- It seems that, just as Richard Nixon had a "secret
plan" to end the war in Vietnam, George W. Bush had a secret plan
to combat the terrorist threat posed by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network
in the eight months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon.
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- At least that's what National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice says.
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- However, just as Nixon's plan was a fantasy, so was the
plan that Rice described.
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- In her public appearance Thursday before the national
commission that is studying the 9/11 attacks, Rice claimed that the new
Bush administration was highly engaged and tightly focused on the looming
threat. That contradicted the impression created by former administration
aides, independent observers and the president's own statements to journalist
Bob Woodward in 2002.
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- But, claiming that the administration was secretly developing
a "comprehensive" approach to terrorist threats, Rice used her
opening statement to try to paint the picture of an administration that
was on task. Meetings were held, reports were distributed, initiatives
were launched to address structural challenges and "systemic problems."
If she had been speaking in a vacuum, Rice's claims could have sounded
credible.
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- Unfortunately for Rice, she was not merely talking to
the limpid TV interviewers for whom she usually spins her action fantasies.
Rather, she was appearing before commissioners who actually know a thing
or two about what was actually going on.
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- Rice struggled to maintain the impression that the administration
was serious about the threat, even as she was confronted with an Aug. 6,
2001, briefing document that said bin Laden was planning an attack on the
United States. But the spin came to a jarring halt when Commissioner Richard
Ben-Veniste asked whether Rice had discussed with the president information
about al-Qaida cells operating in the United States.
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- "I really don't remember, Mr. Commissioner, whether
I discussed this with the president," mumbled Rice.
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- How's that? Rice said the administration was all over
the terrorist threat, planning and plotting, meeting and discussing, and
focusing in on the threat like no administration before it. Yet she does
not remember whether she and the president even discussed terrorist cells
that were operating in the United States.
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- Rice's testimony was an exercise in spin, nothing more.
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- But there were a few moments of truth.
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- For instance, after claiming that the administration
really had been engaged, Rice mentioned, "Of course, there were other
priorities."
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- As she discussed those "other priorities,"
the subject of Iraq came up - frequently. Though there was no tie between
Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, nor any tie between Iraq and al-Qaida, Rice
admitted that after the attacks, "There was a discussion about Iraq."
She admitted that, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, Bush aides were
working on "contingency plans" for attacking Iraq. And she spoke
of the administration's desire to respond to "Iraq on a grand scale."
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- What came through in Rice's testimony was that the administration
was serious about something in the months before Sept. 11, 2001. It had
a priority. Key players in the administration - Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary of State Paul
Wolfowitz and Rice - wanted to invade Iraq. Their focus on that country,
which posed no terrorist threat, warped the administration's actions prior
to Sept. 11, just as it has warped them ever since.
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- That was what former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke
told the commission. And nothing Rice said on Thursday altered that impression.
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- http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/71941.php
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