"Clinton's hold-over folks had been trying to get her to come up with a new plan -- lets call it a comprehensive plan -- after the Cole bombing made it clear that the threat wasn't going away."

It has been clear for decades that the threat was not going to go away, and only increase as technology improves.

As long as the US and most of the West give lopsided support to Israel over the Israeli/Palestinian issue*, the threat of retaliation by those sympathetic to the unjustly treated will remain and grow.

Regs, Shaggy

* - and general that-of-the-world issues

I noticed that Rice and Clinton used different terms:

Clinton:  "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy."

Rice:  "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida." 

Clinton's is a generic reference; Rice's is specific.  I don't if there is any significance, but it could be Rice's attempt to muddy the water and hide behind a technicality.

Glenn
Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.—Hubert H. Humphrey

My post over in reader blogs corroborates your statements with the direct quotations from the 9/11 Commission Report.

They focus on getting new people in quickly, but they also state that the transition ought not to be politicized. That seems right; a good governance reform.

To be fair, GWB did hold on to Tenet, Freeh and Clarke, for a while. Of course, all three were Republicans, and the fact that they were in the Clinton administration for GWB to hold on to is a testimony to Clinton's bipartisan leanings, not Bush's. What became clear to all of them, pretty quickly, and especially to Tenet, was that this was an administration that prized absolute political fealty above all else, and didn't particularly care about policy or competence -- apart from one's competence at rewarding big-ticket GOP donors and interest groups. That's why nothing was done on the terrorism front for the first 8 months of the administration. GWB and KR couldn't see the political percentage in it. On 9/11, all the gears dropped into place.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Also pertinent on this topic is the testimony from a Justice Department official that Ashcroft didn't want to hear any more about Al Quaeda & OBL. Right from the beginning of the Bush administration there was a predisposition to consider Iraq a bigger threat than Al Quaeda. So the plan that the Clinton administration left was not considered important since it didn't focus on Iraq.

ABC News, while not exactly our friend at the moment, actually had a nice report last night. After quoting the politicians on both side, it then actually took three of Rice's bullet points and followed each with a relevant quote from the commission, with the quote also in text on the screen. For example,

Rice also claimed that Clinton did not leave them a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda. That is contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report, which described Rice receiving a "comprehensive" paper in January 2001 called "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Networks of al Qaeda."

As for what if's, I have to admit that there's some value in not looking back and playing the blame game too hard. Some things might happen, just as bombs went off in London and Madrid even after 9/11. And we probably, in fact, would not be as angry at Bush about missing the signals had he stuck to the plan in Afghanistan and with diplomacy. We can at least assume Gore would have done so. But the point is really that the wingnuts have started to feel fear, so they have made "blame Clinton" their current excuse. I don't see us as opening the blame game but responding honestly. It seems to me that Clinton put things the same way, in fact.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

If memory serves, Clarke lays out what happened in his book Against All Enemies.

Various incoming NSC folks met with the outgoing NSC folks during the transition, based on issue specialty areas.

There was one issue on which Sandy Berger personally met with Rice and the incoming folks: bin laden.

Berger told Rice personally that they would spend more time on bin laden than on any other issue.

Would that that had been the case.

Instead, they didn't listen. They had bigger fish to fry: NMD, China and Russia policy.

It may be technically true that Clinton didn't leave them with a written plan.

What Berger did, in conveying the message personally to Rice, was a far stronger and clearer signal than passing along some plan that might have gathered dust on a shelf for months before anyone in the incoming group even looked at it.

No, first, the Bush Administration's attention had to be gotten in re OBL. Only if that worked would they invest in developing or upgrading a plan to destroy him.

The Clinton people did what any of us as American citizens would have wanted them to do in issuing that personal, direct warning, from Berger to Rice.

Condi now seeks to wiggle out with grossly disingenuous rhetoric. She has to be called on that.

Unless Condi is going to get a rep for explaining to us that these matters depend on what the meaning of "is" is.

If I've gotten any part of Clarke's account wrong on this please correct me. That's what I remember.

Although I have a very incomplete knowledge of presidential history (is there such a thing?), surely this administration must be the most or very nearly the most incompetent in our history. Of course, they were quite accomplished in certain areas of political maneuvering, such as the massive redistribution of wealth upward. But, as far as I can see, in every policy area into which they have entered, they have failed utterly. Their failure must be considered so complete that, were it not for the invasion of Iraq, 'W' would disappear from view 'without a trace' in 20 years time. 'W' might well find himself 'a comma' in our list of national administrations -- not even rating status as a semicolon.

The bizarre engagement with lying evidenced by all the top members of this administration is thoroughly documented in the new book by Isikoff & Corn, Hubris.
This book has kept me up past my bedtime several times. ;-)

These people seem to be, in many ways, downright deluded. I'm reminded of an annotation in one of my chess books: "White chose a discredited plan." And, having chosen the bad plan, White follows it through to the end, even when it has become clear that the game will be lost as a result of following the bad plan. Now, here we have Rice, who probably is smart enough to play chess, looking at the complete destruction of her position, yet unable to acknowledge error and adjust strategy. She would do well to contemplate Maugham's insight:

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "Of Human Bondage", 1915

I don't have the impression she's much of a reader, though.

Thanks.

mp

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
-- Louis Armstrong

Now, choking on a pretzel isn't in the upper range of historical Presidential precedents. William H. Taft getting stuck in the bathtub certainly counts. The corruption in the Harding administration was sufficiently bizarre that Secretary of the Interior Fall went to prison for accepting a bribe from a fellow named, Doheny, who was acquitted of paying a bribe to Fall. JFK calling himself, in idiomatic German, a jelly doughnut can't be forgotten. Harry Truman threatening to beat up the music critic of the Post is another note. William Henry Harrison giving the longest acceptance speech in history, and dying 30 days later, also has its bizarre aspects.

But no, for serious things, this Administration has pride of place, perhaps challenged only by James Buchanan. "Civil War? Oh, I'll let my successor worry about that."

And in fairness to Harrison, would that GWB heard Harrison's last words, and was impressed by them: "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more."
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

The national argument right now is, one, who’s got the truth and, two, who’s got the facts. Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we’re not going make much progress.

Me thinks the lexicographer is confused.  Truth, as I was trying to explain to Ellen, is a property of DECLARATIVE sentences.  Declarative Sentences have what are called TRUTH VALUES, of which there are two : true or false.

Facts on the other hand are not linguistic entities and they certainly have no truth values attached to them.  It is incoherent to say, for example that such and such is a true fact or that this and that is a false fact.  Truth values do not attach to facts.  So what are FACTS simpliciter? . They are states of affairs.  They are the way the world is.  So for example THAT the empire state building is located in New York City is a fact.  Alternatively, THAT dogs are reptiles is not a fact.  So what we can say about facts in general is that they either obtain or they don't.  We cannot say that they either are true or false because truth, as I said, is a concept that is applied to Declarative Sentences.

 SO WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN TRUTH AND FACTS,YOU ASK?

Very simple: A declarative sentence is said to be true if it corresponds to a fact, and false otherwise.

Ellen and others need to appreciate that  there is a language/world divide.   Language is a tool invented by mankind to make representations and assertions about the world.  The world itself DOES NOT (contrary to Ellen's delusions) DEPEND ON LANGUAGE TO EXIST.

This is really not hard stuff.  It is quite simple, but it does tend to ensnare otherwise rational people in all sorts of absurdities.