Down the Rabbit Hole

Sorry for the radio silence recently, I've been traveling. But I wanted to comment briefly on Condi's testimony.

Republicans, and the Bush Campaign, attacked Clinton repeatedly for his hyper-technical use of language, such as the infamous "it depends what the meaning of "is" is." But listen to what Condi said this week.

Rice has repeatedly tried to argue that the August 6, 2001 PDB that Bush received was not a "threat report" but instead was a historical document. She was confronted on Thursday with the fact that the August 6 PDB was entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Her response? "The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says Bin Laden would like to attack the United States."

As Fred Kaplan has already noted, "To call this distinction 'academic' would be an insult to academia."

I also find the evolving statement by the Bush Administration justifying their response interesting. First, it was "If we had known that Bin Laden was going to hijack airplanes and use them as missiles, we would have done everything to stop him." (That was Condi in May 2002). Then it comes out that the Administration WAS warned about hijacked airplanes used as missiles. So now Bush says, " if we'd had known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we'd have done everything in our power to stop it." Note that Bush has eliminated the missile or hijacking references.

Pretty soon, the noose will tighten so that the only true statement he'll be able to say is: "If we'd had known that United Flight __ and American Flight __ were going to be hijacked at _ o'clock by ___, ____, and ____, we would have done everything we could to stop it."



- posted by Joshua @ 5:46 PM