Was anyone else alarmed when Rice said in her opening statement that democracies are often slower to respond to gathering threats -- and that therefore sometimes it takes a catastrophe to mobilize democratic societies into action?
I'm not one who believes the Bush administration knowingly allowed this particular attack to happen. But isn't Rice's line of thought precisely what so-called "conspiracy theorists" have imputed to the Bush Administration and its ideological core group (e.g., the Project for a New American Century)?
When she offered that excuse, the thought crossed my mind: Yes, she's right, it's hard to get democratic societies to back perpetual war. And that's why they made so few efforts to act on these warnings.
It was the only way to achieve certain policy goals, because pesky, slow democracy was standing in the way.