CAP's "Viewer's Guide" for Condi's Testimony

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=44768

Happy Excerpts:

Did she offer convincing evidence that the White House took the threat of terrorism seriously enough prior to 9/11?

- The president told Bob Woodward that, when it came to terrorism: "I was not on point... I didn't feel that sense of urgency." Up until the day of the attacks – as the speech she was scheduled to deliver on 9/11 reveals – Rice and the president made missile defense their number one priority. In a database search of all of her public statements and writings made before the 9/11 attacks, she never once mentioned al-Qaida and made only one mention of Osama bin Laden in a radio interview.

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Did she explain misleading public statements made regarding 9/11?

- In 2002, Rice said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." But when presented with overwhelming evidence that the administration had been warned about such a plot, she admitted privately to the 9/11 Commission that she "misspoke." Yet, even after this admission, she proceeded to repeat the same claim, writing in a recent Washington Post op-ed, "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles."

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