'Dick' Ashcroft Faults Clinton for 9/11

HA HA HA

"Jacking off. It's more dangerous than we all thought."

And thanks again Ben-Veniste for revealing that you are the snarkiest moron on the commsion--once again, you wasted my time and my money by not doing your homework: what exactly was the point about asking Ashcroft what kind of aircraft service he used? Idiot.

Ashcroft gives me the creeps.

You have been watching this on the t.v. right? Theyre all whores.

Did anyone catch tenet today? Man he needs a vacation. he looked so unbelieavably uncofortable w/ the fidgeting and whatnot. Almost felt sorry for him.

No, I thought it quite clear that he knew exactly what the answer would be. And yes, it is the Commission's responsibility to seek to reassure Americans of its willingness to put aside partisanship when the motives of its members are impugned. That's happening much more on the right than on the left, of course. You don't hear people crying about how Exec Director Zelikow is an appointee to Bush's foreign intelligence committee, or how Thompson and Fielding had a private meeting with the White House prior to Rice's questioning.

Let me ask you, as my time is expiring, one question, which has been frequently put to members of this commission; probably all of us have heard this one way or another.

And we are mindful that part of the problem with the Warren commission's work on the Kennedy assassination was the failure to address certain theories that were extant and questions and much of the work was done behind closed doors. So I would like to provide you with the opportunity to answer one question that has come up repeatedly.

At some point in the spring or summer of 2001, around the time of this heightened threat alert, you apparently began to use a private chartered jet plane, changing from your use of commercial aircraft on grounds, our staff is informed, of an FBI threat assessment. And, indeed, as you told us, on September 11th itself you were on a chartered jet at the time of the attack.

Can you supply the details, sir, regarding the threat which caused you to change from commercial to private leased jet?

ASHCROFT: I am very please pleased to address this issue.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

And his follow-up after Ashcroft's response:

BEN-VENISTE: I'm pleased to have been able to give you the opportunity to clarify that issue for all who have written to this commission and communicated in other ways about their questions about that, sir.

What made you think this? Watching this exchange did not communicate this to me. And his followup seemed a lot more CYA than anything else.

If this is such a noble excercise by Ben-Veniste, and it was so important that it had to be addressed in public before the report is released this summer, then Ben-Veniste could have made it a closed-ended, leading question. He could have acknowledged that Ashcroft travelled by private jet for government business and that he also travelled commerically in a private capacity during that time period, then closed the question out. You're seriously trying to convince me that this line of questioning was vital to the televised inquiry? If it was such a burning issue, I'm pretty sure Ashcroft would have been willing to simply put out a press release rather than waste time under oath testifying that it actually happened.

If that's the case, then maybe we can just pretend all the editorializing the Commission members have been doing doesn't exist.