We caught the Condi Show live this morning and started taking a few notes, but we had work to do so left the TV on in the background. What came through was the predictable melodrama of toe-curling grandstanders making preening speeches (yes you, Bob Kerrey, a big disappointment after that excellent WSJ op ed this morning) and same-old-same-old partisans making jabs.
Condi herself was intense, believable and mostly unflappable, citing long-standing structural problems -- legal and bureaucratic -- that had prevented communication between domestic and foreign intelligence. She flapped a little under Richard Ben-Veniste's coarse prosecutorial attempts to get her dander up by cutting her off in mid sentence more than once. By contrast, fellow Clintonoid lawyer Jamie Gorelick, equally tough in her questioning, was smooth as silk. One sentence of Condi's encapsulated a fundamental point that we have made here:
"My blood was not nearly as boiling prior to September the 11th."
That's akin to acknowledging, as we have, that it's a fool's game to try to pin blame on any administration for not taking bolder action against terrorism. To put it in Condi's terms, the people's blood was not nearly as boiling prior to September 11. In other words, the political will just wasn't there.
Our favorite moment came when Condi turned the tables on a whining Bob Kerrey. He was complaining about the Bush White House's consideration of going after Saddam in response to the bombing of the USS Cole, when she trumped him by recalling a speech of his that had made the very same point.
FOXNews report: "Rice: No 'Silver Bullet' Could Have Stopped 9/11."
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