Taking two steps back from it...
I think history will view this moment as a loss for Rice and Bush.
#1: Rice's testimony was largely defensive.
She did not explain or reveal....she parried and obfuscated.
#2: Rice did not take responsibility.
The upshot of Rice's testimony is that "No one could have prevented or anticipated 9/11. The Bush administration did it's best, within the context of a flawed bueareaucratic and foreign policy environment. I did my part in that effort. The only folks to blame are the terrorists themselves."
#3. Rice's emphasis on a "strategic" response to Al Qaeda begs the question that the commission was formed to answer.
Cells trained in Afghanistan, formed and funded from Saudi Arabia and moving freely in Europe and SE Asia plotted a successful attack on our aviation system, New York City and the Pentagon. If it is not the responsibility of the National Security Advisor to monitor this type of threat to the security of the United States, then whose job is it?
If she was busy working with Clarke (irony intended) on a plan that all parties acknowledge wouldn't have prevented 9/11...whose job was it to deal with the "immediate and gathering threat" of the Al Qaeda cells active in the U.S. in 2001? Whose responsibility was the coordination of the military, intelligence and law enforcement branches of government to respond to immediate and growing threats to our security?
#4: When Rice philosophically says that it takes a catastrophic failure for democracies to respond to threats, what does that mean?
Was the 1993 WTC bombing enough?
Was the foiled attempt to bomb the Holland Tunnel a warning? or the Millenium plot for LAX?
And the "successful" embassy bombings in Africa, Khobar Towers and the attack on the Cole?
We Americans are a busy and distracted lot, but to put it in it's bluntest terms...
September 11th, 2001 was not the first time we woke to footage of a smoking WTC that had been attacked by an Islamic fundamentalist terror cell. Why did Rice leave out 1993 completely?
If you ask me, Rice's testimony, like so much of the Bush Administration's self serving rationalizations will go down as another low moment...on a par with Colin Powell's testimony before the United Nations...where an erstwhile patriotic public servant does a disservice to our nation as a whole out of loyalty to GWB and his political cause.
Dr. Rice may or may not have won points today in the political skirmishing that gets covered in the beltway...but her testimony adds further weight to the growing dossier called exhibit A in history's case against the Bush administration.
Frankly put, she is right. There was likely no way for the Bush Administration to avert 9/11. After all, it is easy to forget that after 1993 we INCREASED airport security...and yet still allowed folks to buy one way tickets and board a plane with a 4" knife in their carry ons. That's America for you, for better or for worse.
But the way Dr. Rice tells it, in 2001 we were living in a fairy tale land where we had a certain "national innocence" regarding terror, and this is just not so. Her fleeting reference to "two oceans" made me queasy. 9/11 happened not because we were "unaware and unprepared" but because we were "willfully unaware and woefully underprepared." Al Qaeda exploited this weakness, and in the process accomplished something truly horrific.
It is critical to remember that Dr. Rice is the same person who warned us of a potential "mushroom cloud" from Iraq on the eve of our invasion there. It is not so long a distance from the summer of 2001 where she could not imagine the real threat of 9/11...to the fall of 2002 where she was encouraging us all to imagine something even worse.
That being said...across this country tonight and in the coming weeks, folks are going to be doing their own assessments of her performance, her capabilities, and her competance....and they don't really care about this or that document...
what folks care about is this:
Do Condoleeza Rice and George Bush make you feel safe? Are they the stewards you want guarding our country and our children?
To paraphrase Dr. Rice...sometimes the only thing a bullheaded, misguided political party responds to is a catastrophic electoral failure...I hope we give her and George something to think about come November.