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The low point of Dr. Condoleezza’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week was the cross examination by Richard Ben-Veniste. It was not a low point for President Bush’s Security Advisor; she acquitted herself excellently. It was a low point for the Commission as one of its members, sworn to pursue the truth of the matter, revealed himself as rude and obnoxious, but more importantly as dishonest. Commissioner Ben-Veniste used a technique known to debaters and philosophers since ancient times, but a special province of modern trial lawyers. It is to use truth to manufacture a lie. It reared its...

It’s no secret that I believe the War on Terror is essential, for us and for the future of Western Civilization.It’s also no secret that the standard “intellectual” position on the war is virulent opposition – at least to the campaign in Iraq. There are sensible reasons to have opposed the Iraq campaign from the start, and sensible reasons to regret it now. Unfortunately, I hear almost none of the sensible reasons. Instead, I hear the kind of vitriol spewed in – sadly – John le Carré’s latest novel, Absolute Friends. It’s a moving story of how a disaffected young...

This is how Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9-11 Commission and former Democratic senator from Nebraska, opened his questioning of Condoleezza Rice before the Commission last week:"Thank you, Dr. Rice. Let me say at the beginning I'm very impressed, and indeed I'd go as far as to say moved by your story, the story of your life and what you've accomplished. It's quite extraordinary."It is widely believed in universities and in the media that conservatives are more likely than liberals to be racist and sexist. I have long believed that the opposite is true, that most Democratic politicians and...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- The document at the heart of the most contentious moment of National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week was released by the White House on Saturday. The two-page Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 was made public as requested by all members of the panel. Former Watergate Prosecutor and high-powered Democratic lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste took Rice to task during her sworn testimony, demanding that she say the title of the PDB, which was "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." He tried to cut her off before she explained...

<p>April 12, 2004 -- Condoleezza Rice's performance before the 9/11 committee was exemplary and showed coolness under fire ("Rice thrives in the cooker," April 9).</p> <p>One can understand now why President Bush was reluctant to send his national security adviser into what was sure to be an ambush.</p>

<p>If you were expecting to get some kind of closure out of Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission, you were probably disappointed. It was never going to happen.</p> <p>The notion that the national security adviser was going to explain what was broken with our national security system that - had it been fixed - would have prevented the 2001 tragedy was misguided.</p>

WASHINGTON -- It was during her musings on the sources of terrorism before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that Condoleezza Rice had her high-drama, "You go, girlfriend!" moment. A "You go!" moment is the hip-hop generation's version of a big applause line, a red-hot zinger that causes black audiences to bob their heads up and down and erupt with some verbal punctuation like, "That's right! That's right ...!" National Security Adviser Rice's moment came when former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) asked her how America might best deal with the deeply seated discontent and dislocation that generates...

DR. RICE: Good afternoon. I'm going to give you a chronology of the events that occurred during the spring and summer of 2001. But I want to start with a little definitional work. When we talk about threats, they come in many varieties. Very often we have uncorroborated information; sometimes we have corroborated but very general information. But I can tell you that it is almost never the case that we have information that is specific as to time, place, or method of attack. In the period starting in December 2000, the intelligence community started reporting increase in traffic concerning...

(2004-04-11) -- A presidential briefing, dated August 6, 2001, and released by the White House yesterday, shows that in 1998 George W. Bush did nothing to respond to the threat of terror attacks from Usama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. In fact, when correlated with last week's testimony before the 9/11 Commission by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, it seems clear that the Bush administration had virtually no plan to act on top-secret intelligence gathered during the Clinton administration until after George W. Bush took office in 2001. "The August 6 PDB (President's Daily Brief) clearly shows that the White...

Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission didn't resolve questions about what the Bush administration could, or should, have done to prevent the attack, but her comments made it clear how Bush policies since 9/11 have made Americans radically less safe. While Republicans and mainstream Democrats argue over what Bush and Clinton officials did or didn't do, the conventional wisdom - that Bush officials may have dragged their feet before 9/11 but have since acted decisively to protect Americans - goes unchallenged. But the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has done virtually nothing to prevent future terrorist attacks, and the Iraq...

