LUDIC LOG

So, let's review George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's 'testimony' before the 9/11 commission.

1. Unlike actual testimony -- and unlike all the actual testimony given by everyone else so far, including the former president and vice president -- the things that Bush and Cheney said today were not given under oath, as they had refused to be sworn.

2. Also unlike everyone else's testimony, theirs was not be electronically recorded; only note-taking was allowed, another condition on which they insisted.

3. Their 'testimony' before a commission representing the interests of the American people and concerned with the most devastating attack on this country since its inception will not be made public.

4. Once again, unlike everyone else who has testified including their own national security director, Cheney and Bush would not speak to the commission separately. They would only allow questioning to take place when they were together, another condition upon which they generally insisted (they said that if separate testimony were demanded, they would give the commission only one hour of time apiece). This does very little for the notion that George W. Bush is incapable of answering questions about his own policies without prompting. The head of the commission says he has no problem with this joint non-testimony, because he thinks they "need to have one story". Needing to have one story (also known as 'coming up with a story and sticking with it') is a condition usually invoked in the process of lying, since, after all, there is no need to get your story straight if you are telling the truth.

5. Although the tandem appearance in fact lasted more than an hour (three whole hours! So the nation's chief executive and his ventriloquist were willing to testify about the greatest intelligence failure of all time for the duration of a long movie!), Bush and Cheney still insisted that they could end the questioning at any time and without any warning, without consent of the commission.

6. After finally giving the non-testimony, George Bush, a man seemingly incapable of expressing an appropriate emotion, seemed absurdly pleased with his claim that he answered all the questions he was asked, as if being able to answer questions about his administration's foreign policy and intelligence capabilities is an achievement worth of special praise.

7. Finally, the president -- who opposed the very existence of the committee and who ducked questioning by it until he was essentially shamed into it by the widows of 9/11 victims -- yukked it up with reporters, saying he was "glad he did it" and was "glad he took the time" (three whole hours!) out of his busy schedule to trouble himself by appearing before them. He generally treated the whole thing like an unexpectedly pleasant golf outing and stopped just short of saying it was fun.

And yet, the mainstream media doesn't think this is remotely scandalous. Although all these facts are available by reading any wire report, the headlines are all of the "Bush & Cheney to answer questions before 9/11 commission" variety rather than the "Bush & Cheney insist on restrictions" or "Bush & Cheney refuse to give sworn testimony" variety.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, we've handed the dirty work of massive suppression of a popular anti-colonial uprising over to local officials so as not to get our hands dirty; we have awarded cultural hero status to a dead football player while simultaneously not allowing ourselves to be troubled by photographs of anonymous corpses who weren't lucky enough to be millionaires; over two dozen of our soldiers are being courtmartialed for torturing Iraqi prisoners; the most partisan Supreme Court justice in memory claims the judicial nomination process is too partisan, while the most Republican Democrat in memory claims that democracy is overrated; the White House rewrites presidential biographies to make it appear that our founding fathers were neoconservative Republicans; and the government agency reponsible for interdicting the finances of suspected terrorists discloses that it has dedicated five times as much personnel, one hundred times as many investigations, and one thousand times as much money to the pursuit of Fidel Castro over the last 12 years than to the pursuit of the people who flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers.

Today is a great day for the truth.