{"id":8577,"date":"2006-09-26T16:26:33","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T20:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8577.html"},"modified":"2006-09-26T16:26:33","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T20:26:33","slug":"condi-rice-re-fighting-910","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/condi-rice-re-fighting-910\/","title":{"rendered":"Condi Rice, re-fighting 9\/10"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Note suggested<\/a> this morning that Bill Clinton’s appearance\/smackdown on Fox News may have been “a paradigm-shifting moment” for Democrats. It struck me as wildly hyperbolic — will the interview still dominate the political discourse a month from now? — but I think it’s fair to say Clinton’s hard-hitting responses have certainly gotten the right’s attention.<\/p>\n

For example, in the Secretary of State’s office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making “flatly false” claims that the Bush administration didn’t lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n

Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration “did not try” to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks. […]<\/p>\n

“What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Rice misread the talking points. The right isn’t supposed to believe Bush was “as aggressive” as Clinton on counter-terrorism; the line is that Bush was more<\/i> aggressive than Clinton.<\/p>\n

Not that it matters — in either case, Rice is simply, demonstrably wrong. Indeed, it’s odd that she’s pick this fight in light of the evidence.
\n
\nI’ll spare you a voluminous post, instead offering links to the key details:<\/p>\n

* Rice’s claims are flatly<\/a> contradicted<\/a> by the 9\/11 Commission.<\/p>\n

* Rice’s claims are flatly contradicted<\/a> by former Bush administration officials.<\/p>\n

* And Rice’s claims are flatly contradicted by a memo she received<\/a> shortly after becoming National Security Advisor.<\/p>\n

And as long as we’re on the subject, if the administration really<\/i> wants to seriously point fingers here, I’d also recommend reviewing 9\/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste’s latest comments<\/a>; the opening anecdote<\/a> from “The One Percent Doctrine”; and Joe Conason’s pre-Richard Clarke piece for Salon, “Don’t Blame Clinton<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Why the administration and its allies would want to have this fight all over again is a mystery. Were the facts not clear enough the last time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Note suggested this morning that Bill Clinton’s appearance\/smackdown on Fox News may have been “a paradigm-shifting moment” for Democrats. It struck me as wildly hyperbolic — will the interview still dominate the political discourse a month from now? — but I think it’s fair to say Clinton’s hard-hitting responses have certainly gotten the right’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}