Wonkette: 'Presumption of Criminality' Kept Bush, Cheney From 9/11 Testimony
March 23, 2007
...Remember how Bush and Cheney wouldn’t go under oath or even On the Record for the 9/11 Commission? And how they would only talk together, to keep their bullshit story straight?
...thrill to the antics of the White House Press Corps as they lure Snow into a trap he may never escape.
(...)
Q Then you had the 9/11 Commission, we’re having conversations, nothing under oath. And now this.
MR. SNOW: Well, wait a minute. The 9/11 Commission, number one, was authorized by Congress and signed by the President and supported by the administration. What we were trying to do was, again, to avoid the kind of precedent that we’re talking about now, which is to bring senior aides up under oath. So what you ended up having were, in fact — I think they were categorized as briefings. They used that particular — they used that formulation for precisely the same reasons I’m talking about now.
So I don’t think this is a matter of transparency. This is a matter of trying to have — what do you mean? Condoleezza Rice was on there and she was facing tough questioning from Richard BenVeniste —
Q But certain people — the Vice President and the President would not testify under oath. You had “conversations” at that time. And there’s a —
MR. SNOW: Yes. That’s perfectly appropriate.
Q You used the word “avoid.” There is an avoidance, it seems, of this administration to sit down and talk on the record, under oath, about critical issues.
MR. SNOW: What you’re saying is that every time somebody wants to try to mount a charge you ought to be able to get hauled up and testify under oath, with a presumption of criminality, rather than a presumption of goodwill. I’m not going to buy that.
Q Was it criminal, 9/11 — was that criminal?
MR. SNOW: No. What I’m saying is that the 9/11 Commission, we participated fully.
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The dam...
There it is - the dam. Standing in front, you have the likes of Snow, Hannity, O'Reilly, Rush, Scarborough, and the minions under Bush & Co. in the guise of Popular Mechanics... and the Dam was manageable for a while. There was a hole here and a hole there. But among these people, there were always enough fingers to plug it.
Now, there's more pressure. At this point, the shoes and socks have come off. They're struggling to get their toes to plug them up. Too bad Rush can't lift his foot more than a few inches. Not to mention, his toes are too fat.
But I hear it - creaking. There's a significant crack that's about to breach. The levee will break.
They know it.
They can't stop it.
Holy Shit...
Here's the video...
Click Here
Wow... watch him. Watch the smug look on his face when this reporter starts pushing him on 9/11. It starts at around 18:23. Watch him smile.
"So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Richard Cheney - Chief Executive Of Halliburton
Why We?
Why does Tony Snow keep saying "We"
Wasn't he working at FOX during the time frame mentioned on 9/11?
___________________
Together in Truth!
Yes...
Reporter: Mr. President, why are you and the Vice President insisting on appearing together before the 9/11 Commission?
Bush: Because the 9/11 Commish,.. the 9/11 Commission wants to ask us questions that's why we're meeting, and I look forward to meeting with them, and answering their questions.
Reporter: I was asking why you're appearing together rather than separately, which was their request.
Bush: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 Commission is... uh... looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.
Incidentally, I was trying to find the transcript of when the Jersey Girls appeared on Hardball, and said, "Don't you think they should be able to stand up and speak their own words?" The one transcript I found that is listed as April 8th, 2004 doesn't have any mention of it.
"So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Richard Cheney - Chief Executive Of Halliburton
Even Cops
on the street beat always question suspects separately, never together. That way they can't tailor their stories to corroborate each others' lies. Both of them in the same room... yeah right. So neither slips up and gives away something incriminating; which isn't already blatantly apparent.
The 9/11 Commission: What a monumental charade. The biggest investigational fcuk up imaginable, second only to the Warren Commission.
Actually...
I would say the 9/11 Commission was worse than the Warren Commission.
"So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Richard Cheney - Chief Executive Of Halliburton
Pls. back up the video stream!
Hi Jon, great material. I hope you will download the stream before it expires from c-span (60days). There are many utilities to download realaudio/video streams I'm using the vintage streamboxVCR but there are for sure much more modern applications for the task..
911 Truth Surge
This video covers the 911 Commission quite well. It's slams the Bush Administration. 911 Truth Surge
http://www.freedomtown.org/Site/Freedomtown%20Videos.html
Video has GONE...
Anyone download ?
