Pressure mounts on Rice over 9/11 speech

[kskiska]

The US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was due to deliver a major national security speech on September 11 2001. But it dwelt not on terrorism but on the proposed Star Wars missile defence system.

The White House confirmed the existence of the draft speech, which was first reported by the Washington Post, but refused to release the full text. However, a spokesman argued that one speech focusing on missile defence did not mean the White House was ignoring the terrorist threat.

The Rice speech was never delivered. The hijacked planes struck New York, Washington and Pennsylvania before she was due to talk.

(snip)

Scott McClellan, chief White House spokesman, shrugged off calls for the text of the Rice speech to be published, arguing that it was never delivered and therefore not in the public domain. He added that missile defence and counter-terrorism were not "either-or choices".

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1184158,00.html

[pinto]

1. love this snip:

Ivo Daalder, a national security council staffer under President Clinton, argued that senior officials in the Bush White House took office with the same foreign policy concerns and outlook they had had eight years earlier working for the first President Bush.

"When they left in January 1993, they hit the pause button. The intervening eight years were missing," said Mr Daalder, now a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution.

What did Clarke say? "It's like they were encased in amber"...?

[Pale_Rider]

2. This line is classic as well!

The Rice speech argued for the need to confront "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday", and then went on implicitly to criticise the Clinton administration's preoccupation with terrorist groups at the expense of building defences against ballistic missiles.

[grannylib]

3. They're cracking, they're cracking, they're starting to get entangled in

their own miserable web of lies...
Clinton might have been able to get Bin Laden and further hamper the Al Qaeda operations had he not been dealing with the repuke's insistance on wasting taxpayer dollars to investigate something that is nobody's business and didn't kill several thousand people.

[loudsue]

5. THAT is the part that they don't want on the evening news...

They REALLY don't want 24/7 discussion of that tidbit getting any press.

I REALLY hope it gets LOTS of press.

Keep on DIGGIN'!!

:kick:

[Desperadoe]

4. Republicans

Have always been much more interested in correcting yesterday's presumed mistakes and inadequacies than in addressing the current agenda. They are always "stuck in the 50's".