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<p>My home is on a cattle farm. Flies visit my porch after hatching in the fields, and I tend to swat the more determine beasties that irritate. My swattings do nothing to end the proliferation of flies born from the dung out in the fields. Bob Kerry wanted to know from Dr. Rice ‘just what flies President Bush had tried to swat.’ It was, of course, a partisan hack attack aimed at casting doubt on this administration’s efforts to fight terrorism foreign and domestic. Let’s dissect the foolishness of Kerry’s assault, before the likes of Chris Mathews, Andrea Mitchell, Ambassador Holbrooke, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather have the opportunity to make B2 bombers out of imaginary flies (yes, imaginary, since Kerry implied Rice alluded to actions taken, when she was in fact addressing the president’s desire for change in policy).</p>

Rice's response to Bob Kerrey (transcript -- scroll down) is amusing: KERREY: Why didn't we swat that fly? RICE: I believe that there's a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense; whether or not you decide that you're going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every -- on a kind of tit-for-tat basis. By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit-for-tat, doing this on the time of our choosing. RICE: I'm aware, Mr. Kerrey,...

Kerrey/Rice Clash Ex-Nebraskan not satisfied with testimony Former Nebraska Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey said he was not satisfied Thursday by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's responses to questions posed by the commission investigating the September 11 attacks. "I simply don't like a conclusion that says we didn't make any mistakes," Kerrey said after he questioned Rice as part of the 10-member commission in Washington. Rice appeared to blame lack of communication between the FBI and CIA on intelligence matters, but that is not an acceptable response, Kerrey said. There were enough warnings that Rice and others in the...

WASHINGTON - A Sept. 11 commission Democrat disagreed Friday with President Clinton's assessment there wasn't enough intelligence linking al-Qaida to a deadly attack on a Navy ship to justify an attack on the terrorist organization. Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey said he believes Clinton should have launched a military strike against al-Qaida following the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. "I think he did have enough proof to take action," Kerrey said on ABC's "Good Morning America. The commission interviewed Clinton behind closed doors Thursday for nearly four hours, with many of their questions focused...

During his private interview with the 9/11 Commission on Thursday, ex-President Bill Clinton denied that he told a New York business group in 2002 that he turned down an offer from Sudan for Osama bin Laden's extradition to the U.S., according to 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey. "Bill Clinton said yesterday that, that was a misquote," Kerrey told WDAY Fargo, North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen, in an interview set for broadcast on Monday. A transcript of the exchange between Hennen and Kerrey was read on the air by national radio host Sean Hannity late Friday. It shows that the 9/11...

<p>THE liberals and Democrats on the 9/11 commission are using the public hearings to develop a plotline about the months leading up to the attacks - a plotline whose purpose is to harm George W. Bush's chances for reelection, help John Kerry's chances and whitewash the Clinton administration's failures. The liberal plotline was on display yesterday in the questioning of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose refusal to capitulate to the partisan goals of her Democratic cross-examiners resulted in some shockingly inappropriate behavior on their part.</p>

Is there anything clearer than hindsight? And is there anyone - inside the Washington Beltway or beyond it - who wouldn't want to rewrite our pre-Sept. 11 history? But as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the 9/11 commission, ``There was no silver bullet that could have prevented'' the attack on American soil.'' Shouldn't the FBI and the CIA have been forced to talk to each other? Shouldn't the CIA's information about al-Qaeda have been shared with the FBI, which knew of Middle Eastern men attending U.S. flight schools? Yes, of course, that's what should have happened. But it didn't...

After the traditional morning blood dance over the current casualties in Iraq (with the mandatory views of American wounded and/or killed), The Today Show's Matt Lauer got right to it with former Senator "Senior Moment" Kerrey. The two faced a tough job of "putting the smear" on Dr. Condoleeza Rice's fabulous testimony from yesterday, but with the help of strategic video editing and omissions, they were able to do it. They actually were able to find a piece of tape where Boob Kerrey didn't call Condoleeza "Dr. Clarke", or where Kerrey wasn't wandering off into the wastelands of the "9/11...

