic of these criminal types is that they are very paranoid that someone is defrauding them. I guess if your own moral compass is askew, you must assume everyone else's is too.

[damnraddem]

16. Well, there's no doubt that Saddam was nasty, ...

moral compass all screwed up. But, then, what he was hiding wasn't WMDs. No, it was that he DIDN'T HAVE any WMDs. Not having them any more obviously threatened his manhood, not to mention is ability to intimidate. Ain't Saddam and Dubya a real pair?

[Delarage]

21. I heard that............

and I thought a nice follow-up question would have been: "Speaking of hiding something, Mr. President (sic), when can we expect a full disclosure of the attendees at the "energy summit" as well as a summary of the minutes?"

Good God--this from the leader of the most secretive and creepy administration in U.S. History.

[rkc3]

8. It's time

It's time we quit pissing around on these threads and get some ideas on how to get the media's attention.

Bush needs to have dissenters at his rally who get arrested for protesting his views - a few more people being sent off to "Free Speech" zones, a few more signs being destroyed on camera, and a few more sets of handcuffs on dissenters will open some eyes.

Show up at a Bush rally with a sign supporting Bush/Cheney and then tell the SOB he's an idiot and he's destroying the country - interrupt him like that woman did to Dean. Let them cart you off, get a fucking lawyer and talk about how the president is screwing around with our Constitutional rights to free speech.

Punch out a cop for defiling your rights if you have to.

The media's job is to sell the media - not even Fox could pass on a story like this. It would sell time for everyone involved.

[Jane Austin]

11. After watching Chris Matthews apologize for him

last night, I not only wrote, but I attached the picture of the caskets inside the L-141.

[GumboYaYa]

12. I agree in theory, but practically speaking it is very hard to

get that close to him. He came to St. Louis on opening day and we had lots of protestors down there to greet the idiot. Unfortunately, he is so sheltered he never saw our signs and we never saw him. I'm still not surte how they got him in and out of Busch Stadium.

[Bridget Burke]

19. Cool! You'll pay the legal fees, I assume.

But how would punching out a cop help?

[damnraddem]

13. And there was the little item about Ashcroft:

stopped using airline flights during summer 2001. So, at least one member of the Administration did something in reaction to the warnings -- took action to save his own skin, and no one else's.

Then there's what Rumsfeld did that summer: took AF response to a hijacking out of the hands of officers on duty and required Sec. of Defense approval before shooting down a hijacked airliner.

[GumboYaYa]

17. Add to that what Rumsfeld said on the morning of 9/11.

He was having breakfast with someone and was informed that there was an incident with a plane that flew into the WTC Rumsfeld waived it off and said there will always be another incident, don't stress about this one. He then continued his breakfast. Little did Rumsfeld know how accurate his prediction would be; or did he?

[rkc3]

18. Huh

Has that comment been validated anywhere?

[GumboYaYa]

22. I read that in Against All Enemies. I can't remember who heard

the statement, but I assume if there was evidence it was untruthful that would have been blasted all over the media to discredit Clarke. When I get time I'll check who heard the quote and PM the info to you.

[GumboYaYa]

25. Here it is:

It is still incredible to the moms that their Secretary of Defense continued to sit in his private dining room at the Pentagon while their husbands were being incinerated in the towers of the World Trade Center. They know this from an account posted on Sept. 11 on the Web site of Christopher Cox, a Republican Congressman from Orange County who is chairman of the House Policy Committee.

"Ironically," Mr. Cox wrote, "just moments before the Department of Defense was hit by a suicide hijacker, Secretary Rumsfeld was describing to me why … Congress has got to give the President the tools he needs to move forward with a defense of America against ballistic missiles."

At that point, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the Secret Service, the F.A.A., NORAD (our North American air-defense system), American Airlines and United Airlines, among others, knew that at least three planes had been violently hijacked, their transponders turned off, and that thousands of American citizens had been annihilated in the World Trade Center by Middle Eastern terrorists, some of whom had been under surveillance by the F.B.I. Yet the nation’s defense chief didn’t think it significant enough to interrupt his political pitch to a key Republican in Congress to reactivate the Star Wars initiative of the Bush I years.

"I’ve been around the block a few times," Mr. Rumsfeld told the Congressman, according to his own account. "There will be another event." Mr. Rumsfeld repeated it for emphasis, Mr. Cox wrote: "There will be another event."

* * *

Pretty amazing!

[KansDem]

20. This is getting tiresome...

"if someone would have told me.."

BUSH MISSED BILLBOARD OF OSAMA

60-Foot-Tall Sign Appeared Outside White House

The Bush administration today grappled with allegations that President George W. Bush did not see a sixty-foot-tall billboard featuring Osama bin Laden that appeared suddenly across the street from the White House in August 2001.

The gigantic billboard, which featured bin Laden’s stern visage and the words “I AM GOING TO HIJACK U.S. AIRPLANES VERY SOON,” was first spotted by a UPS driver, Clayton Spedding, while making his morning deliveries on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I was like, ‘Didn’t there use to be a Bacardi ad up there?’” Mr. Spedding, 34, told reporters today.

After making his startling discovery, Mr. Spedding called the White House, but was told to call back when he had “something more specific.”

(more)
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=841

[Generator]

23. Thanks for that KansDem

Okay I'm forwading that one on!