The pivotal question came from Richard Ben-Veniste, former Watergate prosecutor and current commissioner of the 9/11 hearings, who asked, "Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th (presidential daily briefing) warned against possible attacks in this country? (And do you) recall the title of that PDB?"
Dr. Rice replied: "I believe the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.' " "...the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.' " "...attack inside the..." Smoky in here!
August 6th, 2001 might be destined to become another one of those dates that sticks in the national datebook like June 17 (Watergate break-in) and December 7 (Pearl Harbor). If that sounds too radical, listen to this: on August 6, 2001 George Bush read that Bin Laden was determined to attack inside the United States.
In order to ignore a headline like that, one would have to be extremely thick — and to some degree we've come to expect our presidents to be thickish. But the help? That's their job! Honor insists on resignation. Hubris fights tooth and nail.
I've studied the transcripts, I don't care what she said; it's the fact she's still saying it. Like so many others in the Bush cabinet, Rice has this strange inability to see or hear. I was baffled by Paul O'Neill's deaf/blind metaphor, but I'm getting it now. These people, like sentinels, stand beside whatever they said before, and defend it.
What are they defending? And why? Who asked? All this is is an inquiry into an act of mass murder we witnessed. We were all there. Every last goddam one of us were there, whether we lived through it or not. You'd better believe we were all there. Yet Dr. Rice in words and demeanor seems to be saying we weren't there, not like she was. We didn't see or hear what she saw and heard. We didn't have the context she had, or the intelligence she had, or the focus.
Article comments
1 - Nyx
Why should she resign? She wasn't any more at fault than the president.
He and his entire staff should resign.
2 - David Flanagan
To be fair, lets let Dr. Rice have her say as well. Ben-Veniste's behaviour was rather rude in that he tried to get her to answer quickly and cut her off hoping to leave the point at that. Dr. Rice, fortunately, did not let that one lie. Here is the dialogue in context:
Once the memo itself is declassified, which the White House is working to do right now, the case will be made, but, really we don't have to wait. Instead, we can just go back to 2002 and look at a quote from former presidential candidate Bob Graham:
So, that is what you'll find when you declassify that memo, information dating back to when Bill Clinton was still President with no other specifics than "something big is coming."
By then, I'm sure partisans will find some other item to try and spin into a scandal. This issue, however, is a dead duck and Ben-Veniste knows it, which is why he tried to keep Dr. Rice from clarifying.
And the politicization of 9/11 goes on.
David
3 - Dirtgrain
The White House is working frantically to declassify a memo? Yeah, sure, they have everybody working on it. They're working in shifts. Declassify? How hard can it be? Maybe some doctoring needs to be done. The title alone will probably be transformed in the following way: From "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" to, with a few blacked-out words, "Determined United States."
Oh, and by the way, Condoleeza Rice is Oliver North.
4 - Shark
It's sickening, but what's more sickening?
The other day, I realized that:
1) we're not going to get our country back; even if Bush & Co. leave, their shit has become so institutionalized that they could all be sent to Hell tomorrow and NOTHING would change; Halliburton and the Military-industrial-secrecy-energy industry wouldn't miss a beat; not for generations.
2) They've already dismantled over 30 years of 'regulatory' actions taken for the greater good of our people and our environment -- and we won't be able to get back to ZERO starting point for years and years. Losing a few decades in the fight to preserve the environment, get off the petroleum-heroin kick, assure access to clean water and clean air might mean the difference in life and death for millions. It might also mean the difference in 'independence' and some WW III fought by CEOs with their backs to the wall.
3) There is no cosmic guarantee that America will survive as a nation. America can disappear in a heartbeat -- the new 'Rome'.
4) These fuckers are expediting Her demise and we might see the dissolution of the 'American national ideal' dissolve into dust in our lifetimes.
5) This will end badly.
6) We've already lost, and Malcom X's "by any means necessary" is starting to sound like a defiant final gasp for the true patriot who cares about the future of this once-great nation.
5 - CW Fisher
Dr. Rice is free to return to academia in better proportion to her real stature. She's a fly to shoo.
George Bush is now equally irrelevant by my stick. I don't need polls to know he's already lost. We were attacked by hornets and he threw the nest into the crowd.
I've moved on. The election's over, Kerry's in power, but somehow... I keep seeing us still in Iraq. I'm going back to the future, did I hear the phrase "peace with honor"? Kerry too is talking about a job that needs to be "finished."
Whatever "job" this is, I'd like Kerry to get it in his head now that our "job" is to do what our host has demanded: go home now. Our "job" was never our job in the first place. We came to find phony WMDs. Finding none, we calmly took over Iraq and behaved as if we were planning to build a democracy there someday, but first we had to get the phones going, and the juice and water and roads and schools and hospitals that we destroyed up and running again.
To our utter amazement we are now shocked that this crap never sat right with the Iraqis, who'd heard the same shit from Saddam for 30 years.
None of this, none of it, should surprise anyone in the slightest. We have begged for it.
It is true that "we" had nothing to do with this conspiracy. But we, like the rest of the world, will continue to pay, and likely for the rest of our lives.
While George builds a library and Cheney gets life for tax fraud and embezzlement, and good ol' Denny Hastert becomes president -- and a fine one, with polls showing him neck and neck and even slightly ahead by November -- until kaBlam and kaBlooie.
The nightmare scenario, as casually dropped by General Tommy Franks to Cigar Aficienado, concerns a terror type attack followed by the imposition of martial law, followed by a suspension of the election. Tommy Franks.
Cigar Aficienado.
End of world. And you thought your day was hard, tonight I saw "The Passion." Holy Christ.
Curt
6 - Ben there
Richard Clarke was not the only national security expert who warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. She was warned by both Richard Clarke and the U.S. Commission on National Security, who also briefed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials about terrorist threats before 9/11. the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent. Former Sen. Gary Hart and former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.)wre members of that commission,and according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before 9/11. Bush held a press conference or made a public statement on May 5, 2001, calling on Congress NOT to act and saying he was turning over the whole matter to Dick Cheney.
So this "historical" PDB should be viewed in it's context of all the intelligence. It's been reported that every day George Tenet, the CIA director, would do the morning intelligence briefing of the president, and he would raise the al-Qaida threat with great frequency. That's not the same as having a meeting to decide what to do about it. yet at none of these meetings did Bush signal an urgency to do anything about al qaida. After many security briefings and the many times George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat -- the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to swat flies." Months or weeks went by after that, and he didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to approve it and give it to him. Did Bush follow up, did he ask, did he push his staff, did he make it a priorty.... well apparently not.
7 - CW Fisher
Indeed you sound like you've ben there.
8 - BB
I already know how I'm going to vote:
Bush for 'Hoser of the Year' ;
Cheney for 'Chicago Mob Boss",
and Rice for newest "Sock Puppet' sensation.
9 - Hal Pawluk
Unfortunately, CW (and Mike and others) are right:
Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack
Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.
Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.
Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.
But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.
John O. Edwards, Friday, Nov. 21, 2003
Newsmax