Rice Pudding

I thought Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's recent comment's on terrorism, and the link between Hussein and Binny were telling.

First the good news (sort of):

"I think it's clear that we are safe -- safer -- but not really yet safe,"

Then let's call this "War on Terror" a victory. We'll never be totally safe, we haven't been totally safe since, well...ever. But safer, that's great. Granted, I didn't know the goal was total safety, and yes, she didn't say "totally safe" but I think the word "totally" is superfluos, either your safe or your not. Kind of like being "totally pregnant." Anyway, safer is like totally awesome, and also a winning campaign platform, "Hey we won the war on terror!" Yes, yes, probably a touch hard to pull off with Binny running around free and all, but it's time to highlight some success.

Second, I was very interested in the Hussein/9/11 link, non-link.

"as far as we know," Saddam had no knowledge of or role in the Sept. 11 plot. "If you think that 9/11 was just about al Qaeda and the hijackers, then there's no connection to Iraq. But if you believe, as the president does and as I believe, that the problem is this ideology of hatred that has taken root, extremist ideology that has taken root in the Middle East, and that you have to go to the source and do something about the politics of that region.

Ahhhhh, now I get it. Yes, there was no direct link between Al Qaeda and Iraq (welcome to the show Mrs. Rice, we saved you a seat. It's right here next to the rest of the world - Stalin, we have one for you too). However, if you look at Iraq in a certain way, tilt your head to one side and kind of squint, then...then you can almost see a connection.

Sometimes I get a cramp trying to contort myself into position to follow the logic of this administration.