Repubs molesting Lady Liberty while pretending to guard national security

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Republicans who lead by lying

Robert Scheer
San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, October 4, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/04/EDG6PKDUJJ1.DTL

THEY ARE such liars. No, I am not speaking only of the dissembling GOP House leaders led by Speaker Dennis Hastert, who, out of naked political calculation, covered up for one of their own in the sordid teen-stalking case of former Rep. Mark Foley. Call me old school, but I am still more concerned with the Republicans molesting Lady Liberty while pretending to be guarding the nation's security, an assignment which they have totally botched. The news about the Foley coverup, while important as yet another example of extreme hypocrisy on the part of the Republican virtues police, should not be allowed to obscure the latest evidence of administration deceit as to its egregious ineptness in protecting the nation.

On Monday, a State Department spokesman conceded that then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had indeed been briefed in July 2001 by George Tenet, then-director of the CIA, about the alarming potential for an al Qaeda attack, as Bob Woodward has reported in his aptly named new book, "State of Denial."

"I don't remember a so-called emergency meeting," Rice had said only hours earlier, apparently still suffering from some sort of post-9/11 amnesia that seemed to afflict her during her forced testimony to the 9/11 Commission. The omission of this meeting from the final commission report is another example of how the Bush administration undermined the bipartisan investigation that the president had tried to prevent. Surely lying under oath, in what was arguably the most important official investigation in the nation's history, should be treated more seriously than the evasiveness in the Paula Jones case that got President Bill Clinton impeached. Nor is it just Rice who should be challenged, for Tenet seems to have provided Woodward with details concerning the administration's indifference to the terrorist threat that he did not share with the 9/11 Commission.

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Such weaseling would be funny if the topic were not so serious. But there is no way Rice can squirm out of this one, despite her impressive track record of calculated distortion on everything from Iraq's nonexistent WMDs to the trumped-up ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Can there be any better case for turning over control of at least one branch of Congress to the opposition party so that we might finally have hearings to learn the truth of this matter that is far more important, and sordid, than the Foley affair?

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1. 7/10/01 7/10 7/10 7/10/01 7/10

"The news about the Foley coverup, while important as yet another example of extreme hypocrisy on the part of the Republican virtues police, should not be allowed to obscure the latest evidence of administration deceit as to its egregious ineptness in protecting the nation."


edit oh wow. Didn't see this is in GD. Greatest of the Great.


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