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Title: Condi's "historical" statements on 9/11
Source:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/
URL Source: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/condis911lies.html
Published: Aug 23, 2007
Author: http://www.flyingsnail.com/
Post Date: 2007-08-23 09:51:09 by robin
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Views: 69
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Condi's "historical" statements on 9/11 Cover Up to Protect Lies? BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB? RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Condi's "historical" statements on 9/11 As we noted yesterday, there are some unanswered questions regarding a previously undisclosed section of the 9/11 report out this week -- both the timing of its release and what it says about Condoleezza Rice's sworn public testimony before the 9/11 Commission last year. A 9/11 widow offers a few thoughts in the Independent today: "Kristin Bretweiser, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Centre, said yesterday the newly released details undermined testimony from Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser, who told the commission that information about al-Qa'ida's threats seen by the administration was 'historical in nature' She told The Independent: 'There were 52 threats that were mentioned. These were present threats -- they were not historical. There were steps that could have been taken. Marshals could have been put on planes that spring. Condoleezza Rice's testimony is undermined.' To the consternation of members of the commission who published the original report last year, the administration has been blocking the release of the latest information. An unclassified copy of this additional appendix was passed to the National Archives two weeks ago with large portions blacked out." As first reported by the New York Times late Wednesday, the latest pages from the report show that of the FAA's 105 daily intelligence summaries between April 1, 2001 and Sept. 10 2001, 52 of them mentioned Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, or both. The report also concludes that officials did not expand the use of in-flight air marshals or tighten airport screening for weapons. It determined that FAA officials were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays and easing airlines' financial problems than thwarting a terrorist attack. Are we any safer in the hands of the FAA now? In August 2004, Salon's Kevin Berger reported in depth on the disastrous security failings inside the agency prior to 9/11 -- and why it may still be failing to protect us today.-- Mark Follman [11:06 EST, Feb. 11, 2005 Protocol for Lying/A tale of two senators To read Erin Aubrey Kaplan's article about Rice, click http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/10/news-kaplan.php Boxer's Match - A tale of two senators by DAVID CORN On one morning, in one Capitol Hill hearing room, two senators from one state displayed starkly different approaches to handling the powerful of Washington. The occasion was the confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's pick to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state. Senator Barbara Boxer confronted her; Senator Dianne Feinstein coddled her. The respective performances of California's two U.S. senators - both Democrats - illuminated a divide in Washington. There are those in town who participate in and preside over the clubby atmosphere of a Washington establishment that fosters a we're-all-honorable-men-and-women conceit. And there are those who realize that governments don't make bad policies, people do, and that such officials - especially when they engage in dishonest policymaking - do not deserve respect or hors d'oeuvres. When Rice came before the Senate foreign-affairs committee, Boxer showed that on this day she cared more for policy and politics - perhaps even for truth - than for the faux politeness that animates many of Washington's official spectacles. Feinstein, however, demonstrated an allegiance to personal bonds, not to holding government leaders accountable for their missteps and misdeeds. In a way, the two reflected alternative modes of opposition available to the Democrats: Kick the GOPers whenever possible and afford them and their agenda not a scintilla of respect, or agree to disagree and confront the Republicans when practical without challenging their motives, intent or character. Boxer's grilling of Rice - that is, the reasonable and forceful sort of questioning that passes for a grilling in Washington - drew much notice. So let's start with Feinstein. The hearing began with Feinstein introducing Rice. It is often customary for a senator from the home state of an appointee to escort him or her to a confirmation hearing and say kind words, even if the two hail from opposing parties. (Rice grew up in Birmingham; after serving as a professor and provost at Stanford, she considers herself a Californian.) But DiFi did more than provide Rice, a friend, a senatorial courtesy. She gushed like Old Faithful. She informed the senators on the committee that Rice had been a brilliant 3-year-old, a piano-playing child prodigy, that her father had called her "Little Star," that the first President Bush, for whom Rice had worked, considered her "brilliant," that she has "the skill, the judgment, and the poise and leadership to lead in these difficult times," that she is a "remarkable woman," and that as a young girl she stood before the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and