by Tom Toburn

Secretary of State Condoleeza rice appeared on the Today Show with Matt Lauer to defend the administration’s approach to terrorism in the 8 months leading up to 9/11, and said that terrorism and the threat posed by Osama bin Laden were discussed at several high level cabinet meetings, but “we just, briefly, confused them with Iraq, which is only human, only natural, given the circumstances.”

She denies that a comprehensive stratgey was left in place by Clinton, and said “Former President Clinton himself admits to trying and failing. We tried, got a little confused, then tried again later. It is counterproductive to try and hash over this all again. Let’s just leave it at ‘Clinton did not take them out, we heroically invaded Aghanistan after 9/11, and President Bush never fought them off with a machine gun (as the more recent ABC docudrama has tried to expouse).”

She does not dispute Richard Clarke’s recall of events, but defends against Clinton’s assertion that the supposedly capable Clarke was summarily dismissed for loyalty to Clinton. “Absolutely not,” Rice said. “He was let go only because he was a big partisan hack.” When Lauer pointed out that Clarke is a Republican, and said what she implied could be interpreted as meaning that he was dismissed for political reasons, Rice said being “let go” and being “dismissed” are quite different, and referred Lauer to view the 9/11 Commission Report if he needed further clarification.