Linkmeister

Disgusted but not surprised

Why Condoleeza Rice should not be Secretary of State, from her testimony before the 9/11 Commission:

First of all, yes, the August 6th PDB was in response to questions of the president -- and that since he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al Qaeda's operations.

Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum -- I remember it as being only a line or two -- that there were al Qaeda cells in the United States.

Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that?

And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al Qaeda cells. I believe in the August 6th memorandum it says that there were 70 full field investigations under way of these cells. And so there was no recommendation that we do something about this; the FBI was pursuing it.

I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about. (My emphasis)

Something we were told we needed to do something about. Excuse me. At the time you were the National Security Adviser, and you didn't think that you should be concerned about this, because somebody else supposedly was? And who were you waiting for to tell you to be concerned?

Condi Rice reached her level of incompetence as NSA; there's no way in hell she should be promoted to SecState. I'm not even going to go into the idea that this appointment means there will be even fewer voices presenting dissenting ideas to the President.