told her father, "Daddy, I'm barred out of there now because of the color of my skin, but one day I'll be in that house." Feinstein observed, "If Dr. Rice's past performance is any indication . . . we can rest easy." No mention of Iraq, not a whisper about WMD. It's not that Feinstein has been a Bush backer since the invasion. Last October - after Charles Duelfer, the administration's WMD hunter, released a report noting that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction and no active WMD programs before the war - Feinstein declared, "Considering the statements that were being made by the administration [prior to the war] and the intelligence that was presented to the Congress which said otherwise, this is quite disturbing and points once again to failures in the analysis, collection and use of intelligence." But who was a co-conspirator in this "disturbing" effort that misused intelligence and produced false administration statements? National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. She led the phony WMD charge. For instance, Rice claimed the administration had solid evidence that Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear-weapons program when intelligence analysts were in disagreement over this information. She also made comments suggesting that Hussein was in cahoots with al Qaeda, even though the administration possessed no evidence of any alliance. If Feinstein was disturbed by the absence of WMD, why was she not disturbed by the role her pal played in this disturbing episode? Feinstein spoke more about what Rice did at Stanford - Feinstein's alma mater - than what she had done at the White House these past four years. She gave Rice a pass. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - not Rice - is responsible for the mess in Iraq. Boxer was not swayed by Rice's supposed charm. She walloped Rice for participating in the White House's cynical effort to use a trumped-up WMD case to sell the war. An angry Boxer confronted Rice with uttering contradictory statements about Iraq and nuclear weapons after the invasion. Rice replied with controlled indignation: "I would hope that we can have this conversation . . . without impugning my credibility or integrity." Boxer replied, "I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said." But in a way, she was challenging Rice's honor, and Boxer might have justifiably said, "Come to think of it, I am impugning your credibility." The next day, she pressed Rice further. Boxer challenged Rice's prewar exaggerations about the alleged connection between Hussein and al Qaeda and Hussein's (nonexistent) nuclear-weapons program. On the latter point in particular, Boxer clearly showed that Rice had doled out falsehoods. She accused Rice of providing the public only half-truths and of "gaming the American people . . . because the mission - the zeal of selling the war - was so important." Boxer could have gone further. She could have questioned Rice on her key role in the controversy stemming from the administration's use of the unproven charge that Hussein had tried to purchase uranium in Niger. She could have asked why Rice did not ensure that adequate plans for the post-invasion period were crafted before the invasion. But she had only so much time. Rice was bruised by Boxer - though not nearly enough to threaten her confirmation. Shortly after Boxer finished with Rice, all the Democrats on the committee - with the exception of her and John Kerry - voted in favor of Rice's appointment. Political commentators have pointed to Boxer's recent 20-point re-election win and her lone vote in the Senate against certifying the Electoral College vote (due to irregularities in Ohio) as signs that she is now free to position herself aggressively as one of the leading liberals of the Senate. That may be so. But Boxer demonstrated a willingness to ignore the collegial niceties of institutional Washington and to raise impolite and inconvenient questions. And, after all, what's wrong with impugning the credibility of someone who you believe misled the nation into war? If a legislator holds such a belief, isn't it his or her responsibility to pursue the matter? On Fox News, Feinstein was asked if Boxer went too far. "I'm not going to comment on that," she said. "Each one of us, you know, marches to the sound of our own drummer. And each one of us has strong feelings on various issues from time to time, and sometimes all the time." This is indeed a difference. Feinstein was listening to a drumbeat (perhaps the rhythm of the Stanford fight song). Boxer was creating a drumbeat. emocrats ought to be able to figure out who set the better example. Protocol for Lying - The senators let Condi Rice slide http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/10/news-lewis.php Even by the accounts of people inclined to hate her, Senator Barbara Boxer delivered a fierce argument on January 18 against Condoleezza Rice's nomination for secretary of state. But if all the news you caught the next morning was in the headlines on National Public Radio, you wouldn't have known that. In the distilled world of audio broadcast, the only reference to the Rice-Boxer exchange was a 10-second clip, with Rice telling Boxer, "I would ask you to refrain from impugning my integrity," and Boxer responding, " I'm not." It's hard to know who selects these bits, and why. Presumably, a 10-second excerpt is meant to capture the overall tone of the proceedings it's culled from, to give the listener a sense of a longer story in a very short time. But the impression one got from this segment was of a