Kerry rescinded those penalties because they were inappropriate, because the people penalized were not in a position to influence security. The people at the higher echelons were not penalized, heck some of them were not even interviewed. The ARB report under Hillary Clinton was a whitewash, and the fact that Kerry was compelled to vacate the punishment on the scapegoats is evidence of that.
How is the fact that Kerry rescinded the punishment of the people identified as responsible in the ARB report because (according to you) they were not actually responsible an indication that the ARB was not independent?
/with all due respect, your comments regarding Pickering make no sense. Pickering was not scheduled to testify that day (in fact he said: "The White House pulled me back")
He said he wanted to testify, but the White House pulled him back. Issa's committee never even invited him to testify that day (what the White House pulled Pickering back from was Pickering's own voluntary desire to appear before the committee).
Issa then lied and said that "Ambassador Pickering, his people and he refused to come before our committee" - Pickering
didn't refuse, he wanted and was willing to testify, and the committee never called him to testify before them (as Pickering noted, because "we were told the majority said I was not welcome at that hearing").
and he was in fact called as a witness, and did testify, and I believe that he was in fact called by the House Committee Leader.
The third time. The first time was the above, in March when Issa and the Republicans didn't want him to testify and then lied and said he "refused", and the second time was in May, when Pickering again said he wanted to testify, and Issa's excuse for not letting him testify was that the White House simply didn't make a formal proper request to have the Democrats call him as a witness that say (Issa claimed that had the White House made that formal request, "we would have allowed him"). The Republicans made no effort to call Pickering themselves as a witness that day, despite being told that he wanted to testify.
In neither March nor May did Issa's committee invite Pickering to testify, in fact, and on both of these days, by the way, were days of
public testimony.
When Pickering
was finally called as a witness, Issa strangely insisted that his testimony be heard behind closed doors, instead of in public like the two instances where Issa did not invite Pickering to testify and did not allow him to speak.
