Condi Part Deux

Earlier I said that Condi had to lie in order to defend the Bush administration against Clinton's "flatly false" claims that they "didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks." Well, I was wrong. It was no ordinary lie. It was a great, big, spectacular one.

Raw Story:

A memo received by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters yesterday, RAW STORY has learned.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on Monday. "Big pieces were missing," Rice added, "like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan."

...However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

There's more at the link. My apologies for glossing over your unparalleled talent for fallacious misdirection, Ms. Rice.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)