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Don't any of you look at this stuff without using your party glasses? Dr. Rice needed to go before the public, because we deserve to know what happened. Do we get all the salient details? - NO. Dr. Rice is an impressivly bright individual with a great deal of political accumen and she handled herself like a pro. The Bush administration was not pulling some great P.R. coup, they have a philisophical opposition to the 9-11 Commission and its purpose, but in the end, it is an election year and they need to carefully choose their battles.
Is this commission political - YES. Will the final report be political- I don't think so. Did Dr. Rice get tougher questions from the Dems - Yes, and her answers took a great deal of time, thus she was cut off frequently(and often rudely) by Dems. Reps asked much more general questions and her answers were much more brief, so they got to ask more questions. I think that this was good for America. We saw that this administration has some very competent people and that they may have made some mistakes. We also learned that 9-11 stemmed from a long history of failures dating back several decades and numerous administrations.
Ben-Veniste is an old, and experienced trial lawyer, and he was just doing what trial lawyers do. Kerrey was doing what, if you look at all of the interviews, he always does. He aggressively asks tough questions. When you hear commissioners talk, they have only positive comments about each other. I have the feeling that they came to the decision that they would leave it to those of the opposition party to ask the tough questions, depending on who was testifying.
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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
-Douglas Adams
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