I have been watching the Rice testimony (it’s still not over right now) before the 9/11 Commission, and it has been both interesting and predictable. It has been predictable as Rice has given the same old stale excuses about why they didn’t do anything: they only had 233 days, there were structural problems that kept the agencies from communicating, there was never any specific information about al Qaeda attacks, and no matter when they could have started to do anything, there just wasn’t any time to do anything that could have prevented 9/11.

On the other hand, there have been some surprises, and a little declassification, such as the fact that a PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) while Bush was on vacation in Crawford was titled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.” Rice tried to dismiss this as a “historical document,” that it did not address potential threats but just covered what bin Laden had done in the past. This PDB is still not declassified, and despite many requests by the Democratic members to declassify it, Rice hemmed and hawed and avoided answering directly. Obviously if this memo were declassified, there would be some pretty damaging information there.

Rice also kept saying that the threats were vague, and that she would have “moved heaven and earth” to stop the attacks if they had known the day, the targets, and the manner of the attacks. The thing is, one almost never gets that kind of detailed information. If you have to be telegraphed such detailed info in order to stop an attack, then you are pretty undeniably incompetent–a responsible and even halfway competent administration would take warnings, just like the ones it did receive, and work to locate more detailed information, and institute security measures that could be used to thwart the attack. Rice’s repeated claims that there was nothing she or anyone else could have done come across as self-serving, to say the least.

A great moment was when Bob Kerrey asked about Bush being “tired of swatting flies,” which Rice had spoken of time and again, and he blew that simpering platitude out of the water by asking Rice exactly which flies had he swatted–pointing out that Bush could not have tired of something he hadn’t done yet. Rice, of course, avoided the question. Kerrey’s question, hopefully, clarified to the public that these kinds of sound bites that Rice was clearly trying to put out there for the media to pick up (“swatting flies,” “structural problems,” “no silver bullet”) really are empty and meaningless.

There is a lot of information here to go over, and I’m sure we’ll be going over a lot of this very soon.

UPDATE: The Commission’s head stated that they have made a direct request to the White House to declassify the PDB, and that will be answered perhaps by next week.