In her testimony before the 9/11 Commission last Thursday, Condi Rice relentlessly, unblinkingly used a particular talking point that the criminal cabal at the White House must have collectively thought up:
233 DAYS
Over and over, "233 days," like a mantra. The Bush Administration had been in office for only 233 days when 9/11 happened. How could they have stopped it? How could they have been able to develop a clear policy (when they were too busy throwing everything Clinton had accomplished out the window, for idio-ideological reasons) in just 233 days? How could they have implemented what Rice would call "structural changes" in just 233 days, so that the various agencies would be better coordinated? How could she, whose job it was to coordinate the agencies anyway, get anything done, other than missile defense work, in just 233 days?
Here are some excerpts:
[RICE:] The vice president was, a little later in, I think, in May, tasked by the president to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations that had been made about domestic preparedness and all of the questions associated with that; to take the Gilmore report and the Hart-Rudman report and so forth and to try to make recommendations about what might have been done.
We were in office 233 days. And the kinds of structural changes that have been needed by this country for some time did not get made in that period of time.
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GORELICK: Now, you have said to us that your policy review was meant to be comprehensive. You took your time because you wanted to get at the hard issues and have a hard-hitting, comprehensive policy. And yet there is nothing in it about the vast domestic landscape that we were all warned needed so much attention.
Can you give me the answer to the question why?
RICE: I would ask the following. We were there for 233 days. There had been recognition for a number of years before -- after the '93 bombing, and certainly after the millennium -- that there were challenges, if I could say it that way, inside the United States, and that there were challenges concerning our domestic agencies and the challenges concerning the FBI and the CIA.
We were in office 233 days. It's absolutely the case that we did not begin structural reform of the FBI.
Now, the vice president was asked by the president, and that was tasked in May, to put all of this together and to see if he could put together, from all of the recommendations, a program for protection of the homeland against WMD, what else needed to be done. And in fact, he had hired Admiral Steve Abbot to do that work. And it was on that basis that we were able to put together the Homeland Security Council, which Tom Ridge came to head very, very quickly.
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KERREY: But, Dr. Rice, everybody ...
RICE: But the structure of the FBI, the restructuring of the FBI, was not going to be done in the 233 days in which we were in office ...
...
RICE: Well, I think that when I made the comment that the country was not on war footing, that didn't just mean the executive branch was not on war footing.
The fact is that many of the big changes, quite frankly, again, we were not going to be able to make in 233 days.
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233 days, eh?
In those 233 days, how often was the President on vacation?
As we all know, he was on a month-long vacation at the time he received the now too-hot-to-handle August 6, 2001, PDB. Here's a report from that early August period:
President Bush begins a monthlong vacation on his Texas ranch Saturday, and by the time he returns he will have spent nearly two months of his presidency there.
And that doesn't include the many weekends he's spent at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
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He has spent 14 weekends at Camp David, bringing paperwork and an aide or two along. He played host to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain there. Bush also logged a long weekend last month at the family's Kennebunkport, Maine, compound, throwing horseshoes, playing golf, fishing.
Wow. In 233 days, the President managed to spend 2 months at his ranch in Texas, 14 weekends in the Maryland mountains, and one long weekend in Kennebunkport. Close to 100 out of 233 days before September 11th, were spent relaxing.
And apparently it was very relaxing indeed. The August 6 briefing, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.," did not cut short a month-long vacation, did not cause the President to stir a bit, apparently. Of far greater concern was clearing brush from the ranch in Crawford. Here's a report from August 6, 2001:
Admittedly, the president will spend some time relaxing. Monday morning, before the mercury rose over 100 degrees, Bush went for a 4-mile jog. He then got his daily intelligence briefings and spoke by phone to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and chief of staff Andy Card. In the afternoon, Bush headed out into the wilting heat -- he loves it -- to work on a nature trail he is building in a canyon.
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While Bush is gone, aides will mind the shop at the White House. Vice President Dick Cheney, won't be among them. He will be at his own vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., until Labor Day, though in contact with Bush whenever needed, a spokeswoman said.
And apparently, old habits don't die. With the chaos swirling in Iraq right now, with over 50 Americans killed this week in what has become a Quagmire of the first order, guess where our CEO President is:
This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.
Is malfeasance impeachable? Criminal negligence? Going on vacation while Americans die in your mess? Or is it just sex-related offenses that get a President impeached these days? Cuz, if so, I can think of a couple hundred million Americans whom the President has screwed in the past 233 days alone.