RADIO TIDBITS

Fats took a lengthy call from Deborah Burlingame, the sister of the pilot of Flight 77, about the upcoming movie about Flight 93. She's a typical wingnut and even had an op-ed published in the WSJ about the supposed disgrace the WTC memorial would be. To get a feel for how out of touch she is, here's what she had to say about Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission:

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, praised Rice as honest and open, even to partisan questions.
“I think she should be very, very proud,” said Burlingame, whose lapel held a picture of her brother sitting in a cockpit. LINK (You can find out more about Debbie here)

Now, let's recall a small part of Rice's testimony on 4/8/2004:

MR. KEAN: I've got a question now I'd like to ask you. It was given me by a number of members of the families. Did you ever see or hear from the FBI, from the CIA, from any other intelligence agency any memos or discussions or anything else between the time you got into office and 9/11 that talked about using planes as bombs?

MS. RICE: Let me address this question because it has been on the table. I think that concern about what I might have known or we might have known was provoked by some statements that I made in a press conference.

I was in a press conference to try and describe the August 6th memo, which I've talked about here in my opening remarks and which I talked about with you in the private session. And I said at one point that this was a historical memo, that it was not based on new threat information, and I said no one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon -- I'm paraphrasing now -- into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.



This is what Rice had to say at a press conference on 5/16/2002:

Q Why shouldn't this be seen as an intelligence failure, that you were unable to predict something happening here?

DR. RICE: Steve, I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.


In the same press conference, Rice went over the "official" history leading up to 9-11:

RICE: The period in mid-July was a point of another major threat spike, and it all related to the G-8 summit that was coming up. And in fact, there was specific threat information about the President. There was a lot of work done with liaison services abroad; in fact, the CIA went on what I think you would call a full-court press to try and deal with these potential attacks, and indeed, managed through these intelligence activities and liaison activities to disrupt attacks in Paris, Turkey and Rome.


This is where Rice lies about the past. The threat at the G-8 summit was exactly the use of planes as missiles. Either Debbie was uniformed or she is just another BushBot. The preponderance of the evidence points to BushBot.