I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
I agree with your statement about the White House and former Senator Cleland. He's going to be much more dangerous to them this way. I hope this business about 'forcing' democracy on Iraq gets into the public domain soon. Some of us have argued this point until we were blue in the face (is that our color? Never can remember) on another couple of boards recently, as well as here at Atrios.
It's only a matter of time before they smear the guy even further.
After or if his remarks get made national, expect the man to be found living with underage teenage girls, or solicitating teens on web billetin boards, or trading/receiving child pornography. There will even be rumors about how his disbilities require huge amounts of painkillers and that he's since become addicted to them.
It's only a matter of time.
MYOB'
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I saw that on Now.
Cleland was really worked up. He almost came out of his wheelchair a couple of times. He wasn't bitter or mean, just outraged. If anybody has a right be bitter Cleland does.
I liked this Q.
SESNO: I want to ask you about one final thing here, and that is the Commission itself, which is supposed to be independent. And your take on Iraq. You had a bruising, bitter political contest. Is this sour grapes for you?
CLELAND: No. No. I tell you what makes me mad. Is when I see the names of those youngsters that are being killed out there every day. I say, "God help us." I've been there. I've seen this movie before.
One thing that many people don't appreciate is the amount of pressure that can be put on Senators that doesn't work with ex-Senators.
There's all sorts of deals made in the Senate. Vote for this and you'll get the federal funds to get your roads built. Play ball with us here and we'll free up a seat on this-or-that committee for you. Always they can hold a constituency hostage in one way or the other, and a Senator often has to cave on a lesser principle in the name of delivering the goods to the people who elected him.
Sounds like Cleland doesn't care anymore. That stuffed suit they put in his chair has to make the deals, not him. I think you'll see him say things that he never would have said while in office.
In the final analysis what may do Bushco in is the fact that they've really pissed off people who have access to the megaphones.
Smearing a senator (Durbin), a former ambassador (Wilson) and the head of the CIA are not helpful tactics if re-election is on your agenda.
SESNO: The White House says, and I've spoken to them, that they didn't slow walk it, that there was a lot of very sensitive information involved, both in disseminating the information to begin with, and then determining how much should be released.
Then Sesno added, "Besides, the White House assured me that they would never ever do anything like delay important information about the real supporters behind the 9/11 attacks because they are old business partners of Poppy and early investors of Glorious Leader. The only fair and balanced conclusion I can come up with, Mr. Cleland, and the White House agrees with me, is that you sir are simply an un-American liberal-loving pro-Saddam apologist for even suggesting such a thing.
Thank you. This is CNN . . ."
Sesno made a good point, perhaps unintentionally, when he said that Cleland would need more evidence besides his gut feeling. I happen to agree with Cleland, but this can be spun off as coincidence or 'tinfoil hat territory' or 'national security' as it is.
But what about the report combined with other pieces of evidence revealed over the last few weeks? The 16 words mess, the Cheney Energy Task Force papers (complete with maps of Iraq's oil wells and foreign suitors list,) etc? When do we move past the realm of tinfoil hat conspiracies and into investigations?
CLELAND: No. No. I tell you what makes me mad. Is when I see the names of those youngsters that are being killed out there every day. I say, "God help us." I've been there. I've seen this movie before.
Wow, that is priceless.
Sesno made a good point, perhaps unintentionally, when he said that Cleland would need more evidence besides his gut feeling.
B-b-but Ed! The pResident is famous for going by his gut feeling. Can only flyboys do that?
Frank Sesno, Legendary Investigative Reporter, not in the least interested in the fact that it took 8 months for the non-partisan commission to get a staff? Not interested in the fact that the 9/11 joint investigation was ready in December and delayed until July? Mindlessly repeats what the WH says?
Rick in Davis, my husband and I were discussing the dollar amount this morning.
We figured out that the war is costing us 5.4 million dollars an hour, approximately.
Sesno is a tool.
We'll see how much noise Cleland and the others can make.
It could get reeaaal ugly.
LAS VEGAS (July 26) - A promoter who offered to take men on ``Hunting for Bambi'' safaris in which they could hunt down naked young women with paintball guns admits that it was a hoax and now faces misdemeanor charges, the mayor said Friday.
Promoter Michael Burdick could get six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for operating without a proper business license, Mayor Oscar Goodman said.
``I'll do everything I can to see this man is punished for trying to embarrass Las Vegas,'' Goodman said.
Burdick called the misdemeanor summons a waste of taxpayer money.
``I have a license; it's hanging on my wall,'' Burdick told The Associated Press before cutting off questions and referring inquiries to his lawyer, Craig Mueller, who later declined comment.
The DNC has to put together a team of speakers to start putting out a consistent anti-Bush chorus that is not affiliated with any particular candidate for the nomination.
The first member of this group should be Max Cleland. Bush & the RNC should be mauled for what they did to him, but no one has put it in their face. In my anectdotal survey of southern California Dem leaning people, not one is even aware of what happened last year in Georgia.
There are others who would be effective at undermining the Bush administration without forcing the candidates to take them on almost alone and in competition with each other.
