irateplatypus

if it happened as it is being reported so far, the supposed walkout says two things to me...

1. the two commission members have little respect for the President and deliberately left the meeting as a political move. as men in the public eye, they would have to know that snubbing the president like that would have implications.

2. the president's testimony wasn't yielding bombshells, and since they couldn't be seen on tv grilling the leader of the free world... they figured there was no point in sticking around.

my own 2 cents: this, to me, is the reason why bush/cheney wanted to have a closed hearing. many of those commission members would love to ask outrageously confrontational and damning questions. you'd hear no end to the "so... when did you stop beating your wife?" sort of inquiries. by eliminating their platform for grandstanding... you're forcing them to ask only questions pertinent to their investigation.

so, since they couldn't get their sound bites or talking points out of it... the purpose for asking to hear from the president became mute to a large extent. if you can't tell, my faith in the commission's sincerity in preventing future attacks isn't that strong. to me, it's being used by both sides to press blame on the other... no matter the cost to truth (or future lives).

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill