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Dr. Rice...I'd vote for her in 2008!
She was brilliant in her delivery and preparation. She did in fact steal the thunder of a couple of the commissioners soap box blathering by answering their "questions", rather than allowing them to make political statements at her expense and GW's. I was under the impression that this gathering was supposed to be a fact-finding effort so that we could prevent a future occurrence. It seemed to me that some the commission was more interested in making statements of their opinions and political grandstanding than listening to the one real representative, NSA / Dr C. Rice, from the only administration, GW’s, in several decades that IS actually doing something about terrorism and doing something to rebuild our intelligence and national security abilities, not to mention taking the fight to the enemies of this country.
She alluded to previous administrations and their desire to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem, with grand juries, that keep the intelligence data VIA Grand Juries, being used and shared between agencies, for legal reasons. To protect who’s rights? Al Qaeda’s?? Sadam’s??, cover who’s butt??…Janet’s??…Bill’s??
This is one great point she brought up.
“RICE: Yet, as your hearings have shown, there was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States -- something made very difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
I do not believe that it is a good analysis to go back and assume that somehow maybe we would have gotten lucky by, quote, "shaking the trees." Dick Clarke was shaking the trees, director of central intelligence was shaking the trees, director of the FBI was shaking the trees. We had a structural problem in the United States.
RICE: We had a structural problem in the United States, and that structural problem was that we did not share domestic and foreign intelligence in a way to make a product for policymakers, for good reasons -- for legal reasons, for cultural reasons -- a product that people could depend upon.â€
Well said! Thank goodness somebody had a brain in that hearing room today…thank you Dr. Rice!
Maya
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