GooTube etc ?
Thanks
Are you sure?
The video is an Real Media RTSP stream. The URL that Jon gave above is:
rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/whpb032207.rm
Browsers don't recognize that protocol and report the addreess type as unknown or unsupported. You should be able to get it if you use a download manager called NetTransport (windoze), as it supports downloading files using this protocol.
Linus users can try this:
HOWTO Rip Streams With MPlayer
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Rip_Streams_With_MPlayer
--
The true threat to liberty comes not from terrorists but from our political leaders whose natural inclination is to seize upon any excuse to diminish them.
~~ Walter Williams, Nightly Business Report, September 2001
Thanks dicktater...
When I clicked JG's link, my browser said it did not exist.
When I "Right Click / Copy Shortcut" and go into my Real Player and "File / Open" and paste in the rtsp URL. It works fine.
Be good if someone in the know could rip and upload for posterity.
Thanks for the Tech Support ;-)
Best wishes
Here are some great tools for everyone
We need to get as many people possible proficient in doing this kind of thing. Here are a couple of good links for NetTransport and Mediacoder (a great new tool for transcoding media):
NetTransport is an excellent download manager. I use it all the time when I'm doing Windoze.
NetTransport homepage:
http://www.xi-soft.com/
Last Freeware version: Net Transport 1.87
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page9.html
Net Transport now supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, MMS (Microsoft Media Services) and RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol) - five protocols used to transfer data. It can use multiple threads to download files (this feature is supported for HTTP, FTP, MMS and RTSP protocols). If a sites allows multithreaded downloads, you can expect much faster speeds. This is especially effective for MMS streams, because they use a fixed transmission speed and loading several streams of the same file fully uses your Internet bandwidth. RTSP also can use multiple threads to shorten download time, in addition, you can check 'Streaming/Delivery Bandwidth' to use TurboPlay feature of RealNetworks to accelerate delivery.
Mediacoder - A GREAT TOOL! Powerful, too. I just started using this one.
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/
MediaCoder is a FREE universal audio/video batch transcoder distributed under GPL license, which puts together lots of excellent audio/video codecs and tools from the open source community into an all-in-one solution, capable of transcoding among different audio/video formats. With many extra features and a expandable architecture, MediaCoder is more than a GUI of a bunch of command line tools.
Supported Fomats
MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+v2, MusePack, Speex, AMR, WMA, RealAudio, mp3PRO*
FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio, OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, WMA Lossless*, WAV/PCM
H.264, Xvid, MPEG 1/2/4, Theora, Flash Video, Dirac, 3ivx*, RealVideo*, Windows Media Video
AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia*, ASF, Quicktime*, OGM*
CD, VCD, DVD, CUE Sheet*
* supported as input only
* not all combinations supported
--
The true threat to liberty comes not from terrorists but from our political leaders whose natural inclination is to seize upon any excuse to diminish them.
~~ Walter Williams, Nightly Business Report, September 2001
One more thing...
I really don't like flash video files (.FLV). Unfortunately, videos from youtube are only available in this format (when saving to file). However, google videos are available in three formats when using a site called KeepVid to grab them (AVI, FLV, MOV). I believe that the AVI files are of higher quality from the get go and I immediately have more flexibility in viewing them versus FLV files. Also check out:
VideoLAN - Free Software and Open Source video streaming solution
http://www.videolan.org/
I think that VLC can be used to capture streams, too. I use it primarily as a player in Windoze and Linux. It plays AVIs and FLVs nicely and allows you to adjust video window size from a corner pull so you can quickly find the best maximum size for the video you are viewing.
http://www.keepvid.com
Also, keepvid now has a nifty littlew javascript that you can add to your toolbar to run for grabbing videos for many places. It works for IE, FF, and Opera. You can find it on their homepage above.
One reason I really like the toolbar link is that when invoking it, it grabs the URL and immediately moves to a keepvid link download page, where you can choose from the three video formats available if it's a google video, This stops the automatically invoked transfer of the video tha began when you hiot the "gooble" page and let's you have more bandwidth used for actually saving it to file.
Some video sites are tough to snag from. Since I use Opera, it is generally easy to open a file manager (TurboNavigator), to my Opera cache, sort by date/time or size, and find the video streaming in as it is the file constantly growing in size. Once it has finished doiwnloading, simply copy to a new directory, rename, voila!, it is done. Finding a file in IE or FF cache is annoying as there are more than one folder to search through for some weird reason.
