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In the summer of 2002, Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, issued a stern warning to the BBC: a US invasion of Iraq would "threaten the whole stability of the Middle East." As I wrote at the time, "He's missing the point: that's the reason it's such a great idea." I thought about Mr. Moussa a lot this past week. I was invited to speak at the United States Naval Academy's foreign affairs conference, a great honor for a foreigner. I wasn't the star attraction — that was Condoleezza Rice; I was merely a warm-up act. Anyway, I was...

A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a...

Just minutes after the cameras went dark in the Senate hearing room on Condoleezza Rice on April 8, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings invited Richard Clarke — now an ABC News consultant — to comment. Mr. Clarke reiterated his central allegation that the Bush administration failed to "shake the trees" by daily meetings with Cabinet officials together and contrasted that to his own behavior during the Millennium crisis. "And by having the Cabinet members come to the White House every day in crisis mode and then go back to their departments and look for anything that is anywhere in the...

President Bush's national security advisor says the United States will not negotiate with hostage-takers holding Americans in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice says the Bush administration will do all it can to obtain the release of the hostages. But she makes clear there will be no negotiations with their captors. "The president of the United States does not negotiate with terrorists," she said. During a series of interviews on American television, Ms. Rice was asked if the White House would consider a prisoner swap. She told ABC's This Week that the hostage-taking must be seen in a broader context. "This is an...

WASHINGTON, April 18 (UPI) -- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice Sunday said the Bush administration is on alert for any al Qaida attack close to Election Day. Rice, appearing on "Fox News Sunday" said, "I think that we do have to take very seriously the thought that the terrorists might have learned, we hope, the wrong lesson from Spain." After Rice's appearance, Spain's new Socialist government -- brought into power in the wake of the Madrid railway bombings -- announced it would pull its 1,300 troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, perhaps within 15 days. Said Rice, "I...

WASHINGTON, April 18 (UPI) -- U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice Sunday said the new book by Bob Woodward is wrong on exactly when the president said, attack Iraq. Rice, on CBS' "Face the Nation," said, "That decision he made in March when he finally decided to do that," and not, as Woodward's book Plan of Attack" says, in January of 2001. On "Fox News Sunday," Rice disputed another contention in the book, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are so far apart on the Iraq issue they don't even talk to one another....

<p>Just minutes after the cameras went dark in the Senate hearing room on Condoleezza Rice on April 8, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings invited Richard Clarke — now an ABC News consultant — to comment.</p> <p>Mr. Clarke reiterated his central allegation that the Bush administration failed to "shake the trees" by daily meetings with Cabinet officials together and contrasted that to his own behavior during the Millennium crisis. "And by having the Cabinet members come to the White House every day in crisis mode and then go back to their departments and look for anything that is anywhere in the departments in December 1999, we were able to get the kind of information we needed to stop the [Millennium] attacks," Mr. Clarke said.</p>

  Violence Won't Stop Iraqi Power Turnover By Rudi WilliamsAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, April 18, 2004 – It was probably predictable that insurgents would try to prevent the transfer of power to Iraqis on June 30, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on ABC's "This Week" today. The insurgents "been aggressive and violent in the last couple of weeks," Rice told host George Stephanopoulos. "We're responding to that. We're also responding politically by working with the people on the ground, including local leaders and members of the governing council." She said the people the coalition is working with...

Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, said today that the president decided in March 2003 to go to war against Saddam Hussein, not in January 2003, as a new book contends. She said she was with Mr. Bush in Crawford, Tex., in January 2003 when he expressed his frustration with how weapons inspections were proceeding in Iraq. "He said, `Now, I think we probably are going to have to go to war, we're going to have to go to war,' " Ms. Rice recalled today on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "It was not a decision to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States expects other nations with forces in Iraq to reassess their position after Spain's decision to pull its troops out, President George W. Bush's national security adviser said on Sunday. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius also said Washington wanted the Spanish withdrawal to be made in a "coordinated, responsible and orderly manner" but offered no critique of Madrid's decision. Condoleezza Rice, speaking on ABC's "This Week" before the decision was announced in Madrid, said, "We know that there are others who are going to have to assess how they see the risk." "We have 34...

