Robin Wright has gotten her hands on portions of the text of a speech Condi Rice was scheduled to give on September 11th, 2001, to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies ... a speech postponed by certain now famous events ... and the parts that Wright published this a.m. in the Washington Post pretty much prove at least some of Richard Clarke's criticism of this administration and its lack of interest in terrorism pre-9/11.
The undelivered speech was the National Security Advisor's roadmap at the time for what the Bush administration considered the most pressing issues internationally -- "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday." And what was at the very top of that list of threats? Rogue missiles. The Bushies were rolling out that old chesnut, strategic missile defense. And what did NOT merit the barest mention? Osama bin Laden wasn't mentioned. Al Qaeda wasn't mentioned. Islamic extremism wasn't mentioned. Instead, there was plenty of implicit criticism of the Clinton administration for NOT funding strategic missile defense systems, that old blood-sucking vampire dug out of the grave of the Reagan years ... a.k.a., big bucks for defense contractors.
If the 9/11 Commission hadn't morphed into The Bland Investigating The Blind, signing on to a sweetheart deal that gives them Condi Rice but none of her aides under oath, that gives them George Bush and Dick Cheney holding hands together and NOT under oath and not even recorded for posterity ... IF the 9/11 Commission wasn't run by a Bush partisan, a lawyer from Texas who once co-wrote an article with Condi Rice ... we the citizens of this great nation might expect some truth out of all of this. Instead, we're guaranteed only spin. But so far, Richard Clarke's charges look quite accurate to us.
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