' the fuck is she laughing at?

[cantnokdahustle]

this shit is not funny, so stop laughing Rice.

[yeat182]

what are you talking about?

[cantnokdahustle]

Rice was laughing through the entire session.

[Sinister Rouge]

I think she is lying.

[Justin_stacy]

this shit is not funny,.

Man, I'm shocked that you didn't condemn the partisan games that some of the commissioners were playing, too....Maybe if they weren’t doing their best to make a mockery out of this Commission, those being questioned wouldn’t see humor in their (the commissioners) actions….

[Justin_stacy]

I think she is lying.
But clark's a truthteller right?

[Love As Arson]

But clark's a truthteller right?
I am not saying she is lying but if you think about it logically, Rice has more to gain by lying than Clarke does.

[Justin_stacy]

I am not saying she is lying but if you think about it logically, Rice has more to gain by lying than Clarke does.


I would say Clark (is that with an "e", I didn't know that) has way more to profit from this, with his book deals, TV appearance’s, sense of revenge and future posting in a possible Kerry administration......but as it stands, with Rice's testimony being so fresh, it is only Clark(e) who has been shown as a liar or a flip-floppier......but in all honesty, I think time will tell that both probably weren’t the most “truthful”….

[vikingstrike182]

I didnt get the impression that she was "laughing," but maybe I was watching for the wrong things.

[cantnokdahustle]

on both halfs it was laughably partisan, but in this sense, Rice should have suckied it up, this commission was appointed by her administration, the laughing was uncalled for, if i had had a family killed, that would have turned me so against her as a person it's rediculous.

[Love As Arson]

I would say Clark (is that with an "e", I didn't know that) has way more to profit from this, with his book deals, TV appearance’s, sense of revenge and future posting in a possible Kerry administration......but as it stands, with Rice's testimony being so fresh, it is only Clark(e) who has been shown as a liar or a flip-floppier......but in all honesty, I think time will tell that both probably weren’t the most “truthful”….
Rice has more to lose in that Bush may lose the presidency and has more to gain by lying and ensuring that Bush will become president again.

[Justin_stacy]

Rice has more to lose in that Bush may lose the presidency and has more to gain by lying and ensuring that Bush will become president again.
too me it looks like clark(e) has far more to gain personally......but to each there own...

[xXGet AwesomexX]

Rice IS lying and honestly cheating the American public, but when Bush is the president I guess you get use to the feeling of being cheated.....Go Vote, get this moron out of office. Thank you, that was my speech.

[Jason Tate]

Rice got bitchslapped. Anyone with a brain saw her get caught in at least one lie.

[yeat182]

the whole commision is pointless, because the memo's recieved by the government were so vague, even if clarke had met with the president 9/11 wouldn't have been prevented.

[Love As Arson]

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaytheytriedtowarnus.html

[open mind]

the whole commision is pointless, because the memo's recieved by the government were so vague, even if clarke had met with the president 9/11 wouldn't have been prevented.
yeah trying to figure out what led up to 9/11 is just a waste of time............

[open mind]

The Rice apperance is what everyone is talking about, and I wonder why no one here or on tv is really talking about Clinton appearing in front of them yesterday.

Hadnt heard and crys going out about him meeting in private with the commision instead of in public like we heard with Rice?
clinton isn't basing his campaign on his record against terrorism,last i checked he wasn't even running for office.

[open mind]

This panel isnt about re-election. Get it through your head that the panel should be to help America see what it did wrong years before 9/11. That's why we should scrutinize all meetings.
i'll think for myself thank you very much.

[open mind]

You make it into a partisan show when you try to make it a Bush basing panel. The panel was created for......

"to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The Commission is also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks."

It wasnt created for a Bush re-election debate.
i didn't say it was but bush is basing his campaign on national security isn't he? so if it turns out he hasn't done the best job it's a big issue.

[open mind]

That's true what you just said. On the other hand when I raised the question about why no one is talking about Clintons meeting on the same day you said it was because, "clinton isn't basing his campaign on his record against terrorism,last i checked he wasn't even running for office."

