Nosey Online

WaPo has a piece on Condi Rice and her testimony on Thursday. Apparently, they did all they could before 9/11.

"We're confident in the actions we took before 9/11, and we're confident in the actions we took on that day and in the days after," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said. "It's easy to look back in a post-9/11 world with perfect hindsight. . . . The decisions being made were being made in a different mindset, not only for the administration but for all of America and the world."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this why you've been stonewalling the commission all along? Anyway. Rice plans on being tough on Clarke.

Rice also plans to mount a lengthy and barbed rebuttal of Richard A. Clarke, Bush's former counterterrorism adviser, who has sharply criticized Rice and other Bush administration officials for allegedly neglecting the al Qaeda threat. But Rice's response will likely be saved for the two-hour question-and-answer session with the commission rather than being included in her opening statement, which is expected to take about 20 minutes, officials said.

Will anyone find this credible? All of the stories poring out after Clarke's testimony must have done some damage to Condi's image.

And what about the speech she was supposed to give on 9/11? MSNBC.com has this piece about the White House not being very forthcoming.

The White House has refused to provide the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a speech that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to have delivered on the night of the attacks touting missile defense as a priority rather than al-Qaida, sources close to the commission said Tuesday.

But if you go back to the WaPo piece, you'll see this interesting tidbit.

Rice and other administration officials have said the administration was preparing a strategy that was more aggressive than President Bill Clinton's because it was aimed at eliminating al Qaeda rather than rolling it back. Bartlett said Rice plans "a clear explanation of this administration's views towards terror before 9/11 and the priority and the emphasis that we placed on having a successful strategy for the elimination of al Qaeda."

Bush said on Monday that Rice will "be great" when she appears before the commission and called her "a very smart, capable person who knows exactly what took place, and will lay out the facts."

I guess the text of Condi's 9/11 speech doesn't count as fact. Well then, let's take a look, shall we?

"Why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open? At the end of the day, do we really want to choose a course of action that gambles with America's security by choosing not to explore the additional measure of security that limited missile defenses could provide?"

Then I look back at this line in the WaPo article.

...Rice plans to argue that President Bush focused aggressively on terrorism before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Yeah, spend time looking at useless alternatives that provide "limited" defenses. I'd call that aggressively going after terrorism.