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2004-03-29 Home Front: Politix
Rice Rejects Calls for Public Testimony
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Posted by Steve White 2004-03-29 12:00:00 AM|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Stand firm, Condi!
The more they pick on her and cast asperions on her expertise, the more the Lib Dims (which includes Clarke) on this partisan witch hunt look like sexists and rascists!
[Drudge pointed out on his show that the WaPo's editorial cartoon today portrayed Dr. Rice with huge Negroid lips--Charming.]
Posted by Jen  2004-03-29 12:25:29 AM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com]  2004-03-29 12:25:29 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 He has a 1/25 roadmap - so, what was it? Why can't he say?

Why didn't he put it together before?????
Posted by Anonymous2U 2004-03-29 1:11:00 AM||   2004-03-29 1:11:00 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 This is a battle between the legislative and executive branches of the gov'ment, which will blur the party lines. Condi should, and will hold firm. Also, why all the focus on Condi? Pure and simple...she's hot! Hot...and a republican. That's got to hurt!
Posted by Rex Mundi 2004-03-29 2:14:04 AM||   2004-03-29 2:14:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 I keep expecting to see a headline that says:

"Tapes show Bush waited nearly 30 days to attack al-queada after 9/11"

It seems like everyone has had a collective mind wipe of the weeks after 9/11 and what the impact was. It also seems like everyone forgot how awful the transition went from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. The transition office had to be funded by the Bush campaign because the Clinton administration refused to turn over the keys. This caused a huge delay in the rollout of the Bush adminstration staffing. Bush was a full 3 months late getting his people into play just due to that problem alone. Every step of the way the incoming administration had to fight to accomplish the most mundane tasks due to outright sobotage and childish behavior from the outgoing clintonites. Did everyone forget the state the Clinton adminsitration left with their offices? Remember the mass removal of the GWB keys from keyboards? You dont think we burned a hell of alot of calories and manhours on petty little crap like that?

Now kiddies, let's all squint our eyes together and take a trip on "Mr. Peabodys way-back machine" and imagine if the President and evil John Ashcroft had arrested all 19 of the hijackers on September 10th and paraded them around as al-queada operatives who planned on crashing aircraft into the WTC and then said that we were going to invade Afghanistan to stop the spread of terror, do you think these same people badgering Bush today would have supported him?

Ok, you can stop laughing now.

Sometimes I think President Bushs biggest failure has been to make it all look so easy. We all seem to forget how no one predicted we could successfully invade Afghanistan, much less Iraq. Allies? oh yeah, they've been very helpful AFTER we pulled it off, but none of them were there to get the job done because frankly no one believed it could be done! Now,everyone acts like it was a done deal, which is a complete misrepresentation of reality.

As far as Bush asking the intelligence staff to look into seeing if 9/11 was from the Iraqis- Well DUH people!! People are acting like it was as if Clarke had said that Bush told him to "look into seeing if the Swiss had anything to do with it." And what President signed the executive order calling for regime change in Iraq?

President Clinton, Under the advice from his then counter terrorism director - Dick Clarke. Who then subsequently bombed Iraq on three separate occasions.


Posted by Frank Martin  2004-03-29 4:05:56 AM||   2004-03-29 4:05:56 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Frank, you made all excellent points. Thank you!
Posted by Jen  2004-03-29 4:30:31 AM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com]  2004-03-29 4:30:31 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 "Sometimes I think President Bushs biggest failure has been to make it all look so easy."

Two bigger failures, in my opinion, are his apparent assumptions that (a) only a small minority of Americans is too dumb to tell shit from Shinola, and (b) the people running the Democratic Party have the honor and integrity to refrain from playing cheap politics with life-and-death matters like the survival of our country.

So far it looks like most Americans are capable of figuring things out for themselves, thank God, but that "most" is a bare majority at best.