That shouldnt matter at all. We should be asking questions and reporting on Clintons meeting just as much as Rice's.
sure it shouldn't matter but in reality it does,i'm sure clinton dropped the ball with terrorism,but he's not running to be president of the united states with terrorism as a central issue,if he was there would be just as much coverage on clinton but he's not running.

[open mind]

if it shouldnt matter why do you let it matter? Oh yeah the partisan view
i'm no democrat i hate all politicians equally i just call it like i see it.

[open mind]

You're sure calling it one sided though
call it what you will but that's how i see things this may suprise you but my favorite politician is john mcain.

[open mind]

Nothing surpises me, like I said you think America is a bigger terrorist than Al- Qaeda. That's a slap in the face to the military
war creates terror,war kills innocent people,war causes wide spread destruction,when fundemtalists terrorize and kill innocents,and destroy stuff it's usually on a much smaller scale,our military has intimidation,terror and destruction down to a science.
the only difference between terrorists and us is we have deeper pockets and the people funding the destruction are elected officials,instead of crazies,but if their crazed lunatics what are we?
our troops believe we're right and the terrorists believe their right but we both do the same thing when you get down to the most basic and realistic outlook.
we say innocents die in war it's unaviodable,so going to war is decideing to terrorize innocent civilians,especially when we use banned weaponry.

[yeat182]

yeah trying to figure out what led up to 9/11 is just a waste of time............

i didn't say trying to figure out what led up to 9/11 is waste of time, but trying to affix blame to someone when they obviously couldn't do anything to prevent it is lame, and is wasting taxpayers time and money.

[Jason Tate]

Condi and the "it wasn't us" argument.. brillant.

In her testimony before the 9/11 Commission today, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice defended the Bush administration’s pre-9/11 record by referring, on two occasions, to a task force headed by Vice President Cheney that was to review all of the recommendations for domestic preparedness in the event of an attack on the US. She said:
The vice president was, a little later in, I think, in May, tasked by the president to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations that had been made about domestic preparedness and all of the questions associated with that; to take the Gilmore report and the Hart-Rudman report and so forth and to try to make recommendations about what might have been done.
And again, Cheney’s comprehensive task force:
Now, the vice president was asked by the president, and that was tasked in May, to put all of this together and to see if he could put together, from all of the recommendations, a program for protection of the homeland against WMD, what else needed to be done.
Ms. Rice is correct about Cheney’s mission. President Bush announced the Cheney-led homeland-security task force on May 8, 2001. Moreover, Bush announced that "I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts." Cheney would run the task force, and Bush would review its conclusions.

One thing that Rice left out, though: the task force never met.

As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported in 2002:
“Neither Cheney’s review nor Bush’s took place.”
Michael Elliott of Time Magazine reported the same thing:
“MAY 8: Bush creates a new Office of National Preparedness for terrorism and promises a government review, led by Dick Cheney, into the consequences of a domestic attack. It never happens.”
Rice was testifying under oath. She didn’t claim that it met, so she did not technically perjure herself—but she was being dishonest. And it’s clear that she knew what she was doing: saying that Cheney was "tasked by the president" without mentioning that Cheney didn’t follow through is an artful way of giving the false impression of focus and activity.

The 9/11 commissioners should have called her on it. But they shouldn’t have had to. Rice’s testimony was another deliberate attempt to mislead the public and cover up the Bush administration’s miserable record in fighting terror before the 9/11 attacks.

[yeat182]

Rice Testimony Reveals Security Failures

Friday, April 09, 2004
By Julia Gorin
In 1997, three men in a Brooklyn shack— two from Jordan who identified themselves as Palestinian and one from Egypt— were days away from blowing up New York's "A" subway train as an audition for membership into Hamas.



