perfidy

Any administration could make a legitimate case that the testimony of its national security advisor be held a little more closely than, say, broadcast on the national media for all the world to hear. (And all of them have.) Dr. Rice has testified before the committee, but in closed sessions. Her testimony would have been represented in the final conclusions of the commission.

That being said, I think it's good that we'll hear her testimony. Though I don't think that it was time constraints that motivated the administration's resistance.

I think it's pretty clear that this commission will make any effort it thinks it can get away with to embarass Republican leadership.

And yes Johno, I am attributing it to malice, not ignorance.

For starters, why has this body not, and doesn not intend, to demand testimony from messrs Gore and Clin-ton, who avoided ealing with Al Qaeda for 8 years?

GL, you should look at Cohen's and Shelton's involvement/obstruction of Clinton policies.

GL: What the heck are you talking about? Bush and Gore have already agreed to give the panel unlimited access. As far as the Al Qaeda issue goes, by all accounts it became a front burner issue for Clinton at the start of his second term. You remember what happened during the second term, right? The GOP thought it was more important to impeach the President for trying to hide a blowjob than to go after terrorism, or perform any of the other job functions of a President. In my mind that impeachment has a SIGNIFICANT possibility of having impaired the executive branch's ability to interdict 9/11. The leaders of the impeachment process represented everything that is wrong with American politics today. At least part of the blame for 9/11 falls on them. I have no patience for "the blame for 9/11 falls solely on the terrorists" crap. If you pull a security guard away from his station to yell at him and somebody steals something in his absence, whose fault is it?

From the post, March 9:

Just before Sen. John F. Kerry accused President Bush on Sunday of "stonewalling" an investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the chairman of Bush's reelection campaign said the White House had been "entirely cooperative" with the independent commission conducting the probe.

Yet last week, Congress rushed to approve legislation extending the deadline for the Sept. 11 commission -- in large part because constant feuding with the White House had made it impossible for the panel to complete its work on time.

Ever since first opposing the commission's formation, the Bush administration has clashed with the 10-member bipartisan panel over a range of access issues, including aviation records and presidential intelligence briefings.

Even now, the panel is fighting with the White House over ground rules for private interviews with Bush and Vice President Cheney, who want to limit their meetings to one hour with the panel's chairman and vice chairman. Former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore have agreed to unlimited meetings with the full commission.

If you pull that security guard away from his post because he's getting a hummer from a lot lizard, that's a different story. The congress didn't just impeach him for shits and giggles. The president kinda, you know, committed felony perjury and was abusing the interns. Clinton did have just a little bit to do with his own impeachment.

And besides, Clinton was feckless throughout all eight years. Front Burner? He did nothing after the first WTC bombing, after Khobar towers, after the Cole, after the embassy bombings... There is no evidence that had he not been impeached, he would have acted with more vigor in this area. A few cruise missiles is not an effective anti-terror strategy, any more than Kerry's law enforcement ideas.

(and of course Clinton and Gore have agreed to "unlimited meetings" - what better venue could they ever have for piling on a Republican administration in the run up for an election?)

Ross,
Don't confuse my displeasure with the commission's tactics for across the board support for George Bush.

As for "unlimited access", I don't believe it for a second. Neither Gore nor Clinton will ever be put thorugh a public wringer like Rumsfled's been or that they'd love to do to Rice.

Nor do I agree with your metaphor of the security guard. The armed forces train every day, the CIA runs foreign operations, the FBI runs domestic operations, etc etc without any President telling them what to do or how to do it. In other words, professional agents and soldiers are capable of continuing missions while Congress and the executive branch argue or dither.

My whole displeasure with this commission, and the lefty perception of it, is that Bush is responsible for 9-11, but Clinton wasn't after 2 terms as President. Not only for his failure to more aggressively act against threats, but Clinton also perpetuated a perception of American weakness. He cannot be let off the hook in this whole 9-11 inquiry. But he will be.

And it doesn't make me a big Bush fan.

GL, you miss my point. The Sudan cruise missiles generated a massive wave of "wag the dog". Any serious actions by Clinton were pretty much pre-empted by the political climate of the day. The GOP decided to screw around with the President, in a way that has no historical precedent, for purely political purposes.

Buckethead, there isn't a court in America that would convict for "perjury" under those circumstances. You'll notice that Clinton was not, in fact, convicted of anything. Conservatives delight in pointing out that a "different" standard applies to the President. Who decides what that different standard is? When the standard divides on party lines, we draw certain conclusions.

The Clinton administration had at least as much focus on terrorism as pre-9/11 Bush, and from everything I've read they had considerably more. The Bushies bitched about the "excessive" focus on terrorism that they inherited from Clinton, preferring a "bigger picture" approach to the middle east. 9/11 gave them the opportunity they needed declare war -- a war intended to further Wolfowitz, Feith, and Rumsfeld's nation building.