Condoleeza's testimony

[wrongway]

Her favorite response was i wasn't aware of that

[JayB]

There seems to be a fundamental confusion between intelligence and actionable intelligence amongst some of the posters on this board.

 

Vague warnings such as "Al Queda Plans to Attack the United States Within the Next 6 Months" are the intelligence equivalent of the fortune cookie or one of Nostradamus's prophesies. WTF can you do with that? Call a halt to all commerce? In order for such things to enter the realm of actionable intelligence you need specific information before you can do anything constructive to eliminate the said threat. Had the administration had such intelligence and acted upon it, a fusilade of editorials and speeches denouncing their actions as simple fearmongering would have issued forth from the usual mouthpieces. Guaranteed.

 

I've also been amused by the response to Clark's testimory. Every member of the "No Blood for Oil" chorus has come out and hailed Clark, who wanted to invade Afghanistan long before 9/11, as some sort of a secular saint. I would have supported such a measure for a number of reasons, but the fact of the matter is that those on the left who retrospectively support such a measure would have been out in the streets waving placards condemning every single aspect of such an operation.

[Ratboy]

Afghanistan doesn't have oil.

[markinore]

I guess what struck me most about her testimony was how passive and disengaged she seemed to have been prior to 9/11. I hated Kissinger, but can you imagine Henry K saying "I don't recall" or "I wasn't informed" or "We were presented with actionable items but not a plan"? Kissinger, like most national security advisers before and since him, made things happen--sometimes they were bad things, but they tried to do something. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the whole lot felt lost without the Soviet Union to fight. The Soviets were someone they could relate to by building missiles and missile defenses. Dealing with an asymmetric enemy required hard work, imagination, and cleverness, qualities that are totally absent in today's White House. Even the fact that Rice received a call praising her performance from Bush while he was in a pickup truck on his ranch is typical of the Bush attitude: "Sure, there are Americans fighting and dying, the enemy is resurgent, and my national security adviser is facing some tough questioning--but I'm on vacation, dammit!"

[marylou]

Well stated Mark, though I think HK was Secretary of State rather than NSA. Think China for a second...

 

I can totally see him giving the whole "I don't recall" dog-and-pony-show.

 

Isn't Shrub on vacation like 50% of the time? Or did we make being Presdident a part-time job? If it's only part-time now, can we get one of our guys in there the rest of the time, kind of like a "job sharing" sort of thing?