Tomdispatch Rice And Beans Tom

Tomdispatch: “Rice and Beans”

Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch.com discusses the odd maneuvering of the Bush administration around the testimony of National Security Adviser Condi Rice and the president and vice president before the September 11 Commission. Rice will now testify in public and under oath, but Bush and Cheney will testify in private, together, with no official transcript. Bush and Cheney act suspiciously as though they have something to hide and are afraid that if they testify separately, they won’t be able to keep their story consistent. It is like two wise guys in police interrogation; the best way to trip them up about their alibis is to get them in separate rooms talking on their own, and then compare the two stories for discrepancies. Bush and Cheney are attempting to avoid such a potential debacle, one supposes. But if you have to stay together to keep your story straight, then the story is unlikely to be an account of the actual events.