Warnings

Glad we've gotten that cleared up. Condoleezza Rice was, in fact, warned of al-Qaeda threats on July 10, 2001 by George Tenet and Tenet's counterterrorism guy, Cofer Black. Rice's story is now that she denied any such meeting had taken place because she forgot. Well, let's just say I don't find that especially plausible. She got the briefing, blew it off as just another dude whining that his issue is the most important one and deserves more attention, then -- bam -- two months later thousands of people are dead. Never took the opportunity to look back and reflect? Never had a sleepless night wondering "could I have done more?" Never thought back to that briefing that seemed so trivial at the time?

But maybe she forgot. Maybe this is just a government composed of extraodinarily thoughtless people who never took a minute to look back at their pre-9/11 behavior and see if anything might have gone wrong. Maybe she's not lying and she's just incredibly irresponsible. It's often hard to say with this crew. And lord knows they were helped by a press corps that showed no interest for years in the question of whether or not the occurrence of a massive terrorist attack on Bush's watch might reflect poorly on the people in office at the time, rather than simply providing a venue to demonstrate Churchillian grandeur.