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There’s a lot of concern over 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick’s conflict of interest - specifically, that she wrote a memo requiring a separation between the CIA and FBI that later became a hot-point of discussion. […]
But while I think her conflicts are a major concern, and the attention is warranted, I’m today most annoyed at Commission Chair Thomas Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey (which is to say, not much of a Republican at all). When questioned on Fox News about Gorelick and other possible conflicts in the commission, Kean said that everyone should “Stay out of our business.”
Stay out of our business??
Excuse me?!
What this commission decides is my business, as an American and a taxpayer. If conflicts bias the commission to find that certain things are not problems - when really they are - then yes, it’s definitely my business because my safety and the future of my country are at risk. His attitude is damaging, and certainly makes me think his point is more about arrogance than transparency. […]
Thomas Kean says internal commission conflict that can damage its ability to succeed are not my business.
Commission members have hammered the Bush administration for more transparency - to have Dr. Rice testify in public about things she had already testified about in private. To release a classified memo that they already had private access to. The commission’s point there is that it is the public’s business to know.
And Thomas Kean says the commission has no responsibility to be transparent itself.
This really shows that the Commission itself doesn’t see its mission as investigating. Rather, they view this as a way of satisfying personal political agendas and that is inhibited by transparency.
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The kind of question that should have been asked at President Bush’s press conference.
A year after the invasion, the Marines are seeking donations from blog readers to set up TV stations in Iraq so as to counter anti-American propaganda from Al Jazeera and other hostile media. Why wasn’t this a priority from day one? Why isn’t it one now?
This is a hilarious interview with Oliver Stone about his new movie starring Fidel Castro. To excerpt any of it would be unfair — each question and answer is damning of Stone, who comes across as the most ignorant person ever to be apathetic about his ignorance.
There is a nice lesson here about the untrustworthy narrator. As any lawyer who has ever defended a deposition will tell you, writing things down makes them true. Few witnesses ever trust their memory, however clear, against the magic of seeing something written down, regardless of whether they know the author, or his motivation, or the circumstances under which he was writing. The power of filming something is ten times as great and even those few who can be skeptical try to filter what they see through some theory of rationality. They assume that the author, even if he is trying to mislead, is doing so rationally and with foresight. This interview serves as an important reminder that sometimes there’s no conspiracy. Sometimes, at bottom, there is just an ignorant idiot.
Among Lehman’s questions [to Condoleezza Rice] was this: “Were you aware that it was the policy…to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory?”
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“We had testimony a couple of months ago from the past president of United, and current president of American Airlines that kind of shocked us all,” Lehman told me. “They said under oath that indeed the Department of Transportation continued to fine any airline that was caught having more than two people of the same ethnic persuasion in a secondary line for line for questioning, including and especially, two Arabs.”
Wait a minute. So if airline security had three suspicious Arab guys they had had to let one go because they’d reached a quota?
That was it, Lehman said […]
While this is a Clinton era policy, it doesn’t seem to have been changed by President Bush.