'Ive already watched her all morning on TV,' said Gael Sandoval, a Royal Oak events planner, who said she admired the way Dr. Rice was holding up under the scrutiny of the September 11th Comission hearing.For women around the area, the surprising tug of Rice's testimony went largely unspoken and unreported -but you could watch it, see it, feel it.Women especially wanted to see how a woman-and in particular this very powerful one-would hold up to a barrage of carefully honed questions and international scrutiny. You could argue that you were watching the most powerful woman in the world. Whether...

Fighting the Wrong War By BOB KERREY Published: April 11, 2004 t Thursday's hearing before the 9/11 commission, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, gave a triumphal presentation. She was a spectacular witness. I was a tough critic of some of her answers and assertions, though I believe I was at least as tough with the national security adviser for President Clinton. At the beginning and end of every criticism I have made in this process, I have also offered this disclaimer: anyone who was in Congress, as I was during the critical years leading up to Sept. 11,...

The White House has released a classified intelligence document that warned a month before the September 11 attacks of a possible al-Qaida strike inside the United States.The document titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside the United States" was de-classified on Saturday amid an escalating row over whether the Bush administration had received any prior warnings about the attacks and if they had been ignored. National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice insisted in her public testimony to the 9/11 commission last week that the document relating to the 6 August, 2001 presidential briefing contained mostly historical information and did not warn...

Rice's response to Bob Kerrey (transcript -- scroll down) is amusing: KERREY: Why didn't we swat that fly? RICE: I believe that there's a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense; whether or not you decide that you're going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every -- on a kind of tit-for-tat basis. By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit-for-tat, doing this on the time of our choosing. RICE: I'm aware, Mr. Kerrey,...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Abandoning the "trust but verify" mantra of previous Republican administrations, President Bush is determined to reach an arms reduction deal with the Russians that would be sealed with a handshake and maybe a brief communique instead of a 1,000-page treaty such as those of the past.</p>

The National Commission on Terrorist Acts Upon the United States ostensibly has been exploring how the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks could have happened and how they could have been prevented. In light of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony Thursday, I, like so many others, have figured out an easy answer: Get the panel to construct a time machine so that all those geniuses who now believe that Sept. 11 easily could have been averted can wave a magic wand and reinvent the past. That's sort of what is going on anyway. Some commissioners seem to have forgotten what...

<p>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.</p> <p>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.</p>

<p>April 10, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 commission gave a boost to President Bush and helped convince Americans that his administration did all that could be expected to prevent the terrorist attacks, a new CNN poll shows. The poll - taken Thursday after blanket TV coverage of Rice's dramatic appearance - found that 48 percent of Americans now think Bush did all that could be expected while 40 percent disagree. That's a big shift from 10 days ago when 54 percent said Bush didn't do everything possible - that was at the peak of the furor over Richard Clarke's claim that the president was asleep at the switch.</p>

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s strong performance in her appearance before the September 11 Commission should put to rest any notion that the Bush administration was complacent or inattentive to the terrorist threat facing the United States before September 11. Rice capably defended the Bush White House against the storm of controversy created by former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke’s book Against All Enemies, as well as against Mr. Clarke’s testimony before the Commission. Dr. Rice was convincing, composed, and eloquent in her opening statement and in her answers to the Commission’s pointed — and sometimes partisan — questioning....

Laxity was the central cause of America's sloppy security prior to 9/11. Yet lax liberals, the ones who typically view heightened security as an attack on civil liberties, are the loudest critics of Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration. Had the Bush administration adopted ramped-up, hardheaded security policies prior to 9/11, the Richard Ben-Venistes would have been the first to cry foul. Let's say George Bush during the 233 days before 9/11 had armed pilots, instructed airline officials to profile Muslim males, and called for more domestic intelligence on radical Muslims wandering through the U.S. Would the Democrats have applauded...