FRANK RICH: Is Condi Hiding the Smoking Gun?

[kevinmc]

IF, as J.F.K. had it, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, the defeat in Iraq is the most pitiful orphan imaginable. Its parents have not only tossed it to the wolves but are also trying to pin its mutant DNA on any patsy they can find.

George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game, which began more than three years ago when his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Tommy Franks told Bob Woodward that Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s intelligence bozo, was the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” (that’s the expurgated version). Last fall, Kenneth Adelman, the neocon cheerleader who foresaw a “cakewalk” in Iraq, told Vanity Fair that Mr. Tenet, General Franks and Paul Bremer were “three of the most incompetent people who’ve ever served in such key spots.” Richard Perle chimed in that the “huge mistakes” were “not made by neoconservatives” and instead took a shot at President Bush. Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons’ former darling, told Dexter Filkins of The Times “the real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz.”


And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.

This would be a Three Stooges routine were there only three stooges. The good news is that Mr. Tenet’s book rollout may be the last gasp of this farcical round robin of recrimination. Republicans and Democrats have at last found some common ground by condemning his effort to position himself as the war’s innocent scapegoat. Some former C.I.A. colleagues are rougher still. Michael Scheuer, who ran the agency’s bin Laden unit, has accused Mr. Tenet of lacking “the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss.” Even after Mr. Tenet did leave office, he maintained a Robert McNamara silence until he cashed in. .....

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/05/frank-rich-is-condi-hiding-smoking-gun.html

[acmavm]

1. Rich should be required reading...

<snip>

Ms. Rice’s latest canard wasn’t an improvisation; it was a scripted set-up for the president’s outrageous statement three days later. “The decision we face in Iraq,” Mr. Bush said Wednesday, “is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11.” Such statements about the present in Iraq are no less deceptive — and no less damaging to our national interest — than the lies about uranium and Qaeda- 9/11 connections told in 2002-3. This country needs facts, not fiction, to make its decisions about the endgame of the war, just as it needed (but didn’t get) facts when we went to war in the first place. To settle for less is to make the same tragic error twice.

[whistle]

2. Condi Rice has the smoking gun strapped to her inner thigh...

...she knows and she must be forced to come before congress and testify under oath and pressed over and over and over with questions until she tells the truth

[CrazyOrangeCat]

7. thanks for THAT image.

(clever though.)

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Frank Rich is God

I get weak in the knees when I read his stuff.

Quite possibly the best writer of our age.

[Faygo Kid]

9. I agree. Frank Rich is the best of 'em all.

Keith Olbermann in the evening and, most of all, Frank Rich every Sunday are how I retain my sanity (or what's left of it) in a world where all the people still don't realize that the emperor wears no clothes.

[babylonsister]

4. That could be why Rice is stonewalling perchance. I love Frank Rich!

He gets right to the heart of the matter. And, RE: Powell, it'd be really special if he came clean. Better late than never?

[Botany]

5. I loves me some Frank Rich

Condi is lying to cover past lies which got us into this unneeded war.
Time for her to be held accountable .....

From the article .... "no need to testify I have already answered those questions
when I was confirmed" rough quote.



******************************************************************
From 2003

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/10/wbr.smoking.gun/

Search for the 'smoking gun'
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
Friday, January 10, 2003 Posted: 5:58 PM EST (2258 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Last September 8, I interviewed President Bush's National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
I was pressing her on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities.

"We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon," she told me. "And we know
that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody
thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device."

Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world.

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons.
But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

[regnaD kciN]

6. You mean, as opposed to hiding W's salami...?

:evilgrin:

(Insert Stephanie Miller "penalty-box horn" sound here.)

[Faygo Kid]

8. Finally, someone goes after war criminal Condi Rice

Her well spoken demeanor, prowess at the piano, obvious intelligence and social skills cannot hide the fact that she has been at the center of the lies that led to and continue to be foisted on us about the tragic, illegal and immoral war in Iraq. No matter how many others come forward with the truth, from the honored Richard Clarke to the dishonored George Tenet, she continues to spread her mushroom cloud of lies for this administration to the bitter end. She provides cover for Bush and Cheney, and I despise her for it. Been waiting for somebody to call her on the garbage she has spewed for six years, and her utter failure surrounding 9-11, and I am not surprised that Frank Rich is the one to do it. Great and much-needed column.

[mwb970]

13. She is the most consistently dishonest of them all.

Except for Cheney. And Gonzales. Oh, and Rove. And....oh, never mind.

[Skittles]

15. one of the most overrated people EVER

the only thing that gal excels at is being a bush whore

[Miss Chybil]

10. Wow! nt

[glitch]

11. I wonder which bushbot will be the first to cut and run... and which country will they run to?

Idle speculation, but I think it might be Condi. But where will she go?

[Demeter]

14. The Bushbots Are Too Arrogant and Stupid To Run

The only place Bush's chosen people are running to is Congress, for immunity, which they don't deserve, and probably won't get, either. If we are lucky, they will all end up in jail, marked as felons and disqualified from government pensions, service and perks for life.

The career people (ie: those that know, understand and follow the rules and do the actual public service work for which they were chosen and paid) have been heading for the exits, starting in 2001, and escalating annually. Some went voluntarily, some were forced out, and some got while the getting was good, for their own preservation. Hope they can be lured back to clean up when it's all over.

The major figures in this crime family are toughing it out. They think Karl has enough goodies, fallback plans, and dirty tricks to save all their asses. They haven't learned from the 2006 elections that Karl has shot his wad, and the people and the Congress are onto him and his tactics. They're going to have one surprise and defeat after another. It's going to be slow and painful to watch, but if carried to completion, so satisfying! Hope they like Belgian chocolate!

[glitch]

16. You're right about the arrogance. I hope you're right about them ending up in prison too.

The Justice would be Poetic.

[Hestia]

17. Paraguay?

[Paladin]

12. Test(n/t)

Test