Reply #37: GOP Talking points.... change the "subject"

[radfringe]

once again GOPers are engaging in "Operation Discredit" -- latest is to characterize the 9-11 commission as "partisan"...

9/11 Panel's Findings Vault Bush Credibility To Campaign Forefront
By Dana Milbank -- Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54702-2004Jun19.html

The White House's swift and sustained reaction last week to the preliminary findings of the Sept. 11, 2001, commission showed the potential threat the 10-member panel poses to President Bush's reelection prospects.

After the commission staff released its findings Wednesday that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda -- challenging an assertion Bush and Vice President Cheney have made for the past two years -- Bush declared again that there was, in fact, a relationship.

--snip--

Many Republicans are furious about the commission -- though its members are evenly split between the two parties and it is chaired by a Republican appointed by Bush. They say that Bush was right to oppose the commission in the first place, and that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was right this year when he unsuccessfully fought an extension of the commission's deadline.

The panel has become "a tool for partisan politics," Rep. Eric I. Cantor (Va.), a member of the House Republican leadership, charged in an interview last week. "With the latest commission finding coming out that there were allegedly no ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, I think they are totally off their mission, and I think that's indicative of the political partisanship."

---snip---

Bush aides have sought to blunt the Democratic offensive not by challenging the commission's findings but by arguing that Kerry and the media have mischaracterized the findings. The White House issued a 1,000-word document titled "TALKING POINTS: 9-11 Commission Staff Report Confirms Administration's Views of al-Qaeda/Iraq Ties."