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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Asymmetric who wrote (9630)	4/11/2004 5:57:55 PM
From: Asymmetric	Respond to of 173976

Establishing the Cheney of command DAVID ROSSIE Commentary / April 11 Rossie is associate editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin. pressconnects.com The most disturbing development to arise out of the 9/11 commission hearings so far is not Richard Clarke's damning testimony. Nor was it the Bush administration's frantic but futile attempts to keep Condoleezza Rice from testifying publicly and under oath. Rather it is the revelation that Dick Cheney is afraid to leave Bush alone in a room with the commission members when it comes his time to testify. The Bushies did everything they could to prevent Congress from creating the commission. Then they tried to cut short its allotted time. Then they fought against Bush being called to testify. Then they said, yes, he'd testify, but only before the chairman and vice chairman. Then they said Bush would give the commissioners an hour, but no more. They eventually backed off from all those positions under pressure from Congress and the survivors of 9/11 victims. But keep in mind that it is John Kerry who is a flip-flopper. When our resolute president takes a position he sticks to it. No matter. One of these days the full commission will get to hear from Bush, and for some of us of a certain age it will recall Sunday nights when we'd turn on our radios to hear Charlie McCarthy. Not that Bush will be sitting on Cheney's lap; at least, let's hope not. But the difference all but ends there. If there had been any doubts in the minds of anyone outside Fox News and the Republican National Committee about who has been calling the shots in this administration since January of 2001, they should now be dispelled. From a practical standpoint, then, who can blame Cheney for not wanting to leave his puppet alone with that group. Bush has enough trouble dodging questions from the submissive souls of the Washington press corps -- on the rare occasions when he deigns to meet them. But he won't be able to run and hide from Bob Kerrey or Richard Ben Veniste, even with the help of lap dogs such as James Thompson and John Lehman. If Bush runs true to form, the books that will eventually come out of these hearings will make Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, read like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Speaking of books, there's a new one out that is going to have the Bush smear squads -- already busy trashing Clarke and Paul O'Neill -- working overtime. This one's by John Dean, that's right, that John Dean. The book's title is Worse than Watergate, and in it Dean argues that the Bush administration's fraudulent case for invading Iraq, built on a framework of lies and bogus intelligence, was a greater crime than the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency. Dean also argues that Bush could be and should be impeached for lying to Congress. But at the same time he acknowledges that Bush is simply a figurehead and Cheney is actually running the country. Given that, impeaching Bush, which a Congress dominated by Republican goose steppers would not do, would produce a cosmetic change, nothing more: Same snake oil, different dispenser.