One of the many things I find funny about politics is the way folks will try and spin almost any event as a victory for their side. Here's a trivial example: The other day in a short press conference, Bush had the following exchange with a reporter for the Associated Press…
REPORTER: Sir, in regard to —
BUSH: Who are you talking to?
REPORTER: Mr. President, in regard to the June 30th deadline…
As this was initially quoted on the Internet, it sounded like Bush had scolded a reporter for referring to him as "Sir" instead of "Mr. President." Almost immediately, if you browsed political blogs and chatboards, you saw two diverse opinions on what it all meant. The pro-Bush folks were whooping with delight that Bush had slapped down an insolent reporter and made him show some respect. The anti-Bush folks were saying how petty Bush looked for insisting that he be addressed as "Mr. President" instead of "Sir." (What's the difference, you ask? Well, some of the right-wingers have suggested that some reporters avoid addressing him as President because they're still trying to sell the idea that Al Gore earned that title.)
As it turns out, both sides were probably claiming something that did not occur. A more thorough report on the incident reveals that Bush had suddenly, unexpectedly, called on the reporter to ask a question and the guy, unprepared for it, was caught talking on a cell phone. So when Bush said, "Who are you talking to?", he wasn't complaining about not being addressed as Mr. President. He was joking about the fact that the guy was talking to someone else. That's something else altogether.
This brings me to today's testimony by Condoleezza Rice which is getting spun like a Duncan yo-yo across the 'net, with both sides seeing things that probably were not there. Just read one site where right-wingers were cheering how she body-slammed and humiliated her interrogators; another, where left-wingers were declaring her an obviously-fibbing failure. Based on the last hour or so (which I caught) and a few excerpts from the first part, I think both are wrong. If she did Bush damage, it was only for what she didn't do…make any kind of serious rebuttal to Richard Clarke. But she also helped Bush in that she pointed up some of what is to me an essential absurdity — the contention that we can look back and affix blame for 9/11 to specific actions or inactions. I'm afraid I don't buy all this hindsight and attempt to assign guilt to anyone who wasn't part of Al-Qaida.
Yes, there are things we can probably learn from discussing our pre-9/11 shortcomings. But when I hear folks talking about improving the handling and distribution of intelligence, I think they're overlooking an essential question: Is our intelligence any good in the first place? I mean, didn't some of our intelligence tell us that Saddam Hussein had all these Weapons of Mass Destruction? That they could be readied and used against us within 45 minutes? That they were definitely, absolutely in all those places that Colin Powell identified to the U.N.? If that was the quality of intelligence we were getting before 9/11, why is anyone suggesting that better distribution of it between government agencies might have stopped the suicide hijackings?
On the other hand, maybe our intelligence is much better than that. Maybe the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was 95% correct about those weapons and 5% wrong, and all those hawks in the White House — Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and (of course) Bush — chose to believe the 5%. If so, that would probably be a failing of human beings, not of the system. I think we should forget about investigating whether someone could have prevented 9/11 and instead ask how we can avoid sending American soldiers into battle without our leaders having the slightest clue as to what weapons the enemy has or where they have them. Regardless of how things turn out in Iraq, that's no way to run a war.