Rice Plans No Apology in 9/11 Testimony - Video Games Forum

hypedave · #1 (**permalink**) 04-07-2004, 08:48 PM

Like whats up with that?

view the story here

Grisu · #2 (**permalink**) 04-07-2004, 09:43 PM

What's up with that? An appology would mean they accept that they have made a mistake. Dubya and his corrupt bunch can't be honest. They have a mutated gene pool that prevents honesty.

SwamP_ThinG · #3 (**permalink**) 04-07-2004, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hypedave

Like whats up with that?

view the story here

Actually, i would be surprised if she did apologise! Me, and some 6 billion other human beings!
Apologising is the same as admitting guilt, and the BushCo is too arrogant and hard headed to admit to have ever done anything wrong.
Speaking of apologies, i was glad to see Bill Clinton taking the least travelled road when he apologised to the people of Rwanda, for not doing what he should have. The Rwanda genocide could have been prevented, had the strongest UN nations taken a stand and commited their troops. But as we know, the Rwanda genocide took place a short time after Somalia, when the US and the UK (but mostly the US) decided not to take part in any further peace keeping operations in Africa. Due mostly to the Black Hawk incident, and the Somalia fiasco.
I think Clinton had a big responsability in the entire Rwanda episode, and it was very courageous of him to publicly admit his guilt in the matter, and aknowledge the need for an act of contrition..
In that respect, i doubt anyone currently in the White House has the balls and the political will to do the same, in respect to other incidents such as 9/11 and Iraq.
Though I believe Colin Powell is on his way to perform his own act of contrition. He has made several remarks in those lines, although he needs to be more direct and conclusive. It could be either his conscience eating away at him, or it could be a wise political move to distance himself from the other White House hawks, wich he needs to do quickly if he wants to have more than a bleak chance of getting out of this mess with some credibility.
But since Condy Rice is from a quite diferent breed (the blind follower kind), i wouldn´t expect any type of apology. She´s the type that goes down with the ship, if the boss orders her to. Quite boring, actually!
:sleepy: :sleepy:

Phunkie · #4 (**permalink**) 04-08-2004, 11:25 AM

Rice hearing:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...7&pageNumber=0

"She sharply denied Clarke's assertion that Bush pushed him to find an Iraqi connection to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people in New York and Washington. "I'm quite certain that the president never pushed anybody to twist the facts," she said."

That kind of statements can get you in trouble later....

Ps. She always has her happy face on, doesn't she?

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

Startup · #6 (**permalink**) 04-08-2004, 10:01 PM

Why does anyone care whether she apologises or not? Most apologies are not heartfelt and they don't make anything better.

SwamP_ThinG · #7 (**permalink**) 04-09-2004, 02:43 AM

Condoleeza Rice´s Testimony:

Not only she refused to aknowledge to any mistakes, both on her part and in the entire admin. part, she even appeared as cocky and almost defiant.
Hadn´t it been for a few accute questions from Ben-Veniste and Roemer, this entire hearing would have been a complete charade.
Instead of answers, i think the hearing left more questions unanswered than before. Are they going to declassify the August 6 PDB? If the title was as sugestive as she said, it would be safe to assume the briefing was centered on the Al-Qaeda issue. And if so, why didn´t they summon the foremost expert they had, to discusse it with the president?
I´ll grant her, there wasn´t any "silver bullit". But maybe they could have placed a couple of flies in the oyntment, like arresting one or two of them, keep them under surveillence, and maybe prevent one or more jets being highjacked!
Honestly, i think the Bush admin allowed it to happen. Maybe they couldn´t stop it entirelly, simply because they wanted something to happen.
They were hoping for a "disaster" to happen, so they could push some reforms in, and change a few policies. Let´s go over a few quotes from Dr. Condy Rice, that you can read in full HERE:

"But I just don't believe that bringing the principals over to the White House every day and having their counterterrorism people have to come with them and be pulled away from what they were doing to disrupt was a good way to go about this. It wasn't an efficient way to go about it."

Oh, I see! Then those high level meetings are counterproductive, are they? So what´s the point of having them? Or maybe those meetings are actually social gatherings, where they sit drinking and eating beluga caviar with their fingers, and discuss "important" issues, like the shitty season the Chicago Bulls are having, uh?
I don´t follow! First she says the principals didn´t communicate enough, and now she says the meetings are worthless? Bugger me if i understand why...

