Today we had Condi Rice on “Face the Nation”. I would rather see her in purgatory on a show called “Face Yourself and Your Lying Ways”, but I’ll have to settle for Bob Schieffer. She was defending herself from some of the things that George Tenant, the former head of the CIA during the run up to the war on Iraq said. He says some pretty nasty stuff about Ms. Rice, and I have every reason to believe him. After all, who is more credible than the former director of the CIA?
George Tenant, who was in fact Bill Clinton’s CIA director also, said that Ms. Rice was totally ineffectual in her capacity of head of the NSA while she was National Security Advisor to the President. He also said that War with Iraq was a fixture in Bush’s plan since the day he took office. Why do I have a hard time not believing that? Ms. Rice did not deny this charge, she skirted the issue with the same talking points she used an hour later when talking to Wolf Bliztzer. She said the sanctions were “Swiss cheese” sanctions, and that Bush had wanted to put “smart sanctions on Iraq and to strengthen the no-fly zones. Funny that nobody mentioned that the day after 9/11 the President asked George Tenant if Iraq was involved, and then went on to say Iraq was involved again as if he was answering his own question. Maybe that will come out in the interview that will be on “60 Minutes” this evening.
On the lighter side, Bob Schieffer had a member of “Politico.com” (all politics, all the time) a CBS funded web site, and he asked why they had so many candidates on the debates. They both went on to laugh about the obvious candidates that didn’t have a chance, bringing up the name of Mike Gravel, the former Alaskan Senator. The man from Politico said that they should have a cut-off, like having a certain percentage of support in the polls that would “qualify” the candidates. I believe he used 5%. They both laughed and said that then people could have time to hear from the “real candidates”
Like I said, maybe it would have been better if I had “slept in” this morning.