Bush undergoes 9/11 questioning

US President George W Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have begun their appearance before the commission investigating the 11 September attacks.

Mr Bush and Mr Cheney are not under oath, and no recording is being made at the private meeting at the White House.

from the BBC

Simple question: if they are going to tell the truth, why do they have to testify together and why can no record be made?

I can understand even the testimony not being open, if issues of national security are in play (though Rice was able to testify openly). I can understand why it would be thought appropriate to have the commission come tot he White House in stead of the president and VP going to the commission (though the president and VP seems to be able to go anywhere else in the country safely and without inhibiting their performance of their duties, if the end result is more money for their political campaign).

But if one were to set out to intentionally devise a circumstance that would demonstrate an intent to lie, a scenario that would justify the most outlandish of conspiracy theories, a situation that would conclusively prove that the president is as stupid as his harshest critics have suggested, I don't think one could come up with a better plan than this. Even refusing to testify at all could have a more positive construction placed on it than this.

Can anyone at this point have any doubt that the administration is corrupt, deceitful, and untrustworthy? I can't see how.

from an exchange with robbiesmom

> I think it could radicalize folks toward getting rid of the US army, but
> not toward the sort of go-for-broke fighting I see.

One of the things that I have heard again and again in Iraq, in Palestine, and in Somalia. Heavily armed societies in which honor and community/tribal/clan ties run strong. If there's fighting in a neighborhood, especially an urban neighborhood, men (and often women) don't ask "What's going on?" or "How did this start?" They grab weapons and head out the door. And then they start shooting at whoever is the clear enemy/outsider. Instinctive reaction, screw logic or consequences.

> I wonder why there
> would be *thousands* of former regime folks fighting, even though it is
> a Sunni area, because surely they know that they're not going to win;

I don't think that they believe that. They know that they *can* win. They saw the Somalis win, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and some of them have read books about Vietnam. They know if they kill enough Americans and make the casualites look bad, and get al Arabiyya and al Jazeera to show them on TV, where CNN and the Interneet will pick them up, Americans will get upset and we'll pull our troops out.

We've been there a year and we're hunkering in compounds and firebases. Carbombs and missile/mortar crews can go anywhere they want (apart from our most heavily defended areas. There seems to be very little rule of law in the urban areas. We're losing. We haven't lost, but we haven't accomplished what we *had* to accomplish, which is create stability, isolate the insurgents, and create an effective and credible native government and security service to hand things over to. If we don';t change something in the way we're operating, we'll be right where we are now, or worse, in a year. We will have created the only thind worse than Saddam Hussein's Iraq: an Iraq which is *more* hostile, more unstable, less safe for its inhabitants, its neighbors, and the world, and which serves as a beacon for the antiWestern radical fundmentalist Islamic terror campaign.

any interest in some gaming on Sunday?

I have a number of games sitting around waiting to be played, including some new (or old) card games I want to try out or get back to (Horus Heresy/40K, Legend of the Five Rings, Dune--yeah, he doesn't like it, but I do, Babylon 5, Mythos, 7th Sea, Legend of the Burning Sands). Plus I also have Football Champions, Buffy, and Monty Python, which I've never played and Illuminati and Dixie, which I haven't played in a long time.

I have plans for Saturday (house cleaning, a picnic with Da Grrlz, soccer to watch), but I was curious to see whether folks would like to come over for some gaming on Sunday?

TV going spare

A result of all the TV confusion a few weeks ago is that I have a 19" Mitsubishi colour television that needs a home. I paid $50 for it about two years ago, second hand, so any offer of $30 or more would see it going home with you.