Condoleezza Rice: a liar and patronizer . . . but a tiger in the sack

Brilliant: a state characterized by excellent recall.

Ronald Reagan: a person who can't remember anything.

Condoleezza Rice: A person who lies by saying she "can't remember" whether she discussed with President Bush the need to do something about al Qaeda cells inside the United States.

Dumbass: See "Condoleezza Rice".

Okay, so maybe the "tiger in the sack" comment in the headline was uncalled for, but this is normally a humor column, so I had to write something to get your attention. Just for the record, I don't know whether National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is good in the sack or not, but with those gigantic teeth, I hope she isn't into nibbling or biting.

Anyway, Dr. Rice - who, by the way, never answered my e-mails regarding the best methods to treat the common cold, or whether to tilt your head backward or forward during a bloody nose - testified yesterday to the 9/11 commission. I felt kind of bad for her, since she might as well have had a big target tattooed on her forehead. She's quickly becoming the "fall girl" for her administration, and while she deserves some of the heat, she's not the only one to blame for intelligence failures.

However, after her "testimony" started, my sympathy for her slowly disappeared as she refused to give a straight answer about anything. Luckily, the Democrats on the 9/11 commission didn't let her off the hook. There was only one time I saw her get more flack than she deserved, and it was when she mentioned Bush saying he was "tired of swatting flies" in the war on terror. A Democrat on the commission asked her what flies her administration actually swatted, which was a little unfair, since when Bush said that line, he was referring to past administrations.

But other than that, her "testimony" was the usual sickening parade of public relations material. Hopefully, the general public will be able to see right through it. But just in case they can't, I'll challenge a few things from Rice's speech. Her comments are in boldface, while mine are in non-boldface. Comments by Wilford Brimley are written backwards, and in all caps.

!LAEMTAO REKAUQ EKIL I

Okay, seriously, here's my comments on Rice's statement.

The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them.

Let's finish the sentence. We were not yet at war with them . . . because the Bush administration completely ignored Clinton's detailed plan for going after al Qaeda, despite the pleas of Richard Clarke.

On an operational level, we decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network.

No, actually you didn't, because Clinton's plan outlined a strategy to actually go after al Qaeda and weaken their network. While the Bush administration kept the spy probes and such going, they ignored the most important part of the plan, which was the "taking action" part Clarke kept insisting upon.

I took the unusual step of retaining Dick Clarke and the entire Clinton administration's counterterrorism team on the NSC staff. I knew Dick to be an expert in his field, as well as an experienced crisis manager.

You retained them, but didn't listen to them. Smart move, genius.

From January 20 through September 10, the President received . . . more than 40 briefing items on al-Qaeda . . .

And ignored most of them, including the one detailing warnings from American flight instructors who said Middle-Eastern men were learning how to fly planes, but weren't interested in learning how to land. Bush also ignored an August 6 briefing titled, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside United States", which said al Qaeda could attack using airplanes.

Although this National Security Presidential Directive was originally a highly classified document, we arranged for portions to be declassified to help the commission in its work

Uh-huh. But you forgot to release those 11,000 pages of Clinton's al Qaeda documents, which likely prove the Bush administration ignored Clinton's plan to go after al Qaeda.

(The National Security Presidential Directive) gave Cabinet secretaries and department heads specific responsibilities. For instance: It directed the secretary of state to work with other countries to end all sanctuaries given to al-Qaida. It directed the secretaries of the Treasury and State to work with foreign governments to seize or freeze assets and holdings of al-Qaida and its benefactors. It directed the director of central intelligence to prepare an aggressive program of covert activities to disrupt al-Qaida and provide assistance to anti-Taliban groups operating against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. It tasked the director of OMB with ensuring that sufficient funds were available in the budgets over the next five years to meet the goals laid out in the strategy.

These were all things that were already being done before Bush came to office.

While we were developing this new strategy to deal with al-Qaida, we also made decisions on a number of specific anti-al-Qaida initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke . . . we moved quickly to arm Predator unmanned surveillance vehicles for action against al-Qaida.

According to the Associated Press, the military declared armed Predators successful in the first half of 2001. The reason they weren't used before 9/11 is because the White House "failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators." So, if by "quickly" you meant "wasting time by bullcrapping with each other", then I guess you're technically right.

If you had shut your mouth, done your job, armed the Predators, and taken out bin Laden (the opportunity was there on multiple occasions) instead of ignoring Clarke's requests for urgency and putzing around for months, we might not be in this mess.

The threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to time, nor place, nor manner of attack . . . Let me read you some of the actual chatter that we picked up that spring and summer: "Unbelievable news in coming weeks." "Big event . . . there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar." "There will be attacks in the near future." Troubling, yes. But they don't tell us when; they don't tell us where; they don't tell us who; and they don't tell us how.

Well, I'm sorry. Next time, maybe bin Laden will give you a call and tell you exactly when, where, and how he'll be secretly attacking you. Sheesh.

I want to address in some detail one of the briefing items we received, since its content has frequently been mischaracterized. On August 6, 2001, the president's intelligence briefing included a response to questions he had earlier raised about any al Qaeda intentions to strike our homeland. The briefing item reviewed past intelligence reporting, mostly dating from the 1990s, regarding possible al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States. It referred to uncorroborated reporting from 1998 that terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft . . .

What was that you said earlier about not being told how al Qaeda would attack? When this information surfaced during this time of "high state of alert and activity" you mentioned, why wasn't airport security improved? Maybe it's because the reports were part of Clarke's theory, and selfishly, you didn't want to listen to the opinion of someone who spent the past eight years working for a Democrat.

A lot of people will counter this by saying it was impossible for the administration to know the attack was coming, but that's like me standing near a pile of "account balance critical" warning letters from the bank, and claiming it was impossible for me to know my bank account would soon be overdrawn. The intelligence was there. The Bush administration just ignored it.

Yet, as your hearings have shown, there was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States, something made difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

I believe this is a tactic called "passing the buck". In hindsight, it may seem like there was no silver bullet that would have stopped the attacks, but we'll never know since the Bush administration never tried. Rice can blame the CIA and FBI all she wants, but the Bush administration and the choices they made on fighting terrorism were our first line of defense. Sadly, that first line of terrorism defense failed miserably.

I'm not going to go over the question and answer part of the Rice testimony, because it would involve commenting on two-and-a-half hours of politicians taking cheap shots at each other, but I think I've made my point pretty clear. While the Bush administration alone isn't solely to blame for failures leading to 9/11, they certainly could have done more than sit on their thumbs in the months leading up to the tragedy.

Can you believe there are no drink recipes named after Passover? Unbelievable. Luckily, there's a drink called "Whop Me Down Sweet Jesus". That's kind of like Passover. Kind of. 1 oz. vodka 1 oz. gin 1 oz. light rum 1 oz. tequila 1 oz. triple sec 2 oz. blue curacao splash of sour mix splash of 7-Up or Sprite Blue going down, and blue coming up. Man, I'll bet this drink tastes like total ass. Drink archives

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