Sunday, June 20, 2004
Cruel Summer Update IV: If you know Mr. Cheney, please tell us...
Elephant mentioned last week that he didn't understand why the administration choose to take a confrontational stance with the 9/11 commission over the Saddam/Al-Qaeda link. It seems there's enough information about casual contacts to provide a fig leaf to Bush/Cheney had they decided to take a conciliatory approach to the issue. Unfortunately the didn't, both Bush and Cheney repeated there claims (and I'm sure our Friend Bronson has the goods on this) last week about the link. Either way the Administration now finds itself between a rock and a hard place.
The 9/11 Panel has called the Administration's bluff by asking the Vice President to share the information he repeatedly sights to establish a pre-9/11 operative connection between Al-Qaeda and Saddam. There's no easy way out for Cheney. He could divulge his 'intelligence' which could be embarrassingly flimsy (think Chalabi), or he could claim that divulging it would compromise our intelligence. Both of those may of course be true, but politically each is fraught with traps. Reveal and have the information subject to intense criticism or hold the information on a "trust me we know" basis and suffer the consequences. (After all we trusted them on the WMD issue, didn't we?). So, with both avenues closed what is a person to do? Attack the messenger!
PREDICTION: The administration will attack the credibility of the 9/11 Commission. In the coming weeks we will hear all about how the dems and reps on the 9/11 Commission are really anti-american moles who go to vegetarian pot lucks at Jane Fonda's house, rub Michael Moore's feet and listen to Madonna's "American Life".
Story Here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123162,00.html
The 9/11 Panel has called the Administration's bluff by asking the Vice President to share the information he repeatedly sights to establish a pre-9/11 operative connection between Al-Qaeda and Saddam. There's no easy way out for Cheney. He could divulge his 'intelligence' which could be embarrassingly flimsy (think Chalabi), or he could claim that divulging it would compromise our intelligence. Both of those may of course be true, but politically each is fraught with traps. Reveal and have the information subject to intense criticism or hold the information on a "trust me we know" basis and suffer the consequences. (After all we trusted them on the WMD issue, didn't we?). So, with both avenues closed what is a person to do? Attack the messenger!
PREDICTION: The administration will attack the credibility of the 9/11 Commission. In the coming weeks we will hear all about how the dems and reps on the 9/11 Commission are really anti-american moles who go to vegetarian pot lucks at Jane Fonda's house, rub Michael Moore's feet and listen to Madonna's "American Life".
Story Here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123162,00.html
