Update : Condi Rice has finished testifying before the 9-11 commission. As expected she refused to acknowledge that the administration made any mistakes or did anything wrong. I particularly enjoyed the exchange between her and commission member Bob Kerrey. Rice kept insisting that, prior to 9-11, Bush said he was tired of “swatting flies” with Al Qaeda and wanted a greater response. Kerrey asked her “What flies did the administration swat? Give me one example of when you swatted a fly!” That was not terribly surprising since Kerrey is a Democrat. But then James Thompson, the most partisan Republican on the panel, chided Rice for the administration’s failure to attack Al Qaeda after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. She said that a “tit for tat response” was not appropriate. He then asked her how many of our destroyers Al Qaeda would have had to attack before we would have deemed it appropriate.

All in all, I have to give the 9-11 commission credit. It seems they are genuinely interested in determining what went wrong with our intelligence and the failure of our leaders to act upon known threats. (That includes Clinton. Even though I’m an admitted partisan Democrat, his administration must also be held accountable) It will be very interesting to read the final content of their report.