....LMB: "Shortest Barrier Between Two Points"....

March 09, 2004

Wow, amazing how hard it can be to answer a simple yes-or-no question.

Several weeks back, President Bush had announced that he would meet with the 9/11 investigation committee to answer their questions-- for an hour. Yes, while people like your or I might be willing to give up hours, days, or even months of our time if we thought it might somehow help prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack, the president is only willing to give up about 60 minutes.

At this morning's press briefing with White House spokesman Scott McClellan, reporters asked a simple question: has the president changed his mind about that 60 minute time limit? Apparently the president had made some ambiguous statements lately which could be interpretted to mean that he would now spend as much time with the investigators as they liked, so the press was asking McClellan if that was a correct interpretation (granted, the initial question was phrased in a much more confrontational way:

Q: Does the President want to really get to the bottom of the cause of 9/11? If he does, why would he limit his interview with the commission to one hour and for other officials, and, stonewall on documents?

McCLELLAN: I'm glad you brought this up. This administration has provided unprecedented cooperation to a legislative body in the 9/11 Commission. We have worked closely with the commission in a spirit of cooperation. And you only have to go back -- and I would appreciate it if you would report some of the facts of the type of access we have provided to the commission. We have provided the commission access to every bit of information that they have requested, including our most sensitive national security documents. And the commission chairman has stated such --

Q: Well, the commission certainly is not satisfied.

McCLELLAN: -- and as far as the President, the President looks forward to meeting with the chairman and vice chairman and answering all the questions that they want to raise.

Q: Why don't you just open the books and get to the truth? The American people deserve it.

McCLELLAN: Did you not hear what I just said, Helen? Have you not looked at the facts? I think you need to quit reading some of the coverage and look at the facts.

Q: You just said, “all the questions they want to raise.” That means he’s no longer going to limit it to an hour?

McCLELLAN: Well, that’s what it’s scheduled for now. But, look, he’s going to answer all the questions they want to raise. Keep in mind that the commission --

Q: If they’re still asking at one hour, he’ll still answer them?

McCLELLAN: Keep in mind that the commission has already had access to all the information they requested, as I just pointed out, including our most sensitive national security documents. That’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about unprecedented cooperation. And the commission has also -- yes, let me finish --

Q: The issue is whether he’s limiting it to an hour --

McCLELLAN: Let me finish, Mark.

Q: -- and I’m asking a very simple question. If they’re still asking questions at one hour --

McCLELLAN: I think it’s important to point out the fact. Mark, let me finish. Mark, can I answer? Let me finish. It’s important that we point out these facts when we talk about this issue, because the facts have not been pointed out. The facts have not been pointed out. But the President -- I mean, the commission will be meeting with the President, after having talked for hours on hour with White House and senior administration officials. We’ve provided more than 2 million pages of documents; we’ve provided more than 60 compact disks of radar, flight and other information; more than 800 audio cassette tapes of interviews and other materials; more than 100 briefings, including at the head-of-agency level; more than 560 interviews. Dr. Rice met with the commission recently, and even though only five members of the commission showed up, she sat down and visited with them for some four hours.

Q: I appreciate that. You reported all that when you first told it to us. I’m asking --

McCLELLAN: No, I don’t think it was widely reported.

Q: Forgive me, I take responsibility for what I report, and I reported it.

McCLELLAN: I understand you -- I understand. But I take responsibility of talking to everybody here.

Q: Okay. All the questions that they have, he’s going to answer. If they’re still asking at one hour, is he still going to answer?

McCLELLAN: I just said that the President will answer all the questions that they want to raise. I think that’s important to point out. I mean, it’s important to point out the unprecedented cooperation we have provided to this legislative body. We have worked very closely with the commission.

Q: -- when?

McCLELLAN: Still working on the exact time for that, working with the commission...

And it goes on. And on. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the complete transcript for this back and forth is five times longer than the snippet I've just quoted. I would estimate that McClellan spends ten minutes not answering the question at hand.

McClellan knows his talking points, and refuses to diverge from them for even a second: the administration has provided unprecedented cooperation to the investigators; 2 million pages of documents; the president looks forward to being questioned; the president will answer all the questions the investigators want to raise. And that's about it. Any words outside of that extremely narrow scope will not leave McClellan's mouth.

Of course, he's no Ari Fleischer. Fleischer was slipperier'n a teflon snake at the WD-40 convention. He'd've found a way to either subtly change the subject to one which made the president look better, or pretend that the reporter had asked a different question, or say "I think we've already covered that" and force the press conference to switch to another topic. You remember that scene in "The Matrix" on the rooftop, where Keanu starts firing bullets at an Agent, and the Agent twists and bends in 12 directions at once and dodges every bullet? That's Ari Fleischer. You know that scene shortly after where Keanu is firing a helicopter's machine gun at a room full of Agents, and when the dead reincarnated Agents run back into the room, Keanu shoots them and makes them fall down? That's Scott McClellan. Ari evades. Scott gets hit, goes down, but can't really be defeated.

[Jake pauses, gives himself the "worst political analogy of the week" award]

Anyhow.

The Bush administration really doesn't have a leg to stand on here. There simply is no reasonable explanation for why the president wouldn't give this commission as much time as they asked for to answer their questions. There just isn't. Their only hope is to point out how "cooperative" they're being or try to confuse the issue.

And why don't they want this commission to be able to do its job? Because it's unlikely to say anything positive about the Bush administration. It's a report geared to (allegedly) find flaws and errors in US defense, security and intelligence in hopes of correcting those flaws. As a result, the report will be rife with ammunition that Bush's political rivals can use to attack his administration.

Am I suggesting that Bush is more concerned with re-election than with really dealing with protecting the country from future terrorist attacks? Yes and no. I think that Bush and his team are arrogant and crazy enough to think that only they can protect America (by invading countries that could possibly, maybe, potentially one day think about harming some aspect of the United States), and therefore stonewalling a commission in order to get re-elected and protecting the country are the same thing. Fucking loons.