Condi Rice testifies before 9-11 commission

[Agathon]

The only convincing things Rice said was when she was agreeing with Clarke. Otherwise it was the same old rubbish. What was especially laughable was the buck passing to the FBI. e.g. "What did you do?" "Nothing, that's the FBI's department" etc. etc.

It's pretty clear that Bush cared more about Iraq than he did about Al Qaeda. It's also pretty clear that 911 would have happened even if Clarke had had everything his own way (as he himself admitted).

And NYE - what is wrong with you? That article is reportage, not editorial. Attacking Rice in a report would be a major journalistic no no.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Giancarlo


Well the commission failed to break her resolve. And get her to say things that are not true... like some of the democrats want.

Why don't you leave this thread and take a piss somewhere else?

[DinoDoc]

Agathon's doing that for him. He's the anti-Fez.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Agathon's doing that for him. He's the anti-Fez.

Yet again a post with no substance. At least Giancarlo attempts to argue his points. The results may be hilarious, but kudos to him for trying, unlike some people.

[Agathon]

Losing touch with reality

Leader
Friday April 9, 2004
The Guardian

Shortly before being elected US president, George Bush wasn't able to name the president of Pakistan when asked in a televised interview. Yet, according to his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, in the months leading up to September 11, President Bush was fully briefed and supported a detailed plan to help General Musharraf cut off support to al-Qaida in Afghanistan. As Groucho Marx once asked: "Who do you believe - me, or the evidence of your own eyes?"

Dr Rice was in a very difficult position in her testimony yesterday to the September 11 commission investigating the attacks. She had to steer very carefully, between accusations of the administration having done nothing to counter al-Qaida, and its having been able to have stopped the hijackers on September 11. The fact that Dr Rice was testifying at all, after weeks of resistance to a public appearance before the commission, was a recognition by the White House of the danger it faces, with an election looming, a resurgent Democrat party and several telling charges from within the administration itself, such as former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke.

Predictably, Dr Rice's first objective was to protect the president from criticism. But she failed to satisfy those watching her testimony that the received image of the pre-9/11 White House - that it barely feigned interest in foreign affairs - was inaccurate. Her exchange with commission member Richard Ben-Veniste was particularly revealing, over if she had told President Bush there were al-Qaida cells in the US, after that information had been passed to her by Mr Clarke. To say - as Dr Rice did - "I really don't remember whether I discussed this with the president," should be called the Reagan defence, after the former president repeatedly used the phrase "I don't recall" in an inquiry into the Iran-Contra scandal. What is questionable is whether that is a credible defence from someone reputed to be the smartest person in the White House.

The idea that President Bush was fully briefed about al-Qaida, and that the White House understood that it "posed a serious threat to the United States", simply does not ring true. That feeling is supported by the fact that both the administration and Dr Rice were more interested in pushing for a pointless missile defence shield in the months before September 11. To say that a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" did not warn of an impending attack, according to Dr Rice, suggests the administration has begun to lose touch with reality.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1188852,00.html

[Drake Tungsten]

that the received image of the pre-9/11 White House - that it barely feigned interest in foreign affairs - was inaccurate.

Who actually believes that the Bush administration wasn't interested in foreign affairs pre-9/11? That's a new charge to me and I can't help but think the Guardian just made it up...

[Giancarlo]

Agathy, I hate to break this to you but your side was seriously argument whipped. I mean you have no argument. You continously bring up irrelevant nonsense that has no bearing on this subject.

[The Mad Monk]

April 9, 2004
TV WATCH
Testimony Provides Breath of Racial Reality for TV
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

here was absolutely nothing in Condoleezza Rice's neutral-toned suit, primly folded hands or calm demeanor to draw attention to her sex or race. Her answers, guarded, prosaic and a bit pedantic, were typical of any high-level Washington official.

But the last time the major networks interrupted regular programming to provide live coverage of a black woman testifying under oath in Washington was years ago when Anita Hill spoke out against Clarence Thomas in 1991.

And at least one former senator intent on confronting Ms. Rice seemed sensitive to her background.

"Let me say at the beginning I'm very impressed, indeed, I'd go so far as to say moved by your story, the story of your life and what you've accomplished," Bob Kerrey, a commission member and former Democratic senator from Nebraska, told Ms. Rice, referring to her early childhood in segregated Birmingham, Ala. "It's quite extraordinary."

