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hypedave · #5 (**permalink**) 04-08-2004, 02:48 PM

Okay so shoot me cause im a daily reader of this website bushrecall.org but I have to share this daily reality check with those who wish to read it

Quote:

Special Daily Reality Check: What Did She Just Say?
Breaking Down Condoleezza Rice's Testimony

4/8/2004

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice finally appeared before the 9/11 commission this morning, taking questions from all ten commissioners for three hours. The commission had long been denied the chance to publicly question Rice by a reticent Bush administration, which lamely attempted to hide behind a vague precedent that supposedly barred such an occasion. But that was settled after the Bush folks recently flip-flopped on the matter, leading to Rice's 9:00 AM date with the commission. So how did she fare in the spotlight?

Let's just say it looked as though Rice called up former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer for some advice on how to handle the tough questioning. Fleischer was a master at smirking his way through difficult press conferences while delivering winding responses littered with half-truths. Rice attempted to follow suit, but couldn't duplicate Fleischer's mastery. Perhaps it was too much to ask; it would be like asking a martial arts neophyte to split cinderblocks after an hour's lesson.

Rice delivered her testimony in an even tone, often smiling as she answered questions about what went wrong prior to 9/11. Her testimony was largely comprised of standard Bush administration boilerplate, with a few interesting twists. Here is the crux of her defense, and a real-world translation.

We were only in office 233 days.

Translation: Cut us some slack guys. We were trying to do everything we could, but we just didn't have enough time to implement everything.

Why this is false: Former antiterror chief Richard Clarke sent Rice a memo on January 25, 2001 that detailed the threat posed by al Qaeda and a suggested plan to deal with it. The Bush administration did not develop a comprehensive plan for dealing with al Qaeda until September 4, 2001 - seven months later. And the Bush plan largely copied many of the main points from Clarke's earlier memo.

Rice also cited the creation of Dick Cheney's task force as evidence that the administration was serious about this threat. The only problem? It never met before 9/11.
There were structural problems in intelligence sharing that prevented us from thwarting the threat.

Translation: Don't blame us, we inherited this mess.

Why this is false: Rice actually scored some real points on this issue, then blew it all by severely overstating her case. It is true that the FBI and CIA were notoriously deficient when it came to sharing information - as Commissioner Bob Kerrey noted, that was one of the first things that he learned when he arrived in Washington. During her three-hour session, Rice consistently shed blame for all intelligence failures on systemic problems and professed to be profoundly concerned with this issue.

Here's the rub: Rice mentioned the creation of the Homeland Security Department as a major step forward on this issue - but the Bush administration initially opposed its creation. She also couldn't seem to get her timeline straight. She claimed to be worried about these structural difficulties during a spike in the terror threat during the summer of 2001, but - as Commissioner Jaime Gorelick pointed out - her policy recommendations did not include any language about a proposed realignment of US intelligence agencies. Rice's assertions that FBI field offices were put on alert during the summer due to increased chatter was also undercut when several commissioners noted that none of their interviews with FBI agents verified this claim. Rice weakly asserted that we should all be certain that the president took the threat of domestic security seriously because he was meeting with CIA director George Tenet every day. That's like milking a horse.
There's nothing we could have done differently to prevent 9/11

Translation: We here in the Bush administration aren't big on that whole "introspection" thing.

Why this is false: Rice was repeatedly asked to defend why none of the principles (ie, cabinet-level officials) in the Bush administration were ever brought together to discuss the threat posed by al Qaeda, even though she stated on multiple occasions that the president was very focused on this issue. She dismissed the importance of such a meeting (even while lamenting the lack of information-sharing in this business).

Rice tried diligently to undermine Clarke's claim that "shaking the trees" by leaning on top FBI and CIA officials to disclose information about potential plots could have thwarted the 9/11 plot. According to Rice, the Clinton administration got lucky when it stopped an al Qaeda plot to destroy Los Angeles airport on the millennium, and the Bush folks simply didn't have similar luck with 9/11.

Of course, the intelligence business does rely on an awful lot of chance and happenstance, but this cannot simply be chalked up to luck. An FBI agent raised a specific concern about flight schools on July 10, 2001. President Bush was delivered a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) on August 6, 2001 entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." The intelligence community had received large amounts of nonspecific "chatter" about an upcoming threat - in other words, we knew something was coming, we just didn't know what, when or where. Maybe Rice is right. Maybe shaking the trees wouldn't have helped. Maybe.
We were just doing what Clinton did.

Translation: This spotlight is getting bright, can't we share it? And did we mention the whole "233 days" thing?

Why this is false: Too little, too late from the Bush team - their animosity towards all things Clinton has already been well documented. Rice mentioned that Tenet stayed on as CIA director, and Clarke and his team were retained in the antiterror field. And if Rice's testimony had happened only a few weeks earlier, we might have believed her. But the Bush folks spent much of the last two weeks viciously savaging Clarke's character. It is now far too late to pull him back into the fray. Vice President Cheney called him "out of the loop," and Rice herself took to the airwaves to denounce his allegations.
Attacking al Qaeda after the USS Cole bombing would just make them stronger.

Translation: There is no reasonable way to decipher this so that it makes sense.

Why this is false: Rice argued at length that simply dealing with al Qaeda on a tactical basis without a larger strategic framework would only embolden bin Laden. Finally, Commissioner Bob Kerrey became so incensed that he cautioned, "Please, don't filibuster me."

Rice argued that the proper response to the Cole bombing needed to fit into a larger foreign policy framework. In order to deal with al Qaeda, we needed to fit that into our plans for dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. In essence, she was telling the commission, we need to view foreign policy as an intricate web of relationships that all must be untangled before we run off and pursue some rash policy to pursue some dangerous revenge fantasy.

Hmmm, now Iraq makes even less sense than it did before...

Read more here and here.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR: The Bush administration will almost certainly cite Rice's appearance today as proof that they are doing all they can to cooperate with the 9/11 commission. We've heard this all before.

While Rice's public testimony was a step in the right direction, the Bush team should do more to honor their commitment to get to the bottom of the 9/11 attacks. Rice was repeatedly questioned about the August 6, 2001 PDB. She claimed that this document didn't amount to a threat warning, but there's no way for the public to decide for themselves because it remains classified. When pressed on the issue, Rice did not support declassifying the document, but she should.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"I don't believe in beating dead horses, but there's a bunch of lame ones running around here." -- 9/11 Commissioner James Thompson (R)

view full article here http://www.bushrecall.org/DailyRealityCheck.asp?ID=110