Rice Plans No Apology in 9/11 Testimony
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By Steve Holland
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) has no plans to make a public apology for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in her public testimony before the 9/11 commission, a senior Bush administration official said on Wednesday.
A dramatic apology by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke two weeks ago in his appearance before the commission investigating the hijacked airliner attacks led to speculation that Rice might do the same. "Your government failed you, and I failed you," Clarke said.
But White House officials indicated Rice had no intention of apologizing for the 9/11 tragedy as Clarke did, because the administration felt it did all that could be done to prevent the attacks based on the information available.
"The people that ought to apologize for that are the people who attacked us," said the senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official noted that President Franklin Roosevelt did not apologize for the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
"Everybody feels responsible for it and we are exercising our responsibility to defend our country," the official said.
Rice has been practicing in Washington for her Thursday morning televised appearance before the commission as she tries to capture the right tone for the high-stakes testimony.
She will likely face close questioning over differences with Clarke's version of events and whether her story now is differing from her four hours of previous testimony in private before the commission in February. After initially refusing to let Rice testify before the panel and under oath, the White House reversed course last week.
Another senior administration official said Rice would offer a broad picture in her opening statement of what the Bush government was doing to act against terrorism before 9/11 and afterward but would not offer a point-by-point rebuttal of Clarke.
"This is not an effort to respond to him as much as it is an opportunity for her to tell her story and tell what they were doing," the official said.
Bush's leadership has been thrown into doubt by Clarke, who said the president was slow to grasp the threat from al Qaeda before the attacks and became fixated on Iraq (news - web sites) in the aftermath.
White House officials see Rice's testimony as a chance to set the record straight that Bush and his top advisers were actively working on the terrorism threat.
"Had we had the information that was necessary to stop an attack, I'd have stopped the attack," Bush told reporters on Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina. "If we'd had known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we'd have done everything in our power to stop it."
Bush is spending the week at his central Texas ranch.
This is just another example of the rampant arrogance in the White House. Not once has an adminstration official said they were wrong about anything. These fuckers have a truckload of excuses for just about any screw up or they simply dodge the fucking question. They have never said sorry for anything or a simple, you know what we were wrong.
The admistration feels that they have nothing to apologize for? How about the simple formality of saying, "It was our job to protect you and we dropped the ball on 9/11. We are sorry." Jesus Christ will they ever admit to anything or is Bush going to claim Papal Infallibity?
Wherever you go, there you are.
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The administration's been showing its true colors ever since Clark came forward. This isn't a surprise. The only common decency the Bush administration is aware of is outlawing gay marriages and wasting resources prosecuting legitimate porn retailers.
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