Opera is by far the sweetest, most user configurable browser of the three.
Irfanview kicks ass for image viewing/manipulation, mp3s, and many videos as well:
http://www.irfanview.com
--
The true threat to liberty comes not from terrorists but from our political leaders whose natural inclination is to seize upon any excuse to diminish them.
~~ Walter Williams, Nightly Business Report, September 2001
BUSH REPORTED TO HAVE PURCHASED 99,000 ACRES IN PARAGUAY
just found -is this already known to anyone here ?
"This all still seems very innocent on the surface, but now let's add the five hundred U.S. troops that arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court jurisdiction. Neighboring countries and human rights organizations are concerned the massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential real estate for the U.S. military.
Does Bush plan on being charged with something in the future? Does Bush foresee a collapse of the United States and feels a strong need to have a place to cut and run to, or does Bush just need a nice secret little place other than Gitmo where he can send people he doesn't like?"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00308.htm
just my 2 cent
Or cut and run to Dubai.
Or cut and run to Dubai. Twenty more months in office. We can't let them get away.
American Citizenry.
We'll keep working to make sure that doesn't happen and that Justice prevails.
This story broke in the
This story broke in the alternative media here a few months ago. We smuggled all manner of Nazi higher-ups to Paraguay after WWII until conditions cooled down enough to bring them here for our own purposes. Interesting coincidence, no?
I believe there remains no extradition treaty between Paraguay and the U.S., so it's safe haven for the present day Nazis. One could build quite an impressive armored compound on acreage that size.
Here's two interesting articles...
...about this from Wonkette last fall:
http://wonkette.com/politics/george-w.-bush/we-hate-to-bring-up-the-nazi...
http://wonkette.com/politics/paraguay/state-dept-formally-denies-bushs-s...
BE SURE TO READ THE COMMENTS SECTION.
Several people used google earth to look at the supposed site. It may be now blocked by google. I haven't tried. One has to wonder why since paraguay AND THE US STATE DEPARTMENT claims it to be an old, unusable installation. One of the commentors claims measurements that he made dispute the State Department's claims as to runway length and width. And the commentor also shows how the State Department's statement is obviously misleading as to potential aircraft use.
The US State Department released a statement denying certain "rumors" about the US and Bush as related to this facility. Interestingly, the State Department's statement is reminescent of the one they released for a Silverstein spokesperson (not Silversten himself) regarding his use of the phrase "Pull it."
To date, Silverstein himself has not publicaly clarified his incriminating words uttered during that PBS documentary.
--
The true threat to liberty comes not from terrorists but from our political leaders whose natural inclination is to seize upon any excuse to diminish them.
~~ Walter Williams, Nightly Business Report, September 2001
If the Bushy's try to run
If the Bushy's try to run ,I think we should make no distintion between the terrorists & those who harbor them!And what's with this presumption of 'criminality'?They tell us habeaus corpus isn't an 'individual' right & we have no right to a presumption of innocence and if we have nothing to hide we shouldn't mind them taping our phones & reading our mail,but when it comes to them!!!!If they have nothing to hide WHY NOT testify under oath??!That alone is a de facto admission that they do indeed have something to hide!
I'm gonna say it again....
The potus and vice-potus were already under oath. they both swore oaths during their inaugurations to faithfully execute the laws of the united states.
i believe that if they lie to another (federal) "official" about anything related to an ongoing criminal investigation that they could be charged with obstruction of justice, at the very least. same holds for gonzales, judges, and other "officials" who are required to swear an oath BEFORE taking office.
interestingly, and in most states, an office is considered vacant until such oath is filed and any decisions rendered by that person (judge) assuming that office prior to the filing of their oath is legaly null and void. this is due to failure to fulfill the riquirements of office.
what is important are the transcripts and affidavits supporting the veracity of those transcripts.
WERE THE MEMBERS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION REQUIRED TO SWEAR AN OATH OF OFFICE?
if so, where is is filed?
Help me find an answer.
"official" as used here = servant.
--
The true threat to liberty comes not from terrorists but from our political leaders whose natural inclination is to seize upon any excuse to diminish them.
~~ Walter Williams, Nightly Business Report, September 2001