<p>April 9, 2004 -- THE liberals and Democrats on the 9/11 commission are using the public hearings to develop a plotline about the months leading up to the attacks - a plotline whose purpose is to harm George W. Bush's chances for reelection, help John Kerry's chances and whitewash the Clinton administration's failures.</p>

Thu Apr 8, 3:10 PM ET Commission member and former Sen. Bob Kerrey listens to testimony from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks Thursday, April 8, 2004, in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Sept. 11 Commissioner, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, launched his questioning of Dr. Condoleezza Rice Thursday morning with an anti-war diatribe against U.S. involvement in Iraq, drawing applause from a largely anti-Bush gallery watching the proceedings. "I'm not going to get the national security adviser 30 feet away from me very often in the next 90 days," Kerrey began before blurting out, "I'm terribly worried that the military tactics in Iraq are going to do a number of things and they're all bad." At that point the proceedings turned into a full-blown circus, with the gallery erupting in applause. "Please do...

(CNSNews.com) - 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey began his questioning of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by telling that he's very worried about the fallout from the war in Iraq. "I can't pass this up." Kerrey said. "I know it will take into my ten-minute time, but as somebody who supported the war in Iraq, I'm not going to get the national security adviser 30 feet away from me very often over the next 90 days. "But I've got to tell you -- I believe a number of things," Kerrey said. He said he thinks the U.S. underestimates that the war...

<p>The 9/11 Commission's objective is to answer the following question: How--at the end of a summer of high terrorist threat--did 19 men with a few hundred thousand dollars manage to utterly defeat every single defensive mechanism we had in place that September morning and murder 3,000 innocents on American soil?</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — Condoleezza Rice isn't the only one with a lot riding on her appearance Thursday before the Sept. 11 commission.</p> <p>If panel members appear politically motivated in their questioning of the national security adviser, it could raise questions about their credibility — and the findings in their final report this summer.</p>

(CNSNews.com) - A Republican congressman says members of the 9/11 commission should not be sharing their opinions with the media until their investigation is finished. "I have a problem with them prejudging before they get to the end of the investigation," said Rep. Max Collins (R-Ga.) in a CNN interview on Tuesday. Collins, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said he is troubled about recent media interviews given by some 9-11 commission members. On Sunday, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, one of five Democrats on the 9/11 commission, said the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks...

<p>March 30, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton will be on the hot seat over Osama bin Laden when he testifies before the 9/11 commission, panel member Bob Kerrey told The Post yesterday. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska who is now president of the New School University in Manhattan, said he wants Clinton to explain why bin Laden's death threats against the U.S. went unanswered.</p>

Albright answered by saying the administration basically didn't know who — or where — to attack. "Well, what the hell does that say to al Qaeda?" Kerrey responded. "Basically, they knew — beginning in 1993, it seems to me — that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military, and that they were relatively free to do whatever they wanted."

“You, senator, I know, were the only person that I know of who suggested declaring war. In retrospect, you were probably right." Those were the words of former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, on the first day of the 9/11-commission hearings, after being questioned by commissioner and former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D., Neb.) about the Clinton administration's tepid response to the terrorist attacks that occurred from 1993 to 2000. Despite all the attention paid to former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's testimony on Wednesday, Albright's appearance on Tuesday said far more about the American response to terrorism during the...

<p>March 26, 2004 -- Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, one of the federal 9/11 Commission's Democratic members, couldn't keep from sputtering his outrage over Fox News Channel's decision to air a tape of star witness Richard Clarke's 2002 background briefing - saying the network "violated a serious trust." With all due respect, that's a load of hooey - and Bob Kerrey knows better.</p>

SOME OPPONENTS of President Bush would have us believe that the President fiddled before and after Washington and New York burned on September 11. We know, however, that President Clinton fondled after the World Trade Center burned (in the 1993 attack) and while al-Qaida was plotting against and striking American targets. The Clinton administration’s reactionary approach to al-Qaida was a model of failure, as the 9/11 commission has revealed over the past two days. Nonetheless, some would have us return to exactly that strategy. Testimony and reports given to the 9/11 commission have established that the Clinton administration passed up...