very good article on condi and wh

[historian]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098339/

[riverwalker]

1. that was my impression too

that she never fulfilled her role as Security Advisor at all, but was a sort of social secretary, or tutor.

[Auntie Bush]

2. Me thinks we need to make Cheney/Bush posters and

wave them at all protests and everywhere they can be seen.
Wow! How embarrassing (but true) for Bush.

[0007]

5. Get this picture to the folks


Just a little kiss

[scarletwoman]

3. That is an absolutely brilliant analysis!

I've never been to the Slate forums before, so I'm wondering if the author, Beverly Mann, is a regular. The quality of her writing and insight certainly deserves a wider readership, imho.

sw

[scarletwoman]

4. Some snips, so folks can get a better idea of what a great read this is:

>>Actually, what is clear to me now—after watching Rice's testimony and then reading some of the more astonishing quotes from it last evening in various news reports — is that Rice isn't a national security adviser at all. That is, her job — unlike that of all the others, such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, John Poindexter, Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger—was, and is, not to give the president national security advice but instead to carry out orders given by those who actually were devising national security policy: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith.

Rice was simply a glorified supervisory bureaucrat. Her job was to take and carry out orders—or, as she repeatedly put it, to be "tasked" — to carry out this or that bureaucratic aspect of the national security policy set by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the input of Wolfowitz and Feith. Rice was almost as much out of the loop as was Richard Clarke; she was present at these "principles' meetings, but only to receive her marching orders.

<snip>

Rice wasn't tasked to tell the president of the existence of al Qaeda cells in the United States, and so she didn't. Rice was tasked with furthering Cheney's and Rumsfeld's goals of pushing the missile defense system's funding and development and of toppling Saddam Hussein.


<snip>

The structural problem is simply this: Bush was the president in name only, a genuine figurehead, with no intellectual decisionmaking capability whatsoever, and that Cheney was the actual president at least with respect to national security matters. The information in the Aug. 6 "PDB"—the presidential daily briefing—wasn't given to the actual president. Nor were Tenet's daily oral and written reports. They were given only to the figurehead president, and not transmitted to the real one, who already had determined the administration's national security agenda and therefore wasn't interested in them.<<

Read the whole piece, it's really good!

sw

[opihimoimoi]

6. As pieces like this gets out, the Pubs will suffer loss of face as

bush supporters.

They are embarrassed no end but cannot admit it. They are having troubles sleeping.

[buycitgo]

8. Bush = "jaw-droppingly stupid!" got THAT right

this is one of the best, most concise analyses of the group dynamics of this sorry lot that you'll come across

kick it up a notch

BAM!

[scarletwoman]

7. a kick because this is a really good piece!

:kick:

Hoping more folks read this...

[Atman]

9. Kicking...this is one of the best!

I love the last paragraphs!

[mrdmk]

10. Unfortunately, I only heard part of the testimony

I did hear this part though

<snip>
No, of all the many bizarre comments Rice made yesterday, the loopiest, in my opinion— and anyway the most starkly factually inaccurate—was her incessant claim that because of "structural" and legal prohibitions, the CIA director couldn't tell the FBI director that there were certain known al Qaeda operatives who had entered the country.
<snip>

I nearly fell out of seat of my truck when this was said. What planet do these people live on. These people need to be thrown out of the White House on their stupid collective asses.

[buycitgo]

11. exactly! and the media response is SO delusional, for the most part

ESPECIALLY the cableshillfools

not to mention the "elite" journalists, for whom ACCESS is EVERYthing

don't you think, bah fahr, the most clearly apt metaphor regarding this junta, and the media handmaidens surrounding it, is that of Emperor's New Clothes?

with each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer, to even the most delusional, that this regime is completely and utterly bankrupt on ALL fronts

but the major media will NOT let the benighted majority news consumers know that obvious fact

thank god for "real" journalists, like, uh, Jon Stewart, who so skillfully pull back the curtain

his Thursday show deserves an emmy, a peabody, a pulitzer, a nobel peace prize!

[xxqqqzme]

12. this is, also, what knocked me out!

"...her weirdest statement was not the one in which she says that the intercepts about "a very, very, very, very big uproar" that will be caused by "unbelievable news in coming weeks" about "attacks in the near future" were "roubling, yes," but because "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" they were not quite troubling enough for her to task herself to notify the FBI director and the field offices about them"...

I could not Blieve she was admitting this!!! 4 me sleeza's when, where, who & how Xcuse was astounding - she was Xpecting a confession? a diary entry from OBL? Geee-zus, she is an overpaid 'simon sez' participant.

[buycitgo]

13. she's just a bureaucratic version of the chimp, only "smarter"

from the article

Rice was simply a glorified supervisory bureaucrat. Her job was to take and carry out orders—or, as she repeatedly put it, to be "tasked"—to carry out this or that bureaucratic aspect of the national security policy set by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the input of Wolfowitz and Feith. Rice was almost as much out of the loop as was Richard Clarke; she was present at these principals' meetings, but only to receive her marching orders.

Rice didn't get Clarke a meeting with the principals because Rice couldn't get Clarke a meeting with the principals. Rice didn't order the FBI director to "shake the trees" of that agency—nor even to notify the field offices of the stunningly clear indications from al Qaeda intercepts about a very, very, very, very big and imminent terrorist attack possibly within this country, or even inquire whether the field offices that were tracking al Qaeda cells within this country had any information that, viewed in light of the intercepted messages, might help pinpoint any such plot within the U.S.—because Rice lacked the authority to do so on her own.

Nor, apparently, did she even have the authority to decide on her own to demand that the FBI director (and later the acting FBI director) do so. Apparently, she lacked the authority even to notify the FBI director of the threats—excuse me, of the non-threats—about some "unbelievable news in coming weeks," about a "big event" that will cause "a very, very, very, very big uproar," about the announcement that "there will be attacks in the near future".

And she didn't have the authority—or maybe the proper word here is clout—to persuade Bush meet not just with the CIA director but also with the FBI director. In that dramatic exchange between her and Ben-Veniste in which Ben-Veniste demanded a yes-or-no answer to his question whether Rice had told Bush "at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al-Qaida cells in the United States" although Rice herself had been told of this in early 2001, she answered, finally, that she didn't recall whether or not she had done so.

[buycitgo]

14. and don't you just love the memory lapse response?

so convenient

she used that one WRT the yellowcake insertion

when reminded that they'd been told to take it out of an October speech, but put it back in the SOTU, she said "I forGOT"

how stupid to they think we are

just a minor little pair of memory losses, right?

right

[skip fox]

15. You're not going to believe this! Breaking . . . on Condi!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x997172