Oh yeah, and somebody tell Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden that their careers in the Dem party are over if they don't get on board right this very day.
Seeing Max Cleland in that wheelchair, three limbs gone, war hero, thrown out of office by vicious lying propagandists AND crooked Diebold voting machines, was utterly compelling. Inspiring. God bless Max Cleland.
The best hot dogs in Chicago were produced either by the Vienna or the David Berg sausage company. They were bright red, with thick skins. We ate them with yellow mustard, piccalilli, and chopped onions--never ketchup, which was considered outré. Ask in those days for Poupon mustard, and I could not have answered for the consequences. (Some people liked to add hot green peppers.) A properly steamed bun with poppy seeds was the finishing touch. I could go for one now, hold the peppers....
Cleland would have been a lot more effective if, instead of saying "it's obvious" when Sessno asked him for evidence that the junta was delaying things,he had actually produced some evidence. There is enough documented slime from this administration that it should be any to attack the junta without making it a game of 'he said -she said'
It would have been a great time to point out that huge sections on what the White House knew were not in there and that there are lots of questions about Bush's actions (and lack thereof) that day that need to be answered and that the junta has an obvious interest in not answering.See http://
www.cooperativeresearch.o...restingday.html for example.
Instead, all Cleland said was "it's obvious"
Why has this turned into an argument about proving the president wrong, instead of the president proving he is right? Where is the SCLM on this? He has told so many embellishments, exaggerations, half-truths, but is defended because it was not a "bald face lie"? Of the ten main reasons (based on intelligence)we went into Iraq, have any of them been proven true?
What is "some evidence" to you, tool ?
Didn't "slow walk" it. Does that lying whore think he's auditioning for Fox or something? Jay-zus.
Does Scott McClellan have his hand up Sesno's ass to move his lips?
What was Bill Moyers thinking? Letting this little washed-up media slut sit in for him? That's disprespectful to the Senator...
SESNO: The White House says, and I've spoken to them, that they didn't slow walk it, that there was a lot of very sensitive information involved, both in disseminating the information to begin with, and then determining how much should be released.
So that's why it took eight months.
Let me put it this way: suppose that there are war news comming, some very positive, all potentially sensitive. How long it will take to declassify news for a press release? 10 minutes?
Clellan should have a quicker wit perhaps, but Sesno was a total whore.
They declassified the 'NIE' after about two weeks of getting hammered on the '16 words'.
Funny how those declassifications can get 'fast walked' when they need to be.
Max is right. If you don't see it you're a frikken 'tool'.
It's great that Cleland found his way on that commission. I wonder how the republicans screwed up on that. Perhaps they were so satisfied at getting milquetoast Lee Hamilton as the senior Democrat on board.
Max Cleland would make a great Democratic Vice Presidential nominee.
I do think that Cleland's charges would be more convincing if there was more. I suspect he's right, but maybe there is some kind of paper trail - repeated requests for information and subsequent denials and delays. Maybe this information already exists.
I say this because while Cleland sounds credible to a lot of folks here, the aura of uncertainty that surrounds classified data understandably leads a lot of Americans to think "Gee, maybe the president knows something I don't. Maybe there is secret information that I don't really need to know." Even my dad, who has no love for the Bush Adminstration, has been saying things like, "well, I don't need to know everything." So, if the Admin. employs reasons of secrecy to deflect criticism, a lot of people are going to give the president the benefit of the doubt.
Brian S. - a lot of people aren't going to give him the benefit of any doubt on this. THis is 9/11. Every American takes it personally. And I think most Americans want the whole story.
Tena: That's a fair point. I'm just thinking of such things as those polls showing the disturbingly high numbers of people who think the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, and the persistence of the view of an al-Qaeda/Iraq connection when that hasn't been proven. "For reasons of state" is a rationale that has remained remarkably potent.
David Ehrenstein, calm yourself. There's no need to call people names.
If it gets down to a shouting match between Cleland and the junta where each side makes assertions and doesn't support them, Cleland is going to lose.
I doubt Cleland has any memos or documentation to prove his assertion,it would be hard to see how he would get it. and he should have said that. Then he could have said, "here's why I think this was intentionally delayed.
1.It was very important that this be completed quickly for the following reasons... (and he did emphasize that the independent commission couldn't start without it, but he could have also stressed that until we know what happened we can't fix it).
2.it shouldn't take eight months to clear the report of this size and sensitivity. For example, look at such and such report -it took a single day, or whatever, I'm sure he knows of examples.
3. So then we are left with the question why did it take so long?
at that point he could have asked sessno if when he was chatting with the White House he pressed them on why it took so long since it clearly didn't have to, and sessno would have to say no,I didn't ask them, and then Cleland has made the point that there is a big unanswered question out there which is why did it take so long when it didn't have to.
