POLITICALLY, 9-11 Was The Best Thing To Happen To Bush

I just skimmed the thread because I'm slammin at work. So not sure this has been mentioned.

You do know that Perle quit yesterday?

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In his resignation letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dated Feb. 18 and released Thursday, Perle said he quit because he did not want his controversial views "to be attributed to you or the president at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."

"This is particularly true now since I have just published a book that calls for far-reaching reform of government departments responsible for combating terrorism," he wrote. "Many of the ideas in that book are controversial and I wish to be free to argue for them without those views or my arguments getting caught up in the campaign."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../20040226/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/perle_resignation

 

mc mark,
Wow. thank you. I did not know that. Perle is a wild weird cat.

MacB,
Yes, like I said: you are saying "most empowering thing," and I really agree. And don't make fun of my wasted supposed intellect!

 

MacBeth.

I can only say....

I agree.

DD

 

high job approval ratings redounded to W in the wake of 9/11 due to his performance under extreme pressure, not by the event itself. you will recall that many people thought he was indecisive and weak in the immediate aftermath. after his performance in new york and his speech to congress that began to change. the political benefits, and consequences, of 9/11 resulted from W's performance as CinC. credit where credit is due MB.

 

Got any proof for the above statement?

 

How could a president NOT exhibit good leadership after a tragedy as big as 9/11?

You're acting like he did something magical like he deserves credit for something that would've probably been the easiest thing in the world about that job. That was a pretty unifying event.

 

leading the country wisely and well after the largest attck on american soil by anoutside power was easy? wow!

 

To me, it appeared that Gulianni showed more leadership than Bush.

 

continuing to read to a bunch of kids and then hiding out on Air Force One all day doesn't strike me as great leadership.

 

He handled himself well. Gulianni just seems like a genuine guy who rose to the occasion, without focus groups and bunches of advisors to point him in certain directions and so on. I suppose his personal life doesn't fit in with the Bush base. Another example of why that sort of thing shouldn't be an issue. The Europeans have a much more civilized regard for that stuff, imo.

 

No, I'm sure leading the country wisely and well would have been very difficult.

 

Someone put their finger in the breeze and changed their mind. I don't think it was Hastert.
Good news...


February 28, 2004

Hastert, in Reversal, Backs Extension for 9/11 Panel

By PHILIP SHENON and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — The speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, reversed himself Friday and announced that he would accept a 60-day extension of the deadline for a federal commission to complete its investigation of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The Senate, as expected, unanimously approved the extension earlier in the day, and Mr. Hastert's decision appeared to clear the way for Congress to grant one, until midsummer.

The 10-member bipartisan commission had warned that if it was required to meet its original, Congressionally mandated deadline to issue a final report by May 27, it would have to curtail its investigation and cancel several public hearings.

"We are overjoyed by the speaker's decision," said Al Felzenberg, the commission's spokesman.

Mr. Hastert's announcement followed heated maneuvering on Capitol Hill, where Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, had declared that unless the House agreed to legislation pushing back the deadline, they would hold up a highway bill needed to avoid the furlough of thousands of federal workers beginning Monday.

Once Mr. Hastert changed course Friday, the Senate quickly gave the highway measure final Congressional approval.

Mr. Hastert, Republican of Illinois, had previously said he was determined to block any extension, maintaining that members of the commission were leaking information from the inquiry to news organizations and that any delay in the final report would turn the findings into a "political football" in an election year.

The speaker had also said that the findings might be so valuable that they should not be delayed.

In a letter to the commission Friday, Mr. Hastert said he had been "reluctant to support this extension because I believe that the findings and recommendations that will be contained in your report may require immediate action by both the Congress and the executive branch in order to protect the American people."

But he said that he was also aware of the commission's "difficulties in obtaining clearances and in obtaining documents at the front end of the process" and that he was willing to support legislation that "removes the May 27 report deadline in current law and allows the commission to issue its report at any time until it goes out of existence on July 26, 2004."

Mr. Hastert described his offer as a "compromise," since it allows the commission's final report to be delayed until midsummer but would still require the panel to abide by the July 26 deadline to complete its administrative work and close its doors.

While that could pose extraordinary logistical problems for the commission, since it might be compelled to issue its final report and shut down its offices on the same day, the panel seemed eager to accept Mr. Hastert's offer. "Our main concern was always to get the additional 60 days to prepare the best possible report," said Mr. Felzenberg, the spokesman.

John Feehery, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert, said the speaker "is a reasonable man, and he was just trying to find a compromise."

He also suggested that despite the wording of Mr. Hastert's letter, the commission might be provided time beyond July 26 to close its offices.

On the Senate floor, Mr. McCain said it was his understanding that under the agreement reached between Mr. Hastert and other Congressional leaders, the panel would get an 60 extra days to finish the report and 30 days beyond that to wrap up, an outcome he said was satisfactory to the panel's leaders.

In other encouraging news for the commission, members said on Friday that the White House had agreed in recent days to allow its chairman, Thomas H. Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, and former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, to have access to much more information from daily intelligence briefings that reached the Oval Office in the months and years before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Under an agreement with the White House last year, Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton had been permitted far narrower access to the intelligence reports. The fuller access was given only to former Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic member of the commission, and Philip D. Zelikow, the panel's Republican staff director.