Actually, Ms. Rice has said in interviews that there is nothing unusual about her success given her upbringing by parents and grandparents who were college educated and who prodded her to excel.

It was Mr. Kerrey who brought a touch of the extraordinary to a mostly tepid, inconclusive televised hearing. His wild-card questioning and difficulty remembering Ms. Rice's name gave the starchy national security adviser a chance to show, live on every network and cable news show, a flash of personality so often missing from her public persona. "I don't think I look like Dick Clarke," she said with a patient smile after Mr. Kerrey repeatedly called her "Dr. Clarke." Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief, testified before the panel last month.

CNN and other news outlets had hyped her appearance as a kind of showdown, but as it turned out, Ms. Rice's much-anticipated moment in the spotlight did not shed new light on the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11. If anything, her measured performance brought a breath of reality to a television universe too often clotted with distorted images of black women, most notably the angry Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth making her vengeful comeback on the NBC show "The Apprentice."

The fact that Ms. Rice is a black woman is rarely mentioned in Washington — she is so much a part of the establishment and blends so smoothly into the buttoned-down Bush White House that her heritage is usually invisible.

As the administration's national security policy has come under fierce scrutiny, however, it has been raised along the margins.

The liberal political satirist Garry Trudeau had Mr. Bush calling her "Brown Sugar," in a Doonesbury cartoon strip this week. On "Crossfire" last month, the conservative columnist Robert Novak asked whether Mr. Clarke might have had "a problem with this African-American woman, Condoleezza Rice."

And after her testimony, Lee H. Hamilton, a commissioner and a former Democratic House member from Indiana, told reporters that he found Ms. Rice "articulate," an adjective that even she has dismissed as condescending.

Mostly, Ms. Rice spoke as fast as she could to throw a protective cordon around the president. In an administration in which the president is rarely described as "articulate" and the taciturn vice president spends much time in undisclosed locations, Ms. Rice is one of the most familiar faces on television.

Yet even the camera-savvy Ms. Rice looked a little nervous while reading her opening statement, a text that steered clear of any apology or admission of error. She smiled a little too often, perhaps to avoid looking angry or defensive, but her geniality was at times jarring in the context of Sept. 11. She also looked small and unprotected, seated alone at a conference table with roaming photographers shooting at her back.

And Ms. Rice looked most uncomfortable when Richard Ben-Veniste, a Washington lawyer and commissioner, asked her the title of the Aug. 6 document that she said carried no warning about an imminent terrorist attack in the United States. "I believe the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' " she replied stonily.

She got her groove back after a bracing exchange with Mr. Kerrey.

Mr. Kerrey scored a sound bite by challenging a Bush comment about "swatting flies," but his reference to the bombing of the destroyer Cole in 2000 gave Ms. Rice a chance to swat back. "I'm aware, Mr. Kerrey, of a speech that you gave at that time that said that perhaps the best thing that we could do to respond to the Cole and to the memories was to do something about the threat of Saddam Hussein. That's a strategic view," she said slyly as some in the room applauded and laughed. "And we took the strategic view."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/politics/09TUBE.html?ei=5062&en=41b4d333db881bee&ex=1082174400&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=

[chequita guevara]

It's sad that the networks will report on "how well she did" and ignore the fact that she was lying.

[DRoseDARs]

I'm suprised that no one has responded to the point-counterpoint links I provided earlier...



Edit: Hit the Reply button too soon...meant to add that I'm going to bed. It's 5am and I've class and work today.

[chequita guevara]

Did she testify under oath? If yes, then they should charge her with perjury.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Agathon
Yet again a post with no substance. At least Giancarlo attempts to argue his points. The results may be hilarious, but kudos to him for trying, unlike some people.

The sad thing is that after this post you copied and pasted an article from the Guardian of all places.

[chequita guevara]

What's wrong with the Guardian?

[DinoDoc]

He could at least try and post articles from places that have pretentions of being an objective observer. Don't act as if you don't know what I'm talking about che.

[GePap]

The main problems with her testimony are:

1. It really did not add much-why I didn't feel any need to watch it, cause I knew it would add nothing.

2. It will stand alone-basically it becomes He said/She said. Becuase of the stupid deal drawn, the testimony will not be checked by asking other underlings to susbtantiate what was said.

I think it was John Poindexter, Reagan's ex-national security advisor testified in front of congress-then many of his underlings did, and finally Poindexter was indicted and found guilty of perjury.