The United States is bracing for possible terrorist attacks before the November presidential election, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. The opportunity for terrorists to try to influence the election, as was the case last month in Spain, appears to be an opportunity that would "be too good to pass up for them," Rice said. "I think that we do have to take very seriously the thought that the terrorists might have learned, we hope, the wrong lesson from Spain," Rice told "Fox News Sunday." "I think we also have to take seriously that they might try during the...

(A couple of weeks ago, I heard radio talk-show host Andrew Wilkow discussing, with outrage, the following article. It is not a new piece, but I post it here in case it hasn't been seen by some. It is a good example of black liberal intolerance towards non-liberal blacks.) Condoleeza: Brown Rice As Bleached As White I can't think of one policy or one piece of advice that has Dr. Rice's name on it. Why, then, did the NAACP see fit to honor her with an Image Award? By Yolanda Rebecca White -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The NAACP has just awarded Dr. Condaleeza...

The Talk Shows Sunday, April 18th, 2004 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): National security adviser Condoleezza Rice; outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. John Kerry, Democratic presidential candidate. FACE THE NATION (CBS): National security adviser Condoleezza Rice. THIS WEEK (ABC): British Prime Minister Tony Blair; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.; independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader; Sept. 11 commission...

Well that was a blow-out, wasn't it? After much media speculation, the famous article from the President's Daily Brief (PDB) of 6 August 2001 was declassified this past Saturday. Many feared (and some hoped) it would show the President had received 'actionable intelligence' about the 9/11 attacks more than a month before they occurred. But just read the PDB. You don't have to be James Bond to see there is no actionable intelligence there at all. Not a shred. This needless declassification of a Top Secret document was the result of a stunt by Richard Ben-Veniste, a member - as...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 16 April 2004 — An old American song goes, “Don’t know much about history.... Don’t know much about the rise and fall. Don’t know much about nothing at all.” Sounds like the song sung by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice before the9 / 11Commission. The scary part? If Bush wins a second term, rumor is he will reward Rice’s performance with promotion to secretary of state or defense. That’s pretty crazy, considering that most of what Rice said was simply wrong. Rice blames9 / 11not on the Bush administration’s or her own negligence, but on America’s “old...

For all of the partisan Democratic sound and fury over National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice`s testimony before the 9/11 commission, one is struck by her reference to the "systemic failures" at the FBI, CIA and other agencies and that previous administrations should have dealt with them: Those structures and those changes should have been a long time ago so that the country was in fact hardened against the kind of threat that we faced on September 11... Sometimes, until there is a catastrophic event that forces people to think differently, that forces people to overcome old customs and old culture...

ATTENTION ALL: Another Freeper watching Chris Mathews implode in his pre-game show! Howard Fineman said it's all Condi's fault, that as National Security Director it was her responsibility to put all the info together and inform the president. Then Chris says, all she did was try and be interested in what the president was interested in...sort of like his butler !! He really said that!!! I sure hope Rush was listening....just imagine if a republican or Sean, or Rush had called a black democrat little more than a "House N-word" That's what it was..that's what Mathews was implying,and believe me,...

<p>True baseball fans loved spring training because it gave us a peek at the future. No, I’m not talking about getting a preview of this year’s pitching rotation. I‘m talking about getting a preview of the opening-day pitcher two or three years from now. The grapefruit-league season provides a glimpse of why we think that next year, or the year after that, or for sure the year after that could be our team’s best year yet.</p>

<p>The so-called "September 11 Commission" is supposedly trying to find out what happened, or failed to happen, that allowed the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 to succeed. But there is a big difference between trying to unearth facts about September 11, and trying to collect political ammunition for Nov. 2, 2004 — Election Day.</p>

<p>April 14, 2004 -- A group of 9/11 families has released an open letter thanking National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for her testimony to the commission probing the attacks and saying it should end "the incredible notion" that President Bush knew 9/11 was coming and did nothing. The letter signed by 40 relatives also blasts some members of the 9/11 commission for trying to "grandstand for political gain" in hopes of embarrassing Bush and thus politicizing the inquiry.</p>