Bob Kerrey just said it did not bother him that Bush read Pet Goat.

My God, why would he say that? Have we gotten so politically correct that sitting in a classroom when we are under attack is ok for a president.

On Franken. I am angry he said that.

n/t

Facts are such stubborn things.

Bob spends too much time with little boys and Rove has the pictures to prove it. We can not trust bob. All the members of the 911 commission are tainted.

any war - so, I guess has second thoughts about seing * go.
Anyone watching his questioning during the comission shouldn't be surprised. Kerrey is worse than Joementum.

The change of mood among his party in the three weeks since Mr Clinton testified to the grand jury has been thrown into stark relief by Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat for whom a young Bill Clinton first cut his campaigning teeth, who launched an excoriating attack on the President in the Senate.

After accusing Mr Clinton of "immoral" and "disgraceful" behaviour, Mr Lieberman, a long-time political ally, said Mr Clinton's actions "contradicted the values" that the President had publicly embraced for the past six years and "compromised his moral authority" to restore family values.

Other senior Democrats in the Senate endorsed Mr Lieberman's condemnation, and it was as if the floodgates had opened. This sudden change of heart by Mr Clinton's erstwhile allies has been occasioned by the lurid and distinctly unsavoury details of his liaison with Ms Lewinsky.

(snip)

The desertions from the Clinton camp are approaching epidemic proportions. George Stephanopolous and Dee Dee Mayers, both architects of his public persona in the early years of the administration, have turned against him, and last week Robert Reich, one of Mr Clinton's oldest political friends, joined in.

The President is now "almost totally bereft of authority", said Mr Reich, Secretary of Labour in the first Clinton administration. He "now appears to be a better liar than truth teller". His denials of the affair were spoken "with the same emotional intensity he has brought to bear on public issues. Thus, he will never again be entirely believed".

But the way in which Senator Lieberman turned on his friend last week provided an insight of how even his closest allies have now conceded that the Lewinsky affair is a lie too far for the President.

(snip)

With the exception of Vice President Al Gore, whose Boy Scout loyalty to Mr Clinton appears undented, they are backing away from him one by one. First it was Richard Gephardt, the House Minority Leader, who declared Mr Clinton's behaviour and his attitude afterwards "wrong and reprehensible". Then Paul Wellstone, Senator from Minnesota, said the President's actions were "indefensible".

Last Thursday Senator Bob Kerrey, the one-legged Vietnam veteran from Nebraska, followed Mr Lieberman on to the Senate floor to endorse his remarks. He declared Mr Clinton's affair "immoral" and accused him of using a standard of truth "not adequate . . . for my children, for me, or for the leader of our country".

Et tu, Paul Wellstone?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/09/06/wcli06.html

out that the entire panel agreed that they could not use any of the information in the findings either for or against candidates. i think this is exactly why he didnt say more even though al definitely did, and encouraged kerrey to as well.

he was definitely being "diplomatic" but it is interesting that sometimes he is talks tough, but other times not as much. i hope it was because he felt he couldnt say it at this time because knowing his personality i dont see that he doesnt care about bush response on 9/11

He was just saying..... what difference did it really make, on that day. Probably none. In the terms of what could have been done during those 7 minutes. So more or less, he sort of ducked the answer.

Now WE ALL look at it as a moral/leadership failure in AWOL/moron. Kerrey didn't address that. He just said we all reacted differently to things that day.

If you were looking for a partisan attack in response to the question, you aren't going to get it from Bob Kerrey.

Bush should have sprung into action the minute he found out the FIRST plane hit the tower, even if it was believed to be an accident. It's the World Trade Center for cripes sake!!! One errant plane flying into it was a serious threat to the MILLIONS of people who live and work nearby. It wasn't a goddamn grain silo in Nebraska. And then when the second plane crashed and he was told we were under attack....Fugeddaboutit. He should have been on the horn with the military and his advisors. His butt should have been in his limo and the hell out of that school. 7 minutes being read to by kids? Oh hell no.

President Gore would never have gotten away with that. It wouldn't have taken a film by Michael Moore for us to find out about it either. Right wing politicians and pundits would not have even waited for the dust from the towers to settle before they were flogging it from high atop the hills. It would be a campaign platform and there would have been ads running showing Gore in that classroom nonstop.

hearings that he can't understand that if Bush had declared a national emergency when the first plane hit that the people in the 2nd tower would have had additional time (not much, granted) to get out of the building rather than being told to return to their desks, and the people in the Pentagon would have certainly had time to save their own lives. What an asshole Kerrey is being after all he had learned of that day. Not a thinking man for sure.

...and an additonal 20 minutes or so in that school, eventually making his way to the school library where he surrounded himself with those kids (whom he supposedly didn't want to alarm) and announced that the country had been attacked.

That is what made me mad. He did defend him on the grounds of confusion. He is the so-called president....I don't want a confused president.

party.

It's the nine months of negligence that led up to 9/11 that bother me.

What bothers me is that Democrats are bothered by the 7 minutes more than by the 9 months. WTF is that? That is something to be pissed about, and Dems don't have to go farther than the bedroom mirror to address the failure. That negligence should have been an issue for two years and strongly through this election cycle. Dems chose to become obsessed over 7 minutes instead.

Do I think not waiting 7 minutes would have been more appropriate? Sure, but that's qualitatively much different than the level of condemnation Dems assign to it.

I fully agree that if it had been a Dem, that 7 minutes would have been unendingly repeated as an accusation of unfitness and near-treason had roles been reversed. It wouldn't have bothered me then either, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that my fellow Dems would be situationally reversed and adamant that it didn't mean much of anything had it been Clinton or Gore or Kerry.

I like to think that the 7 minutes was a surrogate for the apparent Democratic timidity in addressing the negligence issue, which many Dems seem to have only recently have started accepting as important.

The Democrats I know and the ones I've corresponded with here at DU don't complain exclusively about the 7 minutes issue. That is just one of many other 9/11 issues that have been discussed here and elsewhere: the Bush administration ignoring the Hart/Rudman report, not acting after receiving the Aug.6 2001 PDB, focusing on plans to invade Iraq rather than on al Qaeda, etc. Frankly, the 7 minutes thing DOES bother me because I know that Bush's inaction lasted considerably MORE than 7 minutes (see my other post on this thread).

Ask yourself that? I question any of our Democrats who did not and do not stand up and speak out on this.

He doesn't want to be exposed as a traitor by subsequent Kerry Administration investigations. Kerrey is a pro-Bush ass coverer.