Commission to question Rice publicly on Bush's pre-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism policies

"It's not necessarily ... what Condi Rice said to us in the four or five hours we had with her" in a private interview early this year, Kean told reporters. "Sometimes it's some of the things she said to all of you."

- Clipped from (03-31) 11:29 PST WASHINGTON (AP) PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer; Wednesday, March 31, 2004, SFGate.com -

According to the list below, compiled by The Center for American Progress, Condi Rice has spun herself quite an intricate web of contradictory stories. Will she get stuck in her own web, or will she wriggle free?

* RICE CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02
* FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01]

* RICE CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001. She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
* FACT: According to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]

* RICE CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high. We were at battle stations." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04]

* RICE CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: President Bush and Vice President Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"]

* RICE CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: "Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]

Clipped from Fact Check: Condi Rice's 60 Minutes Interview @ The Center for American Progress; thanks to Moveon.org -

Or is that sticky web illustrated above merely Democratic spin in a crucial election year? Ah, what a world of illusions, what a "tangled web" indeed!

Just remember Condi, cross your fingers if you plan to lie under oath.

And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill

- Warren Zevon, Desperadoes Under The Eaves -


"Where goes California, so goes the nation."

- attributed to unidentified pundit or pundits -

Now this from the folks at True Majority:

Support a Real Peace Plan

Lynn Woolsey, Congresswoman from California, has introduced legislation providing a positive vision for America's national security. It's a thoughtful and comprehensive view of how to make us safe here at home and throughout the family of nations across the world, calling for the United States to, for example:

Work with the U.N. and NATO to root out terrorist networks and lead international efforts to cut off financing for terrorist organizations; Pursue diplomacy, enhanced inspection regimes and regional security arrangements; Integrate peace building and conflict prevention into developmental programs; Reduce dependence on foreign oil and promote long-term energy security through greater investment in sustainable and renewable alternatives.

More about Lynn Woolsey and The SMART Security Resolution right here.

If you are a citizen of the U.S. and would like to send a fax to your Representative in support of Rep. Woolsey's very Californian notions for a better world, those helpful people at True Majority make it very simple:

Support a Real Peace Plan

The Night Trains

The freight trains at night
Haul a different load
Than that carried by day.

Following moon silvered tracks
Over a landscape of gloom
They shriek around the bay.

I hear them in my sleep,
In dim hours before dawn,
And my dreams trail down those tracks -

Behind engines stoked by men
With shadows in places where faces should be
And angry flames licking their backs.

An old one, previously unpublished, as we say in the Poetry Business. Hearing the trains hooting and wailing in the distant dark as I walked home this evening brought it to mind.

Now, I bring it to yours.

I've met some pretty interesting people in some pretty dull places. Artists and musicians, for instance, trapped in day jobs like myself and wandering a gray maze of fluorescent lit cubicles, committing crimes against the sacred presence of the moment by wishing (hoping, praying) for 5:00.

Or, as is the case in the office where I have been employed for the last 18 months or so (which shall remain nameless in this space), 6:00. Everybody in this office has a story to tell, a fire burning in the heart or mind, sometimes both. The fire closest in nature to my own, however, is probably that of Bill Dunlap, one of the artist/musicians mentioned above.

"Sex, death, and booze," admits San Francisco painter Bill Dunlap. "That's basically what I'm about." As easy as it is for Dunlap to deconstruct his iconic depictions of virtue and vice, there's a deeper resonance within the cartoonish nature of his work that arises from the unsettling but inevitable acceptance of life's temptations. There's also a not-so-subtle sense of humor and irony evident from both the colorful, rubbery style of his subjects and the seemingly incongruent subtitles that often accompany them. These childlike expressions actually reveal damage and danger, but it's the kind of danger that's welcome, necessary, human; the kind that's overcome by a good hazy binge, until tomorrow's first disappointment.

- from This is the Path You Chose:The Dark Cartoonery of Bill Dunlap by Jonathan Zwickel @ SFSTATION -

Bill hopes to leave the clock watching behind soon and devote his life to his art (don't we all? Which reminds me, I need to check my lotto tickets!).

We have talked about collaborating. In fact, he has read a certain number of my short fictions with an eye toward illustration. Artistic collaboration is a concept that has intrigued me for some time now. Bill's work, such as I have seen, appeals to the dark streak that runs right through the middle of me. I think his fraught cartoon renderings (or maybe something more abstract? Or?) might just suit some of the strange scenes I have transcribed from the far, dim fields of my mind.

I wonder. Does an artist have a responsibility for the dark visions and/or dangerous ideas he/she brings into the world? Another concept that has intrigued me for some time.

And another post.