patient doyenne condescending to a nippy little harpy. It was not a representative excerpt: It was as if NPR had chosen to highlight Joe Biden's initial breathlessness, or Dianne Feinstein's tripping repeatedly over the word "Czechoslovakia." It represented Boxer at her worst, Woman at her worst, and whatever else Boxer had accomplished earlier in the day, what millions of listeners took away was this: Scrappy Boxer had launched a scud that landed inert at her opponent's pedicured feet. That the text and context of Boxer's speech in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that day was much, much different was something you'd only find out had you stayed glued to CNN or C-SPAN during the hearing, or flipped channels after Morning Edition and heard the highlights of the day's dissent on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! In the longer version, Boxer had asked Rice for "a candid discussion," to account for discrepancies between her words and the president's, her words and her other words, her words and the facts as documented in reports by Charles Duelfer and the 9/11 commission. Such an accounting would have required Rice to admit that many of the administration's reasons for invading Iraq were bunk. Rice would never do this, of course - she reaffirms repeatedly that Bush and she speak with one voice - and Boxer knew it. And so Boxer's request that Rice account for these discrepancies served only one purpose: To establish for the committee, and for the world, that Rice is a liar. In other words, to impugn her integrity. As well it deserved to be impugned: In the words of Hans Blix, "It took much twisted evidence, including a forged uranium contract, to conjure up a revived Iraqi nuclear threat, even one that was somewhat distant," and yet there was Rice in the run-up to the war, talking about mushroom clouds. Or as returned-to the-chambers Senator John Kerry observed in the January 18 hearing, despite Rice's justification for the war as a pre-emptive attack on a country readying WMD, U.S. troops had not even bothered to guard a large cache of ammunition that was later used against them. In statements throughout the proceedings she dodged, obfuscated and boldly rewrote history, responding cagily to questions from Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island about her hypocritical disdain for Venezuela ("We hope that the government of Venezuela will continue to recognize what has been a mutually beneficial relationship on energy," she said); dismissing questions from Senator Joe Biden about whether the U.S. initially committed sufficient forces to secure Iraq ("I do believe that the plan and the forces we went in with were appropriate to the task," Rice told him); and stringing together a series of end runs around Senator Christopher Dodd's questions about what Rice believes constitutes torture - "Water-boarding?" Nudity? ("I don't want to comment on any specific interrogation techniques," she demurred. "I don't think that would be appropriate." Dodd called this "disappointing." You got the feeling Rice could have endorsed the decapitation of her critics, and the senators would have called it "disappointing.") Rice's answers were a triumph of insinuation as a substitute for facts. To impugn her integrity should have been uncontroversial. This past Tuesday, before the full Senate, Senator Mark Dayton almost did, even using the word lying. "I really don't like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally," he said. "It's dangerous." It sounded profound. So why didn't Boxer do the same in her own fateful moment? When I called her office to find out, I felt a little like Howard Stern's Stuttering John asking Gennifer Flowers whether Clinton used a condom. "She didn't call her any names," insisted Boxer's press secretary, David Sandretti. "She never called her a liar, she never said ŒYou're not telling the truth.' She said,Œ You said this on this day, and you contradicted yourself on that day.' Excuse me, but doesn't that mean Boxer was calling Rice a liar? Sandretti didn't think so. "She was hoping to get satisfactory explanations about what she said, when she said and why she said it," he insisted. "[If she had said] Œwe had faulty information, we made a mistake' - those would have been acceptable answers, and had [Rice] given them, her integrity would have remained intact." But certainly it was clear by the time of the fateful exchange that Rice was not going to give such answers. And despite a groundswell of support from other Democrats on Tuesday, Boxer still felt the need to introduce her otherwise forceful presentation to the full Senate with a 15-minute preamble devoted to defending her right to speak up, invoking Hamilton, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the tens of thousands of constituents who signed a "She was responding to all the people questioning her motives," Sandretti said. "Because when the chief of staff at the White House says you're playing petty politics and you should just go along and get along - she just felt that was wrong." Much has been written about the Bush administration's aversion to dissent in its own ranks; Ron Suskind's best-selling The Price of Loyalty details a raft of stories in which people lost their jobs when they dared to dissent. Rice herself has promised that she and the president will "speak to the world with a single voice." Less has been said about how the current administration and its Republican allies have silenced dissent among the people they can't fire: not by fairly disputing their views, but by pretending to sneer at their