On the Edge of a Sword

Watching Condoleezza Rice testify, I don't expect any real surprises or revelations. After a surprisingly unpracticed reading of her long introductory statement, Ms. Rice demonstrated a range of reactions to questions, including what appeared to be anger and fear. Audience applause resulted when a commission member reminded her of the time limits, and that it would be nice if she would simply answer the questions as posed to her rather than eating up his time with self-serving, peripheral commentary. But it seems clear that Ms. Rice has a typical strategy for a witness whose testimony is artificially constrained to a limited amount of time - eat up as much time as possible with long, rambling, indirect, and sometimes non-responsive answers.

When Ms. Rice suggested that she wanted to read certain passages of a classified report, the commissioner asked that she declassify the entire report. She asserted, repeatedly, that the commission had been given access to the full report - as if that is the same thing as declassifying the report. The commissioner noted that until today, even the headline of the report had been classified.

Although the headline suggested otherwise, Ms. Rice argued that its description of Al Qaeda activity, delivered shortly before the 9/11 attacks, were historic in nature - detailing Al Qaeda's domestic activities and terrorist plans in the past, but not warning about the future. That's the sort of hair-splitting which might impress the author of a TownHal.com idiotorial, but c'mon. A warning that Al Qaeda operatives were traveling to the U.S., residing in the U.S., and operating cells within the U.S., had no relevance to Al Qaeda's future activities? Assuming she is being honest, I don't know what she was smoking when she made that assessment, but it wasn't something that improved her judgment.

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