Rice was so brief and so incessantly repetative that it is hard to be shorter, or shorter with questioners that she tried to stonewall. But I will make the attempt, because Rice gave the language a new verb today: "To Pnack: Spend all of ones time on grandiose obsessions, while denying the responsibility for the results of neglecting ones duties."
And tell us how the election will turn out!
Rice's testimony confirms, from her own lips, one of the most harsh and, here to fore, unacceptable, conclusions about the Bush Executive. One that was hinted at in Wesley Clark's criticism of Rice as being focused on finding ways to invade other nations. The sum and substance of what she found wrong with the Clinton Anti-Terrorism framework, what the Clinton team embodied in their Eternal Vigilance program - was the "lack of geopolitical" context, which is "the ability to threaten states".
The picture that emerges is that Rice believed that dealing with terrorist threats was a matter that little people on the ground who were "alert" would catch the people responsible, freeing the people at the top to talk about the "structural" changes to America.
She stated herself that 911 offered the inside core a chance to remake America radically, and they took it. She also admits that they would have prevented 911 if they had known how bad it was going to be - but also that unless they had known it was going to be that bad, that they were not going to take extraordinary steps to deal with current problems.
This "we let the details run themselves, we were busy making strucutral changes" - is, however, at cross purposes to their basic theme that they are not responsible for what has gone wrong. People who are doing "the big picture" are responsible for the global problems, simply because they have claimed responsibilty. On one hand Rice wants to be judged like a little person "well I didn't have a memo that said 'they were sending planes out to hit the world trade center on 9-11 in the morning." and on the other hand, wanting to have complete authority to remake American society.
The two are incompatible as a governmental philosophy - it represents the declaration that Rice, and the other members of the inner circle have total authority to change American "law and custom and culture" to achieve their ends, but they are not in any way accoutable for the results of their being in charge.
Her argument, that dealing with small threats and individuals was "swatting at flies", and they don't do dealing with small problems in the Bush White House. That reponses to individual actions are not worth it - the Cole was shrugged off and treated as the cost of doing business - and that this could not be allowed to distract them from implementing the "Project for the New American Century."
So the shorter Rice is:
"The important people were busy pnacking, if anything went wrong, it was the underlings fault, not ours. Our job was figuring out how to invade Iraq and other countries, not protect the US. If they had had something specific, like the time and date and manner, of course we would have done something."
That's Rice's own party line: protecting the country is up to individual border agents, and not a matter for the top to worry about.