"And I think that the unfortunate -- and I really do think it's extremely tragic -- fact is that sometimes until there is a catastrophic event that forces people to think differently, that forces people to overcome all customs and old culture and old fears about domestic intelligence and the relationship, that you don't get that kind of change."

It´s not the first quote i´ve read where the Bush administration seems to have almost wished for the disaster to happen, in order to push those long overdue "changes". They couldn´t "prevent" 9/11, because they didn´t want to. The only problem is that they got more than they had bargained for, and the disaster they wished for turned out to be slightly bigger than they anticipated.

"Dick Clarke never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism. He did brief the president later on cybersecurity, in July, but he, to my recollection, never asked."

Well well well, someone is lying here, but i wonder who? :indeed:

"Mr. Roemer, threat reporting is: "We believe that something is going to happen here and at this time, under these circumstances." This was not threat reporting."

To Dr.Rice, threat reporting is when they get a terrorist to hand them the time, place, and M.O. in a silver platter! What is she babbling about??
Do they expect the terrorists to walk into the local FBI headquarters and say "We are going to strike here, here, and here, at this hour, using this M.O.. So you better move your ass and arrest us to prevent it"?
Acording to her, the only time when its mandatory to have any action is when they find an orgy of evidence, laying around for them to pick it up. But since that only happens in bad movies, does this mean the CIA is sitting on their asses waiting for the next terrorist to come barging in through the door to spill his guts in an act of contrition?

"You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was.

We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 Commission. We've gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody -- nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices.

We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this threat period, Mr. Pickard. He says he did not tell the field offices to do this.

And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don't have any recollection of receiving a notice of threat."
TIMOTHY J. ROEMER, COMMISSION MEMBER

Condy Rice claims that she ordered an FBI task force to investigate the latest threat spykes, but the comission found nothing that even resembles that. So, if the field offices didn´t get the message, where did the pipeline went broke? Or maybe the message wasn´t ever sent in the first place?

"I have no recolection..."
"I don´t remember anything..."
"I was not aware."
"I do not believe I was aware of that."

For a so well briefed and informed person, who remembers a speech given by one of the comission members years ago, she seems to have forgotten a great deal of things, wouldn´t you say? In the words of one of the members, this whole thing is "hooey"!! :indeed:

"I don't believe in beating dead horses, but there's a bunch of lame ones running around here today. Let's see if we can't finally push them out the door."Quote from JAMES R. THOMPSON, COMMISSION MEMBER.

There´s a couple of "lame horses" around here also. Better get my whip!!

Startup · #8 (**permalink**) 04-09-2004, 06:11 PM

My two favorite parts had to be:

(1) RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

And even better...

(2) BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

SwamP_ThinG · #9 (**permalink**) 04-09-2004, 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Startup

My two favorite parts had to be:

(1) RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

And even better...

(2) BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

That´s what i don´t understand! If they knew there were Al-Qaeda cells in the US, why weren´t they under surveillence? All it took to prevent 9/11 was a simple arrest, or a timely search warrant. If they kept the pilots under control, there wouldn´t have been a highjacking, and thus no 9/11!
I mean, were these guys allowed to roam free through the US, with no surveillence at all? And what about Moussaoui? Was he a lucky break, just like the millenium plot?
Honestly, i think they were left alone intentionally. Anyone with two brain cells would have ordered a tail on those guys, a background check, their whereabouts and latest actions taken. If you have a few guys with links to a terror group, with no previous interest in aviation, and suddenly deciding to take flying lessons for comercial jets, wouldn´t you think there was something fishy about it?
And another thing: forgive my ignorance on this, but i was under the impression the NSA was the intel agency in charge of homeland security! The very name is pointing to it. National Security Agency, meaning it should handle all the security issues within the US borders, hence the name "national", right?. What happened to it?
Why create another agency from scratch, if they already had one in place with huge assets and investigative power? I don´t get it...
Maybe NSA doesn´t exist anymore, or maybe it was used only to spy on americans or some other shit, but by definition it should be the NSA who controls terrorism at home, shouldn´t it?
The CIA controls all the abroad stuff, the FBI is more of a federal law and order agency (a better equipped type of police), while the DOD and the NSA take care of national security issues, right? So what´s the Homeland office for?
And what´s Cheney´s Bureau of Special Projects for?
With so many agencies running around and such a blurred line separating each agency´s jurisdiction, it´s obvious something was bound to get fucked up along the line.