SOME PEOPLE JUST CAN'T HANDLE CAFFEINE
By Cori Dauber
This morning on This Week a hyper-aggressive, hyper-animated, hyper-frustrated George Stephanopolous just can't get the 9/11 commission Chair and Vice Chair to say what he oh-so-obviously wants them to say, and the worse it gets the faster he talks, until he finally starts to sound like a college debater on No-Dose. But they still won't cave.
On the Saddam-al Queda link, they're saying things like, "our mandate does not run to the Iraq war." "We looked at those statements from the administration quite closely . . . on the core statements . . . I don't think there's a difference of opinion. If there is, someone needs to spell it out for me." (To which George responds, "well lets start to spell it out then.")
But the Chair, Governor Kean, says something I don't think any of the Commissioners has yet said, and that is absolutely critical given the way the press has portrayed the staff reports, as a definitive statement on the nature of the relationship between the two entitities, one that brings closure to the debate, therefore putting the administration on the defensive. He says:
"We're continuing, we're not finished yet. It's an interim report."
This spurs George to ever greater heights. "You'd of put that in in the report, you didn't put that in, you'd of put that in the report."
Leading Kean to repeat, "This is not the report. . . "It's an interim document . . . the staff report will inform the report."
Listen to the way Hamilton even phrases the commission's finding on Atta in Prague:
"We not not have evidence that the meeting happened." (That's not a rejection of the meeting.)
"That is not conclusive proof he was not in Prague." The Vice himself says it "simply isn't proven one way or the other." You almost get the sense the more George pushes them in a clear and obvious direction, the more they push back just because they don't like being pushed to accord to someone's agenda. |
