Fear of Clowns

• From the Committee's interim report: "Former Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel bin Laden to the United States. Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim." (Right-wing myth debunked.)
• Timothy Roemer: "[W]e have a book issued by Richard Clarke which is a blistering attack on the Bush administration. We have Dr. Rice on the airwaves saying that she strongly condemns and disagrees with Mr. Clarke's assessments and analysis. I would hope that this discussion would not be for the airwaves and would not be a partisan type of discussion that we have, but belongs in this hearing room tomorrow in a substantive way so that the 10 commissioners can ask factually based questions and so the American people have the access to those answers to try to make this country safer. So I would underscore your comments, Mr. Chairman, that I hope Dr. Rice will reconsider and come before our commission for the sake of the American people tomorrow. (APPLAUSE)"
• Colin Powell: "We gave them 24, 48 hours to consider it and then I called President Musharraf and said, We need your answer now. We need you as part of this campaign, this crusade" (CRUSADE?)
• Donald Rumsfeld: "In reflecting on what happened on September 11th, the question is, obviously, the Good Lord willing, things would have happened prior to that that could have stopped it. But something to have stopped that would have had to happen months and months and months beforehand, not five minutes or not one month or two months or three months." (Perhaps Rumsfeld was limiting to "something" to a military campaign - however the timing of the scrambling of jets and the readiness of those jets is an issue the commission is examining.)

// posted by Erik @ 3/23/2004 08:45:00 PM
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