bad-mannered ways - by branding them" obstructionist" and "unconstructive." The process played itself out in miniature in that final exchange on January 18 between the famously Sphinx-like Rice and her more emotional opponent: "Senator, we can have this discussion in any way you want," said Rice, the implication being that right here, right now, this discussion is a violation of protocol. It is shameful. As the Senate wrapped up its last full day of debate on the matter this week, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama took the floor to gripe in an exasperated drawl how "inappropriate" it was that "those people on the Œhard left' had to express all their views"; Senator John Cornyn of Texas shook his head and called last week's grilling and the day's questions "a crying shame." Neither man addressed any of the the very real questions their fellow senators on both sides of the aisle had raised about the integrity of the well-coifed woman destined to be our next secretary of state - the woman who played piano at 3, who never missed an opportunity to remind the committee of her cultural superiority ("You'll provoke me to respond in Russian," she told Dodd when he welcomed her to the committee in Spanish), and yet could not bring herself to categorically condemn the practice of interrogating a human prisoner by forcing him into a tank of water until he panics on the verge of drowning. That, and not the responsible expression of political speech in the Senate chamber, for which no one should apologize, is the more horrifying, crying shame. A 9/11 question for Condoleezza Rice No one could have predicted it. That's what Condoleezza Rice said about 9/11. Yes, George W. Bush received a Presidential Daily Brief on Aug. 6, 2001, and yes, that brief was headlined, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." But Rice and other administration officials have long maintained that no one could have predicted that terrorists would hijack a plane and try to use it as a weapon. "I don't think anybody could have predicted . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said at a press briefing in May 2002. Well, that's not quite true. Someone could have predicted it, and someone actually did. As we mentioned last night, today's New York Times brings news of a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 Commission. According to the Times, the report says that the Federal Aviation Administration "had indeed considered the possibility that terrorists would hijack a plane and use it as a weapon," and that it actually warned U.S. airports in 2001 that terrorists might hijack an airplane in order to "commit suicide in a spectacular explosion." Rice didn't see fit to mention any of this in her sworn public testimony before the 9/11 Commission last year. Asked about her pronouncement about the unpredictability of a planes-as-missiles scheme, Rice backtracked a bit, saying that the idea actually had been raised in reports within the "intelligence community" in 1998 and 1999. She didn't mention that the FAA had issued a warning about such an attack in the spring of 2001, just months before 9/11. The Times says that the Bush administration "blocked" the public release of the newly disclosed 9/11 Commission for "more than five months" -- against the wishes of 9/11 Commissioner members -- but finally "provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago." Two weeks ago? Two weeks ago would be 'round about Jan. 27, and Jan. 27 would be the day after the U.S. Senate confirmed Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. Maybe the timing is a coincidence, and we certainly wouldn't want to suggest otherwise. That might amount to "impugning" Rice's "integrity" and "credibility." And that would be wrong, wouldn't it? -- Tim Grieve [08:53 EST, Feb. 10, 2005]
More 9/11 Warnings Revealed
Martin Rowson
I would move heaven and earth to protect my husb...
errr.. President Bush!
by Balz
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/10/news-corn.php
by JUDITH LEWIS
petition asking her to oppose Rice's nomination. "I am doing my job," Boxer said. "It's as simple as that."
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/
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#1. To: robin (#0)
LOL! Also lying bitch bump! [The FAA knew what Condi alledgedly did not? BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!] I reitterate what we already know. 911 was conducted by principalities at the highest level of our military with government stooge help. I don't know who they are, but they're STILL out there, they're STILL in their positions, and we are STILL NOT SAFE from a repeat performance from them to perpetuate their globalist Empire and PoliceState agenda.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Bingo.
bin stealin', bin killin', bin chillin' (in Crawford), bin rapin', bin bombin', bin trippin', bin fallin', bin kickin' (with Condi), bin smokin', bin dopin', bin slurrin' (his words)...let me know when he's croakin'.
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
black bush bump
#2. To: lodwick (#1)
(Edited)
black bush bump
"There is no 'legitimate' Corporation by virtue of it's very legal definition and purpose."
-- IndieTx
#3. To: IndieTX (#2)
I don't know who they are, but they're STILL out there, they're STILL in their positions, and we are STILL NOT SAFE from a repeat performance from them to perpetuate their globalist Empire and PoliceState agenda.
#4. To: robin (#0)
RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."
#5. To: honway (#4)
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