Quote:
Originally posted by Not Me
Ty, don't you get it? This shouldn't be something that is determined by point-counter-point editorials in the WaPo and the NR. Gorelick needs to testify under oath as to her role in all this. Just like Clinton did, and Rice did, and Ashcrofit did, and Reno did, and Bush and Cheney will be doing.
See, hun, that is the problem. Gorelick is making her case on an editorial page instead of before the Commission, where she should be making her case.
Now do you get the conflict of interest?
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They can take a statement from her, like they did with Zelikow. That doesn't seem to bother you. And she can recuse herself from dealing with, e.g., her memo. I've said this before.
According to you, the reason this is insufficient is that the significance of "the wall" is so massive that it looms over the pre-9/11 world like Harold Bloom and Shakespearean criticism. So far, you've posted nothing that supports this conjecture. It's a load of crap. It's CYA on the FBI's part, pointing fingers to avoid responsibility for failing to do their job. Check on the
Sacred Terror book, written long before Ashcroft and Sensenbrenner and the National Review appropriated this issue to their own partisan ends: It goes on for pages and pages about the FBI's failures pre-9/11, and there is not a word about "the wall." Lots of words about other reasons for the FBI's insularity and lack of accountability, but zippo about "the wall." Which sets aside the fact that -- by all accounts -- Gorelick simply codified prior practice.
The logic of the piece you quoted is, Ashcroft said outrageous things, Gorelick bitch-slapped him, so they disagree and ergo there is a conflict of interest. This is exactly the game Ashcroft was playing when he started this, and it's a sorry-ass attempt to defuse the criticism of him that's coming. They're going to ream him for all sorts of things, basically because he couldn't have cared less about counterterrorism before 9/11 and got caught with his pants down, and he's going to whine that it's partisan and that it's all Gorelick's fault. And people who are too stupid to follow the details may think there's something to it.