The White House claims it necessarily took a long time and Cleland didn't produce any counterexamples to show that this is a lie.instead he just said it was a lie. You can't rely on the media to come up with examples for themselves, so they will do what they always do when faced with the choice of doing research or believing the junta.
on another missed opportunity, he should have directly linked the Junta's insistence that there be government "minders" present when the independent commission does its interviewing and the former Iraqi government's insistence that that there be government "minders" present when the weapons inspectors did their interviewing. "regime change" redux
and it isn't that I don't see that Cleland is right, Bram. you wouldn't be able to torture me enough to vote for Bush. Unfortunately that's not true for 49 percent of voters. and given that I am not in with any of the people who are running these electronic voting machines, I can only vote once.
"David Ehrenstein, calm yourself. There's no need to call people names."
You should hear me when I'm angry. This crap is merely annoying.
No one here on this board ( or anywhere else for that matter) has the right to tell Max Cleland how to act.
This is one example of the sort of smearage Cleland might expect. (Link via the always-worth-a-visit Ted Barlow.
Cleland ought to hook up with the families of 9/11 (Kristen Breitweiser is someone I admire enormously), and be their chief advocate.
jupiter:
That was a truly amazing comment thread. The blogger who originally posted the slander against Cleland never backed it up with anything more than "I'm sticking by what I said even though I can't document it."
True freeper logic. Why do they make it so easy to call them on their lies?
In many ways, this isn't even worthy of our time.
On the other hand, I'm tired of letting this bullshit go unanswered, as were gttim, Ted Barlow, Randy Paul, and many other good people on that comment thread.
I was upset to see hack Sesno replacing Bill Moyers... I wonder whose decision that was? He was a biased RNC hack when on CNN and kept it up last night.
You know goddamned good and well he would never ahve been anywhere as agressive with Rummy or Condy... if you had ever seen him in action in those days when I did when I still watched CNN. He and Candy and Bill boy were the reasons I stopped watching.
Sesno was giving Cleland the Russert treatment, going to the RNC for his marching orders.
Moyers does that liberal bemd over backwards so far your head ends squarely up your ass crap again and I will scratch one of the last things I watch on PBS from my list as well. When I watch NOW I want something different from the whores.
Sesno Indeed! Was Pat Buchanana or Candy Crowley not available.
Cleland was right on! He don' have to show Sesno no steenkin' badges. What is obvious is -er -uh - lessee -- self-evident? It means that if you are not a pig headed apologist for the Boosh MalAdministration, a leads to b to c and to the conclusion. There is no reasonable explanation for holding the report up EIGHT months!!!!! NONE.
Relations with our wonderful ally, Saudi Arabia, are not worth one American life.. no matter how much oil it means to the Boosh cronies. You know he wanted to say Fuck You Sesno, you two bit whore. What is obvious is obvious.
Most of the deletions had to do with the Saudi support issue?
They made that decision on day one. What were they doing for the next 240 days? Trying to figure out what color of highlighter they'd use to black out the redacted material?
Cleland's right. The Bushists simply didn't want anything contradicting their salesjob for their war.
While it is obvious to Cleland and those who support true patriots, it may not be obvious to the Bush regime and its kool-aid-addled supporters.
I think the inordinate amount of time it took for them to clean up the report is inexcusable. When Powell was pushed before the UN to deliver his pack of lies, they declassified tons of useless, fake information for him.
Certainly it must take more effort to fabricate something outright, than it would take to just sift through real information and remove what you don't like.
Also: after Pearl Harbor, FDR had 2 reports about it on his desk within seven months and the investigations had been completed. It's been almost 2 years since 9/11 and we just last week got a preliminary Congressional report.
Anyway, I won't be at all surprised if a paper trail does turn up, implicating the junta in efforts to stall the investigation.
Presumably Cleland knows a Vietnam-in-the-making when he sees one. I thought the interview was refreshing, and hope the WH is dumb enough to try to discredit him.
>No one here on this board ( or >anywhere else for that matter) has >the right to tell Max Cleland how to >act.
>David Ehrenstein
max cleland isn't some god above criticism. if you think he is, maybe you can explain this:
"I'll be supporting the resolution backed by the president," said Sen. Max Cleland, Georgia Democrat and a Vietnam veteran. "It's imperative that we now speak with one voice, to Saddam Hussein, to the entire international community and, most importantly, to our servicemen and women."
and his subsequent vote to allow Bush to invade Iraq.
"it's obvious" isn't evidence and isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already think it's obvious.
Steve said this higher up, but it should be mentioned again: "Max Cleland would make a great Democratic Vice Presidential nominee."
Agreed, Steve. Those knuckleheads in Ga. may have voted him out of office, but could you imagine what a boon he would be to the Democratic ticket, especially if he were paired with a presidential nominee from the North (Dean or Kerry)?
Could you imagine a Cleland-Chickenhawk Cheney debate?
Heck, even some Georgians may make the right choice this time.
Those knuckleheads in Ga. may have voted him out of office, but could you imagine what a boon he would be to the Democratic ticket, especially if he were paired with a presidential nominee from the North (Dean or Kerry)?
From what I have read in interviews, I don't see him running for public office again. He is more interested in serving and helping the people than he is in holding office. I believe he is going to decide that he can help the country more not holding elected office.
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