At the end of Dick Clarke's American Grandstand Week, I am left with this: they want us to believe the Bush administration should have accomplished in eight months, what Clinton didn't in 8 years; that when Bush launched a policy review, barely into his second week in office (!), to come up with a plan to not just "roll back" al-Qaeda (the Clinton policy) but to exterminate it altogether, and approved a fivefold increase in funding for covert CIA operations, that constituted "doing nothing about terrorism"; that Condi Rice didn't even know al-Qaeda existed until Clarke told her about it; and that we should all vote for John Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam.

This whole bloody farce smells like a choreographed setup to me: the content of Clarke's book, so much at odds with his previous statements on public record; the timing of his book release to coincide with his Committee testimony; his appearances on all the talk-shows; the careful selectivity of news coverage from the Alphabet Networks which emphasize some parts of Clarke's testimony while burying others (such as the utterly gross inconsistencies with what he has said previously) and the breathless news accounts depicting the Adminstration as "reeling" from a "knockout blow" by Clarke- I smell a rat.

And a hint of who that rat might be lies in the overall clumsiness and ham-handedness of this orchestrated farce: I smell Terry McAuliffe.

I think Rice should testify. I understand the precedent they're trying to avoid by not having her testify, but IMO its importance is secondary to the compelling necessity of winning the war- and that, in turn, means winning this election.
Posted by Dave D.  2004-03-29 6:08:13 AM||   2004-03-29 6:08:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 And a hint of who that rat might be lies in the overall clumsiness and ham-handedness of this orchestrated farce: I smell Terry McAuliffe.

And -- completely seriously -- believe we should start looking at how much Saudi cash is flowing into the Democrats. A Democrat win will let the Saudis get back to business as usual, while a Bush win will put their ability to farm out their war for the throne at risk.
Posted by Robert Crawford  2004-03-29 9:19:21 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com]  2004-03-29 9:19:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 What I'm curious about is, if testimony is what the commission requires for its work, WHY does it have to be public? Facts are facts, regardless of whether they're stated in public or private.
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-03-29 10:48:00 AM||   2004-03-29 10:48:00 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 So they can create a ruckus.
Posted by Lucky 2004-03-29 11:09:18 AM||   2004-03-29 11:09:18 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 "Facts are facts"

Whatever gave you the idea this was about facts? It's all about political grandstanding and you have to have cameras rolling for that.
Posted by Steve  2004-03-29 12:32:39 PM||   2004-03-29 12:32:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 I see two possibilities here:

1) Having Condoleeza Rice testify is really the briar patch that the Administration doesn't want to be thrown in--and particularly don't want to be thrown in around the time of the Democrat National Convention.

2) They don't want to set a precedent that would be at odds with the pending Supreme Court case that is trying to get the Administration to turn over the notes on the energy task force.
Posted by eLarson 2004-03-29 3:52:24 PM||   2004-03-29 3:52:24 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 eLarson, in that we're at WAR with the same enemy who perpetrated 9/11, don't you think it's smart that we don't tell them everything we know about them via this hearing?
Posted by Jen  2004-03-29 4:01:40 PM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com]  2004-03-29 4:01:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Lucky's right again.

Richard Clarke said President Clinton was more aggressive than Bush in trying to confront al-Q . . . And he said that with a straight face? Really?

If Condi testified, the press would make it look like she's in "big bad trouble," by misrepresenting and twisting things she would say, and if she doesn't they will make it look like she's trying to hide something, thereby "proving" all of their accusations. Nevertheless, I think she's right not to, for a number of reasons--especially the precedent-setting issue. The press and members of Congress have always wanted to be "in" on everything. But it just don't work that way.
Posted by ex-lib 2004-03-29 8:04:08 PM||   2004-03-29 8:04:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by Anonymous3960 2004-03-29 12:32:21 AM||   2004-03-29 12:32:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#15 Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by Anonymous3960 2004-03-29 12:32:21 AM||   2004-03-29 12:32:21 AM|| Front Page Top

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