Rice Poll

Is she ...?

Incompetent

Lying

Vote below.

Addendum: See Jim Hightower's analysis.

Comments

[Ben Veniste]

Lying

[KERRY]

LYING

[me]

They fucked up. Then they lied about it to cover up the fuck-up. So, it's a little of both.

[maja]

Incompetent. She believes what she's saying.

[Pixy Misa]

Have you ever, just for a minute, considered the possibility that she is in fact telling the truth?

[Ted]

Talk about skewing results. Why bother taking a poll if you've pre-judged the outcome?

[Roxanne]

Attention Freepers: This is not a real poll. It's commentary.

[John of Argghhh!]

Ain't perfect hindsight grand?

All the dots are sooooo obvious when all the dead end paths are x'd out. The maze is easy to negotiate when all the turns are nicely labeled.

I worked in the WMD response task force for DoD in 98-00. We considered airplanes into buildings. We considered ricin in the food supply. We considered toxins in the water. We considered nerve gas in the subways. We considered low-order radioactive material distributed in any number of interesting ways. We used complicated models to try and determine downwind paths in complex urban terrain, simulating someone dispensing a biological from a high building. We considered lots and lots of stuff. And there was intel that supported all of it.

Which means that nothing stands out. It's all possible. And, like it or not - just as the Clinton administration found out - you can't guard against everything.

We made plans to react to all of it. We rehearsed those plans and the coordination with Federal, State, and Local agencies. And we lost sleep over the probable casualties.

The problem was no one (this means you, the public, in addition to the executive/legislative leadership) was going to buy the recommended preventive measures - because no one really BELIEVED it could happen here. An attitude carried forward with the change in administrations.

NOW we believe.

This raking over the coals is all about politics - it's not about getting to an answer. Which means it's a virtual waste of time. No one seems interested in improving the system - just their electoral chances... regardless of the downstream impact of that.

A pox on all of 'em.

[Wind Rider]

Neither.

[Roxanne]

John:

You make some valid points. I agree with most of them.

I think you point out that our leaders could envision what happened on 9/11 because folks like you provided them with the evidence. Those who deny they couldn't, including Rice, lied under oath. That goes for people on both sides of the aisle.

Instead what we're getting from some who have testified is the 'blame game,' I think on that point, we are also in agreement.

[Madfish Willie]

You whine about name-calling, but isn't that EXACTLY what you are doing here? Condi is incompetent or Condi is a liar.

I watched/listened to the whole thing, and from what I saw/heard, Condi spanked their ass like little baby boys. Naturally, the reaction from the Democrat's is she's lying/incompetent/convering-up/etc. Take your ass-whuppin like a man and move on; quit crying like babies!

[sam]

Hey Roxanne!

What's up with the trolls?

[John of Argghhh!]

Roxanne - it's a matter of perspective, in that regard. And focus. I lived it, they (and the public) were removed from it.

It just wasn't real. And they really couldn't envision it in a true sense. And that was true for senior leaders of all political stripes. They couldn't envision it because they simply didn't want to, and if they did - knew that acting on that information would be political suicide.

So they did what every American (and European, for that matter 'democratic government' (not the party, but the political process) does - bury their heads in the sand and deny the reality until it hits them in the butt.

It's the nature of the beast. And the beast is us, the people, because we don't want to be inconvenienced by shadow threats that rarely truely manifest themselves until they do, in fact, materialize. So we always give the initiative to the other guy in that respect, as happened to Roosevelt with Pearl Harbor. The two events have parallels - in retrospect it was obvious, but it never is that obvious in real-time. I know, I spent 24 years of my life in the business, it's always easier to write the after-action report than it is to write the manual for prevention.

So, I can believe Dr. Rice isn't baldfaced lying. I have no doubt she was putting as pretty a face on it as she could, but I don't believe she was outright lying through her teeth. And I would give that same consideration to members of the Clinton administration (which, in a purely technical sense of the term, I was, as all military officers are officially appointees of the President, and my promotions were confirmed by the senate - though subsequent changes in the law have reduced the grades the Senate must confirm). But now I'm just chewing up bandwidth, so I'll shut up. 8^)

maybe the creeps are in church today

[jesus]

I think you should turn over their IPs to the IG. Taxpayers are paying them to work, not to troll the Internet at work, looking for blogs to spray their mindless blathering with.

[robb]

She's black and conservative, therefore she is "suspect" in the minds of liberals.