SHOCKER: Condi lied.

In response to Clinton's FOX News appearance, Condi Rice felt the need to blab to the right-wing rag NY Post (and only the NY Post) in a pathetic attempt to set the record straight. The end result? Yup, just more lies.

RAW STORY presents a document that directly refutes Condi's claims:

RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
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The memo sent by Clarke to Rice, to which the Clinton-era document was attached, also urges action on Pakistan relating to al Qaeda. "First [to be addressed,]" wrote Clarke in a list of pending issues relating to al Qaeda, is "what the administration says to the Taliban and Pakistan about ending al Qida sanctuary in Afghanistan. We are separately proposing early, strong messages on both."

The documents have been a source of controversy before. Rice contended in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post piece that "no al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

Two days later, Clarke insisted to the 9/11 Commission that the plan had in fact been turned over. "There's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options, but all of the things we recommended back in January," he told the commission, "were done after September 11th."

Hmm, so eventually they got around to acting on Clinton's memo -- only after 9/11.

These people will descend to a level less than zero. As we know, anything left by Clinton post-2000 election was purposefully ignored or discarded. As a result, the country was made less safe.

The Mahablog has more on the lies.

In related news, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Ben-Veniste and some very interesting things were said, such as this nugget:

But strangely, in the [Clinton] transition there did not seem to be any great interest by the Bush administration, at least none that we found, in pursuing the question of plans which were being drawn up [by the Clinton admin.] to attack in Afghanistan as a response to the Cole.

Ah yes, more of that patented lack of interest by our president, in this case choosing to not pursue attacks against Osama and the Taliban in the months preceding September 11th.

And yet Bill Clinton is suddenly the target for blame? Outrageous.