Sunday, January 18, 2004

Truth take's another hit: Will anyone care?

Who wants to bet any one of the "celebrity" trials gets tons more press coverage than this travesty?

9/11 Panel Unlikely to Get Later Deadline: Hearings Being Scaled Back to Finish Work by May

President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, virtually guaranteeing that the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials said last week.

A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed the panel that they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said.

With time running short, the 10-member bipartisan panel has already decided to scale back the number and scope of hearings that it will hold for the public, commission members and staffers said. The commission is rushing to finish interviews with as many as 200 remaining witnesses and to finish examining about 2 million pages of documents related to the attacks.
...
"We need at least a few more months to complete our work," said commission member Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who has pushed for more time. "We have a breathtaking task ahead of us, and we need enough time to make sure our work is credible and thorough."

But the White House and Hastert's office made clear during discussions over the past two weeks that they would strongly oppose any extension of the deadline, which would require congressional approval, officials said. One source described the issue Friday as "dead in the water."


Dead in the water. Along with getting at the truth of what happened. Heaven forbid we not give Bush enough time to try to spin his administration's mistakes before the fall election. This needs to be HUGE issue.

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