To Show Loyalty, Rice Lies for Bush

During the past two years of international crisis, Dr. Rice has been dispatched to prevaricate repeatedly in defense of her boss. She was caught spreading a false story about Sept. 11, claiming that Air Force One flew the President to Oklahoma after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because "intelligence" indicated that terrorists were aiming for the White House and the Presidential jet. Later she testified that the U.S. government had never anticipated an assault by airliner, when in fact there had been many warnings of exactly such tactics--most notably during the summer of 2001, when Western intelligence services set up anti-aircraft batteries around the Genoa summit to protect the President. Memories are short in this country, so Dr. Rice escaped those embarrassing incidents with her reputation more or less intact. Then last year, as the determination of the White House to wage war on Iraq became plain, she began to promote dubious stories about Saddam Hussein's regime. As national security advisor, she had access to all of the sensitive intelligence about Iraq, so the press and Congress took her pronouncements seriously. [more]

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