(by John Whiteside in the Houston Chronicle)
What's worse than someone who responds to all criticism with
indignation that verges on a tantrum? Someone who does that and gets
her facts wrong. That's our secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. I
wrote recently about how she sees herself as a "true believer."
Unfortunately, what we could have used over the last five years was a
true thinker as national security adviser and in her current position.
The latest, of course, is her indignation that anybody could suggest
that she didn't pay enough attention to warnings that al Qaeda was
intent on attacking on US soil before 9/11:
"What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was
told -- as this account apparently says -- that there was about to be
an attack in the United States. The idea that I would somehow have
ignored that I find incomprehensible," she told reporters.
Rice said her staff is now going back to check if there even was a
meeting on July 10, 2001.
Well, there was a meeting. From the New York Times:
A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet,
then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice
and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from
Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.
The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary
of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall
the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met
repeatedly with Mr. Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Ms.
Rice, the national security adviser at the time, said it was
"incomprehensible" she ignored dire terrorist threats two months before
the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. McCormack also said records show that the Sept. 11 commission was
informed about the meeting, a fact that former intelligence officials
and members of the commission confirmed on Monday.
When details of the meeting emerged last week in a new book by Bob
Woodward of The Washington Post, Bush administration officials
questioned Mr. Woodward's reporting.
Now, after several days, both current and former Bush administration
officials have confirmed parts of Mr. Woodward's account.
Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his
counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an
impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at
the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff.
According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Tenet told those
assembled at the White House about the growing body of intelligence the
Central Intelligence Agency had collected pointing to an impending Al
Qaeda attack. But both current and former officials took issue with Mr.
Woodward's account that Mr. Tenet and his aides left the meeting in
frustration, feeling as if Ms. Rice had ignored them.
Tenet's no hero in this; it seems he failed to mention some of this to
the 9/11 commission. The picture that emerges is that of an
administration so dysfunctional that it was unable to respond to the
intelligence before it.
This brings us into familiar Condi Rice territory, though: getting
indignant and losing her grip on facts when people criticize or
question her. There was her recent complaint that the Clinton people
left her no plan for fighting terror. Here's what the 9/11 Commission
Report has to say on that:
As the Clinton administration drew to a close, Clarke and his staff
developed a policy paper of their own [which] incorporated the CIA's
new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy
options. Clarke and his staff proposed a goal to "roll back" al Qaeda
over a period of three to five years ...[including] covert aid to the
Northern Alliance, covert aid to Uzbekistan, and renewed Predator
flights in March 2001. A sentence called for military action to destroy
al Qaeda command-and control targets and infrastructure and Taliban
military and command assets. The paper also expressed concern about the
presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States." [p. 197]
Okay, so it wasn't a plan... it was just ideas about how to fight
terrorism and specific options that could be implemented. In other
words, the kind of thing one administration would normally leave for
its successor, assuming that they should know what was being
considered, but would make their own plans. (Or, in this case, not.)
And then there were the Senate confirmation hearings when she was
selected as Secretary as State, where her reaction to inconsistencies
in her statements was to go off on Sen. Boxer and complain that they
were questioning her integrity. When faced with inconsistencies, from
an appointee, it's the Senate's job to ask questions; Rice could have
clarified things, but instead she threw a tantrum.
This is a woman who in 2002 was telling us in press briefings that
there was "no way" anyone could have predicted that terrorists would
use airplanes as weapons... but who in August, 2001 read a briefing
that said that al Qaeda was planning a major strike against the US that
could involve hijacking of airplanes.
There's a convenient list of Rice's incorrect statements to the 9/11
Commission here, if you're curious. It certainly sheds some light on
why she was so resistant to testifying to the commission under oath
(which she did, in the end, do).
After watching her for years, it's easy to see the pattern: when
something goes wrong on her watch, she looks for someone to blame, and
makes things up to support it... complete with an indignant complaint
that people are impugning her integrity.
This isn't what we should expect from a secretary of state. This is
behavior better suited to a petulant sixth-grader who's been caught not
doing her homework and is looking for a convenient dog to accuse of
eating it.
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