Kerry Calls on Rice to Testify

March 28, 2004 8:05 AM

Kerry Calls on Rice to Testify"John Kerry said Saturday the White House is committing character assassination with its treatment of former counterterror chief Richard Clarke to avoid responding to questions about national security. Kerry also said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, should testify in public before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. "If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do '60 Minutes' on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath," Kerry told reporters. "We're talking about the security of our country."...
posted by Postroad (26 comments total)

::rolls eyes::

Gee, I don't remember Kerry making such noise six months ago, or any noise at all in the recent past. Where was he when Paul O'Neill was fired? Oh, that's right...he was only a Senator back then. I wonder why he became so vocal?

He's running for President.
posted by BlueTrain at 8:43 AM on March 28, 2004

you little students are sooooo cute when you roll your eyes, there CHOO CHOO. time to study now or you'll miss the big sockhop.
posted by quonsar at 8:54 AM on March 28, 2004

Sigh. What a cr*ppy post. If every charge and countercharge from the candidates is going to be posted on the Blue from now to November, it's going to be a very tiresome eight months.
[Written, BTW, by someone who who thinks Rice should have testified, and will probably vote against the President in Nov.]
posted by mojohand at 8:57 AM on March 28, 2004

Paging Seth to aisle 32055, paging Seth to 32055.
posted by trondant at 9:04 AM on March 28, 2004

Ex-Bush Aide Calls for Testimony on Terrorism to Be Opened

Clarke told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he "would welcome" that declassification. He also said Rice's private testimony before the commission should be declassified, as well as e-mails, memos and all other correspondence between Rice and Clarke.

"Let's declassify everything," Clarke said.

He also accused the administration of waging a "campaign to destroy me professionally and personally," and called on the White House to "raise the level of discourse."

Clarke also fired back at the administration by reading Bush's response to his resignation letter.

Noting it was in the president's handwriting, Clarke said the letter read that he would "be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor," and had "left a positive mark on our government."
posted by y2karl at 9:14 AM on March 28, 2004

Gee, I don't remember Kerry making such noise six months ago, or any noise at all in the recent past. Where was he when Paul O'Neill was fired? Oh, that's right...he was only a Senator back then. I wonder why he became so vocal?

shit, he's probably selling a book too! I'm sick of all these opportunists riding on the coattails of the bush administration's maleficence.
posted by mcsweetie at 9:19 AM on March 28, 2004

Kerry, like Kennedy, a Catholic. But whereas no problem with JFK, a spokesman for the Chruch (in America) has reservations about Kerry: http://www.time.com/time/election2004/article/0,18471,605436,00.html
posted by Postroad at 9:20 AM on March 28, 2004

9/11 Panel Provokes a Discussion the White House Hoped to Avoid

In the summer of 2001, according to witnesses interviewed by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 hijackings, President Bush was told repeatedly of terror warnings pouring into American intelligence agencies, mostly about threats overseas.

The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who briefed Mr. Bush on threats almost daily, "was around town literally pounding on desks saying that something is happening, this is an unprecedented level of threat information," said Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, who was quoted in a Congressional report last year.

But even as the warnings spiked in June and July that year, there appeared to be little sense of alarm at the White House, officials of the Central Intelligence Agency told the commission. It was not until Sept. 4 that Mr. Bush's national security team approved a plan intended to eradicate Al Qaeda and not until Sept. 10 that Mr. Tenet was told to put the plan into effect.
posted by y2karl at 10:05 AM on March 28, 2004

"I see you on the street and you look so tired
I know that job you got leaves you so uninspired
When I come by to take you out to eat
You're lyin' all dressed up on the bed baby fast asleep
Go in the bathroom and put your makeup on
We're gonna take that little brat of yours and drop her off at your mom's
I know a place where the dancing's free
Now baby won't you come with me
`Cause down the shore everything's all right
You and your baby on a Saturday night
Nothing matters in this whole wide world
When you're in love with a Jersey girl"
posted by clavdivs at 10:47 AM on March 28, 2004

the families getting up and walking out on the hearings last week in protest of condi's refusal to testify was a pretty stark moment for this administration - good for kerry in adding for the calls for condi to testify - under oath.
posted by specialk420 at 11:04 AM on March 28, 2004

i think the administration needs to level with the american people about what information they had, what mistakes were made, and the processes now in place to remedy those errors. really, that's all i want.

