Word: rice
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...telling pollsters their number one election year concern is the economy. That?s a problem for Presidential candidates, because there are few things a commander-in-chief can do to fix a sluggish economy, and none of them are bold. When Iraqi Shi?ites are openly rebelling and Condi Rice is testifying before the 9/11 commission, Kerry?s four-point plan to reenact pay-as-you-go budget rules is not going to set the world on fire...
Chances are, Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission has not changed many Americans' perception of the Bush Administration's handling of terrorism. President Bush's National Security Adviser gave a calm and competent performance in defense of the administration's case that it had done all that could have been expected in relation to al-Qaeda in the months before the attacks. Supporters of the Bush administration will, by and large, accept Dr. Rice's argument that even an awareness of a general Qaeda threat could not have allowed the custodians of the nation's security to anticipate...
...Critics, however, won't have been disabused of their claim that the strategic mindset of Rice and other top officials had left the administration's focus before 9/11 on issues such as missile defense at the expense of grasping the immediacy of the terror threat. Expect to see discussion about the August 6 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing referred to repeatedly during Dr. Rice's testimony occupying plenty of headline space for some weeks to come - its very headline "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" suggests that the President was alerted to the general danger...
...depth of election-year partisan division, not only on Capitol Hill but also in the electorate, will likely limit the extent to which either Rice or Clarke's testimony alters the political landscape. Rice's calm, competent performance, has redeemed the administration somewhat. But calls for declassification of the August 6 briefing and questions over the duration and nature of the joint Bush-Cheney appearance before the commission will keep the fires of Democratic criticism over 9/11 burning for weeks to come...
...Although Rice's testimony produced no bombshells, there were plenty exploding in Iraq even as she spoke. The uprising among both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis that has shaken Coalition forces there and thrown U.S. transition plans into crisis may be a more immediate concern on the minds of the American electorate than the increasingly partisan post-mortem over 9/11...