Rice Caught Red Handed

The Bush administration, which has already built a strong reputation for dishonesty, has been caught in the act again -- this time even more conclusively than usual. On a number of occasions (including in testimony before the 9/11 commission) Condoleeza Rice had claimed that the incoming Bush administration had received no plan for dealing with al Qaeda. Rice, Cheney, and others in the administration also repeatedly talked of a failure to act on the part of the Clinton administration after the bombing of the USS Cole -- a failure they claimed had emboldened al Qaeda and possibly contributed to 9/11.

In his testimony before the 9/11 commission (and in a number of other statements) former counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke rebutted these claims, saying that Clinton had only learned from the CIA in December of 2000 that al Qaeda was responsible for the USS Cole bombing, and was unable to take action before leaving office. Most importantly, Clarke claimed that the Clinton administration had passed on a detailed analysis of the threat from al Qaeda, as well as a complete suggested plan for action against bin Laden and al Qaeda in retaliation for the Cole bombing.

In a recent interview on Fox News with Chris Wallace, former President Clinton also passionately defended his actions against al Qaeda, saying that a detailed plan for the invasion of Afghanistan and removal of the Taliban (in order to deprive al Qaeda of safe-haven) had been drawn up by his administration. Clinton further claimed that despite his desire to take military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the pre-9/11 climate made it impossible to secure the necessary fly-over rights from Pakistan.

The conclusive proof that Rice (along with Dick Cheney and others) had been untruthful came with the declassification of documents -- including the plan itself that was passed on to Bush -- as well as a memo from Clarke to Rice detailing the Clinton plan and suggesting that the Bush administration take action in accordance with Clinton's plan (copies of the declassified documents are available here). The Bush administration took no action against al Qaeda until after 9/11, and has maintained against the conclusive evidence that they received nothing from the outgoing Clinton administration.

Now that the declassified documents have confirmed the claims of Clarke and Clinton, it has become obvious that a number of Bush administration officials had knowingly lied in order to place blame for the 9/11 attacks on alleged inaction by the Clinton administration. Furthermore, it has become clear that the Bush administration failed utterly to take action as suggested by the previous administration, and attempted to cover up this negligence with repeated misrepresentation of the facts. No doubt Rice will attempt to save face by claiming to have never read the Clinton plan, however such a claim would clearly be untruthful considering the proof that Clarke presented Rice with a memo -- to which the plan itself was attached -- drawing attention to the need for action against al Qaeda.