Mr. Hamilton said in an interview that he and Mr. Kean would now be allowed to see the material that had already been shared with Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Zelikow, and that the commission was pleased that the White House had allowed greater access. "We think this is important," he said.

Until Mr. Hastert's announcement, the standoff over the highway measure had threatened to force the temporary layoff of thousands of federal transportation workers whose salaries were dependent on passage of the bill by Sunday.

The bill provides an extension of highway and mass transit money funneled through the Department of Transportation. The spending authority was due to expire Sunday night and needed to be extended temporarily because Congress has not finished work on a highway bill covering the next six years.

The prospect of the layoffs of highway and transportation safety workers had loomed as an embarrassment to both the Bush administration and the Republican Congressional leadership, and irked lawmakers responsible for the highway measure. "Stop playing politics with people's lives," said Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, in demanding action on the highway bill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/national/28PANE.html

 

Crazy John rides Joementum to the rescue!

Good for both of them.

 

HAstert's reversal is great news.

 

Still, only one hour for the Commission?

 

If 9/11 hadn't happened I would be suprised if the Republicans weren't looking for someone to run instead of Bush.

 

By the time it's all said and done, 9/11 (or, more appropriately, how they handled it) could end up being the most damaiging thing politically...
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9/11 Panel Rejects White House Limits on Interviews
By PHILIP SHENON, NYTimes

WASHINGTON, March 2 — The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is refusing to accept strict conditions from the White House for interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and is renewing its request that Mr. Bush's national security adviser testify in public, commission members said Tuesday.

The panel members, interviewed after a private meeting on Tuesday, said the commission had decided for now to reject a White House request that the interview with Mr. Bush be limited to one hour and that the questioners be only the panel's chairman and vice chairman.

The members said the commission had also decided to continue to press the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to reconsider her refusal to testify at a public hearing. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are expected to be asked about how they had reacted to intelligence reports before Sept. 11, 2001, suggesting that Al Qaeda might be planning a large attack. Panel members want to ask Ms. Rice the same questions in public.

"We have held firm in saying that the conditions set by the president and vice president and Dr. Rice are not good enough," said Timothy J. Roemer, a former Indiana congressman who is one of five Democrats on the 10-member commission.

Mr. Roemer said that former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore had agreed to meet privately with the full bipartisan commission, and that Samuel R. Berger, Ms. Rice's predecessor, would testify in public.

"It's very important that we treat both the Bush and the Clinton administrations the same," he said.

The White House has declined to discuss details of the limitations it has sought on the interviews with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney but has said the administration wants to cooperate fully with the commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Sean McCormack, said Tuesday that the White House believed it would be inappropriate for Ms. Rice to appear at a public hearing as a matter of legal precedent. "White House staff have not testified before legislative bodies," Mr. McCormack said. "This is not a matter of Dr. Rice's preferences."

Even as panel members warned of a possible confrontation with the White House, there was fresh evidence that the commission had averted a showdown on Capitol Hill. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, said Tuesday that he planned to shepherd a bill granting the panel a 60-day extension for its final report. Mr. Hastert had vowed to block the extension.

Mr. Hastert met Tuesday with the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and a former governor of New Jersey, and the vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, another former Democratic congressman from Indiana, and said at a news conference later that he would try to secure House approval of the extension, a proposal already accepted in the Senate.

With the extension, the commission would have until July 26 for its final report. The panel had warned that if it was held to its original deadline of May 27, as mandated by Congress, it would be unable to complete a full investigation and would have to curtail public hearings.

Mr. Hastert denied suggestions from Congressional Democrats that he had tried to block the extension as a favor to the White House, given Republican fears that the report might embarrass President Bush during his re-election campaign. Mr. Hastert said he had no direction from the White House.

"I didn't want it to become a political football," Mr. Hastert said of his initial opposition to the extension, adding that he had been chagrined when the White House said in February that it would back the extension.

Referring to the commission, Mr. Hastert said he had changed his mind last week "after it became apparent that they couldn't get their work done."

Commission officials said that if the White House continued to insist on limitations on the interviews with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, there might be little that the panel could do to force the issue and that the commission might have to accept the White House's terms.

And they said that despite internal conversation about the possibility of issuing a subpoena for Ms. Rice's public testimony, that move was unlikely. Ms. Rice provided several hours of private testimony last month and has suggested that she is willing to answer additional questions behind closed doors.

 

Bush Plans Ad Campaign Using 9/11 Imagery

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 3, 2004; 3:15 PM


President Bush's reelection campaign will begin running ads in key battleground states around the country tomorrow that focus on the president's leadership on the economy and on the war on terrorism, and feature firefighters and footage from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The multimillion-dollar ad blitz comes at a time when the president's job approval rating has been slipping and he has fallen slightly behind in polls to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who all but wrapped up the Democratic nomination in Super Tuesday last night.

The ads strike a positive tone and don't mention Kerry. But the use of Sept. 11 imagery may cause some controversy and provide ammunition for Democrats who have long accused the president of exploiting the tragedy for political purposes.

more @ url:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26575-2004Mar3.html

 

Well, I guess the most accurate statement is:

9-11 changed everything, except the integrity of Mr. Rove.

 

I will continue to speak about the effects of 9/11 on our country and my presidency ... How this administration handled that day as well as the war on terror is worthy of discussion and I look forward to discussing that with the American people. [/b]

George W. Bush
March 6th, 2004
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He went on... "I meant to say the American people except for 9-11 families and those commission people."