but since that isn't going to happen, i will settle for reporters to ask condi after every statement she makes 'yes, but are you willing to say that under oath.'
posted by lescour at 11:22 AM on March 28, 2004

I fucking concur. "yes, but are you willing to say that under oath?" should be the "would you like fries with that?" of journalism.
posted by trondant at 11:33 AM on March 28, 2004

But will it all be forgotten when it's announced there's life on Mars ?
posted by y2karl at 12:09 PM on March 28, 2004

y2karl, if the first sign we ever find of extraterrestrial life is their farts, we may reasonably conclude that the universe has a very childish sense of humor.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:19 PM on March 28, 2004

Thee who smelt them dealt them?
posted by y2karl at 12:47 PM on March 28, 2004

I wonder why he became so vocal?
He's running for President.

Wow, it's almost like the Democratic Candidate for President has more leeway to criticize the current president than a mere senator / trailing candidate.
posted by effugas at 1:22 PM on March 28, 2004

I wonder why he became so vocal?
He's running for President.

Speaking of which, why hasn't Dukakis spoken up about this?
posted by graventy at 1:59 PM on March 28, 2004

The State Department officially released its annual terrorism report just a little more than an hour ago, but unlike last year, there's no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official tells CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden and "personalizing terrorism."

CNN Inside Politics, April 30, 2001
posted by kirkaracha at 2:22 PM on March 28, 2004

Condi's lying again: Rice said in a TV interview that she wants to testify publicly, but is constitutionally barred from doing so, a senior administration official said Sunday afternoon, before the program aired. from the Guardian (bold mine, and a total lie)
posted by amberglow at 3:35 PM on March 28, 2004

>He's running for President.

Yeah, now the media can't just continue its Bush lovefest and might be forced to do some *gasp* journalism. Everything we've been reading about in the past few months should have come out during the last three years, except you can't get much information from scripted press conferences and editors who don't want to insult the mindless flag-waving Fox News watching mob.

The lovefest is over. Deal with it.
posted by skallas at 6:20 PM on March 28, 2004

Actually, the lovefest continues. Some of these stories dont seem to get much airplay. Something tells me if these were Democrats the wingers, cable news, and talk radio would be all over it.
posted by skallas at 6:32 PM on March 28, 2004

condi was on 60 minutes tonight looking pretty pathetic doing the "us too!" apologizing to the 9-11 families - yet defending her refusal to testify in public and under oath.


awwww.. poor condi - maybe kerry is racist too.

looks like ralph may be getting smart this time around.
posted by specialk420 at 6:59 PM on March 28, 2004

here's the 60 minutes transcript

A high?light:
Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency - any greater than the one that we had, would have caused us to do differently.
posted by amberglow at 7:08 PM on March 28, 2004

maybe kerry is racist too.

No, man, he's just trying to keep us all from focusing on his sex-disease scandal or at least that's what Curveball says.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:17 PM on March 28, 2004

amberglow She never said that it was constitutionally barred, she said..

"Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify. I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle here ... it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress. "

Personally I think she should testify.
posted by zeoslap at 10:06 AM on March 29, 2004

i know, zeoslap--that's what the Guardian reported before the show aired. I guess either the interview was cut or she never said it. She's going to be subpoenaed I think.

That statement you quote is not true either tho: Sandy Berger twice testified in 1990s -- once in 1994 on Haiti and then again in 1997 during the Asian campaign contribution hearings. In 1994 though Berger was Deputy National Security Advisor. Constitutionally, it's not at all clear to me why a Deputy National Security Advisor should be more obliged to testify before congress than his boss. But that's their out in this case.
Then in 1997, when he was NSC Director, he was testifying in the course of an investigation into a scandal -- but certainly one with policy implications, since I'm pretty sure what they were asking him about was whether money affected policy. Why this is a constitutionally significant distinction is lost on me too. But again, that's their out -- it wasn't about 'policy'.
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski testified before congress in 1980. But again, that was in the context of an investigation -- into an accusation that Billy Carter, the then-president's brother, had tried to influence the US government on behalf of Libya. (from TalkingPointMemo
posted by amberglow at 10:14 AM on March 29, 2004