Doctor Rice’s testimony is being dissected, trisected, folded, mutilated, and, most of all, spun all over the place today. This analysis from the LA Times (try bselig/bselig as registration) seems closest to what I think about it.
…the portrait of Bush and his closest aides that emerged from her testimony, while acquitting them of ignoring the warnings, left an image of leaders detached from the practical challenges of mounting a defense.
[snip]
Though the still-classified memo was entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,” Rice said, “This was not a threat report to the president or a threat report to me. If there was any reason to believe that I needed to do something or that [Chief of Staff] Andy Card needed to do something, I would have been expected to be asked to do it. We were not asked to do it,” Rice said.
Asked by whom? Good grief, woman, you’re the National Security Adviser; are you not supposed to recommend action? Remember when the word the Bush Administration most liked was Bold?
Her remarks seem to be encapsulated and departmentalized. Sort of like she were writing a paper. Like all this real stuff was just stuff on paper and part of a thesis…
I often find this type of talk on shows. As if you take the subject matter, and it is then filed into a big surreal folder and a general answer comes out…
I don’t know if I’m explaining myself too well here, but the reality of the event gets destroyed by the paperwork in which it is about…
You did all right. Her training is as an academic, and that’s what she sounded like.
My sentiments exactly……..
Who Is Suppose To Ask Her To Do “It?”
Condi Lousy – Why Rice is a bad national security adviser. By Fred Kaplan “[If] I needed to do anything,” she said, “I would have been asked to do it. I was not asked to do it.” Let’s get this…