Re: Condi Rice now agrees to meet with 9/11 commission
dyslexia wrote:just heard on MSNBC that Condi now requests to meet with the commission Privately and Not under oath.
Dr. Rice, the National Security Advisor, who is one of the most important public servants in the nation, has agreed to testify, but only:
a) In private
b) Without taking an Oath
This is intolerable.
I am still waiting for a rational explaination - no, fu
ck it,
any explanation - for this.
Every administration has a unique dynamic. What we know about the Bush administration indicates that five people - Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney, Tenet, and Rice - exerted tremendous influence of Bush's decisions. Two of these people - Cheney and Rice - were particularly influential, in that they were charged with sifting through information and presenting Bush with what
they felt were reasonable policy options for him to choose from. Consider the comments of James Fallows, in an objective and comprehensive analysis he wrote in the Jan/Fed issue of Atlantic Monthly:
Quote:This is the place to note that in several months of interviews I never once heard someone say "We took this step because the President indicated ..." or "The President really wanted ..." Instead I heard "Rumsfeld wanted," "Powell thought," "The Vice President pushed," "Bremer asked," and so on. One need only compare this with any discussion of foreign policy in Reagan's or Clinton's Administration?-or Nixon's, or Kennedy's, or Johnson's, or most others?-to sense how unusual is the absence of the President as prime mover. The other conspicuously absent figure was Condoleezza Rice, even after she was supposedly put in charge of coordinating Administration policy on Iraq, last October. It is possible that the President's confidants are so discreet that they have kept all his decisions and instructions secret. But that would run counter to the fundamental nature of bureaucratic Washington, where people cite a President's authority whenever they possibly can ("The President feels strongly about this, so ...").
To me, the more likely inference is that Bush took a strong overall position?-fighting terrorism is this generation's challenge?-and then was exposed to only a narrow range of options worked out by the contending forces within his Administration. If this interpretation proves to be right, and if Bush did in fact wish to know more, then blame will fall on those whose responsibility it was to present him with the widest range of choices: Cheney and Rice.
Condolezza Rice played a vital role in the decisions leading up to war. The fact that she is avoiding taking a vow, and avoiding testifying in public, is absolutely deplorable. Rarely have I seen such a blatent lack of accountability and transparency in government.
I can think of no reason she would refuse to take an Oath. Can anybody?
The obvious question is
why has she taken this route?
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