PlameGate: The Condi Connection

Here's what Condi Rice said on Meet The Press yesterday:

The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda ... or we could take a bolder approach.

In other words, we knew Al Quaeda did it but we wanted to go after much more than just Al Quaeda. This ties in neatly with yet another Downing Street memo leak recently, indicating that Bush told Blair two months before the invasion of Iraq that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq" and attack Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.

Do Rice's comments indicate that she is now softening public opninion ahead of damaging revelations about the Office of Special Plans and the WHIG? It happened before with Vietnam and Iran-Contra, of course - many in the USA still consider Oliver North a patriot and believe the USA would have won in Vietnam is the damn liberals hadn't put the brakes on the operation.

Rice's interest may be personal. Here's some more interesting Condi-talk:

WALLACE: Secretary Rice, a new subject. Were you part of an effort in July of 2003 to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was a critic of the Bush Iraq policy.

RICE: I am not going to talk about, Chris, as you might imagine, an ongoing investigation. I have, like everybody else, cooperated with prosecutor Fitzgerald and am quite certain that he will make his report. But I don’t think that it’s appropriate to comment about those events.

WALLACE: Now when you say you have cooperated with the prosecutor, does that mean, in fact, that you spoke to investigators or to the grand jury?

RICE: I cooperated in all the ways that I was asked to cooperate.

No wonder she's suddenly not interested in a Presidential run!