A Memo to Condoleeza Rice: That word does not mean what you think it means

It is a good thing that I am currently immersed in work and must maintain a thin veneer of civility and dignity because shit is just killing me. KILLING ME.

We have another goddam school shooting. I think we should put Kip Hawley in charge of our nation's school security. I guess influential people don't take my advice, go figure.

In other news, Condoleeza Rice is a fucking liar but she swears she is telling the truth this time. Let's run a quick analysis here: Rice lied to the world about the WMDs and the (now admitted) completely false connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. She lied to the 9/11 Commission about the information given to her and the rest of the administration about the threat posed by Al Qaeda. Dick Clarke tried to warn her. Clinton tried to warn her. Everybody from Clinton's administration did everything they could to prevent 9/11 and Rice waved them away and dismissed their advice. Fucking Classic. Now we have a tailor made NeoCon paradise and Halliburton shares are doing great and Cheney is shooting people in the face and overflowing the tank on his Prius with gas and Bush has police state and executive powers unmatched in the history of the United States. But, honestly, this time Rice is not lying when she says she listened to Tenet's warnings about the imminent attack.

For students of Nixon's administration or even those of us who have read books and seen movies about it, this is the non-denial denial. A few links turn up some very odd language:

"The information presented at this meeting was not new," Cooper said. NO FUCKING SHIT, DUMBASS. Tenet was trying to reiterate a threat that had previously been dismissed. This is a perfect example of the non-denial denial. She is not specifically denying the allegations that she ignored a threat.

"...that his boss had said repeatedly she could not specifically recall. She had said earlier that there were virtually daily meetings at the time." Christ on a crutch, I guess it might be too much trouble to ask your staff to keep track of this shit for you. Oh, wait, that's right, THEY FUCKING DID. You had the meeting and now claim that nothing new was brought to it. Well, if a couple people are in agreement that you are ignoring a piece of information, they may restate that information and then ask you to do something about it. They may even call for a special meeting and get vocal about it.

"What I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," she said. Parsing words is fun, isn't it? Blowing off a bunch of experts is a response. Telling them to fuck off and shut up is also a response.

Ms. Rice, the national security adviser at the time, said it was “incomprehensible” she ignored dire terrorist threats two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. The word you are looking for is inconceivable. Incomprehensible is not appropriate here unless Tenet were to have said something like "dark is the suede that mows like a harvest." Now that is incomprehensible.