But their new roommate, who in his few days in the country found Americans to be "nice" and so became confused as to why his roommates wanted to blow them up, flagged down a police car on a Brooklyn street an hour before midnight on July 29. Mohammed Chindluri (search) couldn't speak a word of English, so he played charades with the officer while repeating "Bomba! Bomba!" Rather than ignore the wildman, the officer chose to follow up. Police stormed the Park Slope shack that Chindluri led them to at dawn, shooting the suspects as they reached for the detonator.

High-ranking investigators said the intended attack had the makings of a suicide mission, and it was meant to hit the Atlantic Avenue station, which the New York Times described as "a commuting nexus that includes 10 subway lines and a Long Island Rail Road terminal."

Despite all the congratulations exchanged between the mayor and the police department after the attack had been successfully averted—and the police do deserve credit for looking into the claims of the crazed, gesticulating little man from the Middle East—the fact remains that the only reason we weren't attacked in July of 1997 was Chindluri's change of heart (he was supposed to help coordinate the attack). In other words, pure luck. After all, the deliveries of explosives that were taking place by truck every week to the Brooklyn shack on a route in plain sight of police went unnoted.

On Thursday, in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission (search), National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told a similar story regarding the United States' preparedness for possible attacks during the millenial new year. In contrast to Richard Clarke's testimony (search), Rice reminded us that it wasn't a "shaking of the trees" that averted millennium attacks planned for December of 1999, but a vigilant customs inspector. It turns out that the border patrols weren't even on alert, as Clarke claimed they'd been. It was the alertness and the actions of a customs agent at the Canadian border, named Diana Dean, and her team that set things into motion and stopped Ahmed Ressem (search), who was transporting explosives.

The thwarted millennium attacks, together with the 1997 incident, points to just how randomly our security apparatus often functioned prior to the current administration's reorganizing of our intelligence system. Even now, negligence continues. Indeed, it's a miracle that we have been attacked on our soil as infrequently as we have been.

It wasn't until the first large-scale attack from the Middle East within our borders actually succeeded that the American public lifted an eyebrow. Our false sense of security, buttressed by a complacency abetted by the 1990s economic well-being, was evident from a USA Today headline that appeared shortly after 9/11: "WTC Widows: A Quiet Fury." The article mentioned a common sentiment among the women: "I thought it couldn't happen here."

Why not? Did they think that the targets of the terror training camps in the Middle East—featured in countless documentaries for more than a decade-were somewhere on Pluto? Or that the trainees were just keeping themselves busy? That there would be no fruits to their labor?

Just as when the daily— but prevented— suicide bombings in Israel are referred to among the media and the public as "periods of calm," here too, common logic seems to go: prevented attack equals no attack attempted. We seem to be dismissive of catastrophes that are narrowly and randomly averted like those of 1997 and 1999.

If the American public wants a commission assigning blame to someone other than those who perpetrated the attacks of Sept. 11, it can turn its pointing finger inward. Our security apparatus of the 1990s was a reflection of the complacent, less than vigilant public it was protecting. It was an era of zero interest in foreign policy and national security, an era upon which then president-elect Bill Clinton could comment: "...I've been traveling around our country for a year and no one cares about foreign policy other than about six journalists."

As Rice said in her testimony, nothing less was being done under the Bush watch than was being done under the Clinton watch. Everything that was being done continued to be done as additional measures were being evaluated. This not only leaves hollow Richard Clarke's blaming of an administration that fired him while crediting one that didn't, it also implicates those people who today are eager to point fingers after the fact.

It's a shame that most people can't see the dung piling up until they're drowning in it.

[open mind]

You dont have to explain again why you think America is a bigger terrorist than Al-Qaeda, and yes it is still a slap in the face to every person serving in the military. In essence you are calling all of them terrorists.
i explain because you don't get it,go ahead and say i'm an unpatriotiotic troop basher or whatever the fuck you want.
i've never said war isn't needed but to act like what we do is so much better then some one elses brand of killing just doesn't sit with me, killing is still killing,sometimes it has to be done but only in the most dire circumstances,like say taking out al queda or fighting hitler (not some bullshit nonexistant wmd threat)

[open mind]

I do get it. You said it very bluntly.

