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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (31724)	6/21/2004 11:09:24 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

Cheney Not Bush Was In Charge on 9-11 Who was in charge on 9/11? Newsweek looks at the question of whether the president knew Dick Cheney had given orders to down airliners on September 11. The 9/11 commission staff report says Cheney gave the order, telling others the president had "signed off on the concept" during a brief phone chat. But the report says there is no documentary evidence of this phone call. Newsweek reports: "But the question of Cheney's behavior that day is one of many new issues raised in the remarkably detailed, chilling account laid out in dramatic presentations by the 9-11 Commission. NEWSWEEK has learned that some on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president's account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report. According to one knowledgeable source, some staffers 'flat out didn't believe the call ever took place.' When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction. In a letter from White House lawyers last Tuesday and a series of phone calls, the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report. 'We didn't think it was written in a way that clearly reflected the accounting the president and vice president had given to the commission,' White House spokesman Dan Bartlett told NEWSWEEK. Ultimately the chairman and vice chair of the commission, former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and former representative Lee Hamilton -- both of whom have sought mightily to appear nonpartisan -- agreed to remove some of the offending language. The report 'was watered down,' groused one staffer." GOP stonewalls abuse probe The Denver Post shows how congressional Republicans last week used "late-evening maneuvering that avoided the mainstream media spotlight" to "derail Democratic efforts to formalize a broader inquiry into the growing prisoner-of-war abuse scandal." "The GOP's resistance has sparked growing accusations from the minority party that Congress is abandoning its responsibility to aggressively investigate wrongdoing within the military ranks.... The GOP's control of Congress has effectively hammerlocked Democrats' attempts to glean detailed answers about abuses in the war zone, driving them to schedule private strategy meetings, including one planned for Monday." Meanwhile, Time magazine has a report about new abuse charges. The Senate Armed Services Committee is investigating whether two women were sexually abused at Abu Ghraib. And a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit "claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals." He also claims he was forced to have sex with a female in uniform. -- Geraldine Sealey