"really we're the biggest terrorists in the world."
yeah i said that, and i've given you valid points on why i believe that.
the end results are pretty similiar,for instance we've killed the equivalent amount of innnocent iraqis to the amount of citizens that died on 9/11 and we've blown up way more shit.

[open mind]

and your still giving points and that's fine. The bottom line is you believe our government and the troops serving over in Iraq are the biggest terrorist threat in the world.
yeah that's the bottom line,but your not arguing with me or showing me why i should think otherwise.

[Jason Tate]

if you think Americans are bigger terrorists than Al-Qaeda, I wouldnt bother trying to convience you otherwise. I think common sense and "write and wrong" escapes your thinking.
if you believe in the war so much, why are you not over there?

[open mind]

if you think Americans are bigger terrorists than Al-Qaeda, I wouldnt bother trying to convience you otherwise. I think common sense and "write and wrong" escapes your thinking.
you would be thinking wrong,both sides kill innocents for political gains,and both sides believe they are right,my view is killing innocents is never right, no matter what how it's labeled to make you feel better.
i believe i've demonstrated common sense in my arguments,you just wanna quote me and act like i'm a retard without explaining your views.

[open mind]

what would you say if al queada dropped nuclear bombs on 2 of our big cities and killed thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians?

[open mind]

so although you can't fight you want a career that allows you to order others to?

[yeat182]

so although you can't fight you want a career that allows you to order others to?

those other people volunteer to fight, so what is the problem? if you don't want to fight, don't sign up.

[open mind]

Maybe your right. Everyone who does public administration needs to fight in a war.
to be pro war without really knowing what war is,is kinda backwards.you either won't or can't go yourself,but your willing to send others off to fight for causes you won't?

[yeat182]

to be pro war without really knowing what war is,is kinda backwards.you either won't or can't go yourself,but your willing to send others off to fight for causes you won't?

that is what they volunteered for...

[open mind]

that is what they volunteered for...
i just think telling people to go off and fight when you yourself refuse to is a little off.

[yeat182]

i just think telling people to go off and fight when you yourself refuse to is a little off.

if we were openly drafting people like vietnam, then i might agree with you, but not when we have a completely volunteer army.

[open mind]

if we were openly drafting people like vietnam, then i might agree with you, but not when we have a completely volunteer army.
i don't know, if you wanna order people to go to war but wouldn't volunteer to serve yourself what right do you have to order others to?

[open mind]

to be anti war without really knowing what war is,is kinda backwards. How can you be anit war if you dont know what war really is?

that can go both ways
i'm not trying to make a career out of a job that involves sending people to kill,destroy,and maybe lose their own lives am i?

[open mind]

that's why we vote these people in, that's what right they have to order others.
and how do you go about getting voted into office?massive donations from arms manufacturers and other special interest groups to fund your campaign.

[open mind]

i dont want to be a president of senator either.
so what do you wanna do?

[open mind]

i dont see what that has to do with anything, but i myself think special interest groups are overall a good thing.
yeah i like the idea that elected officials are bought and paid for before they get into office.

[yeat182]

i don't know, if you wanna order people to go to war but wouldn't volunteer to serve yourself what right do you have to order others to?

that is like saying, what right do you have to critisize the military if you aren't willing to go over there and fight yourself? it is irrelevant, military service doesn't effect your ability to make decisions, it may give you a different perspective, but our country is founded on the principles that the military will not lead the country (like the generals of ancient rome), but that the country will lead the military.

[logalog]

the whole commision is pointless, because the memo's recieved by the government were so vague, even if clarke had met with the president 9/11 wouldn't have been prevented.

Politics Politics Politics. That's all this is. Clarke's book wants to be condemned by the republicans and is being praised by the republicans. With no power all this commision is doing is ruining credibility, either the president's or clarke's.
And don't tell me that they are there to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, don't be thick.