Three for the history books.

It appears that the painstakingly posed and very costly image of Republicans is coming apart more and more every day, it seems. It's what happens when you try to gild inferior materials, I guess.

Three items:

1. Condoleezza Rice said she had no recollection of a July 2001 debrief by CIA Director George Tenet of an "imminent attack by Al Qaeda". She said she thought it "imcomprehensible" that she would have heard such a debrief and failed to act on it.

Well, guess what?

A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

So much for Rice's attempt to cover up her incompetence, and so much for the Republican myth that they tried to do everything they could. Rice told Tenet to tell Rumsfeld and Ashcroft but never followed up on the dire threat.

Update: The more truth that's uncovered, the worse it gets for the Bush Admin. We now know that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld actually WERE briefed in a follow-up briefing by Tenet.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

...The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

So it's official now: the Bush Administration was explicitly warned and did NOTHING. They exhibited gross negligence, incompetence and abysmally bad judgment on dealing with the terrorist threat and continue to try to cover it up with lies.

2. We've all heard by now about how Republican Congressman Foley has resigned for having allegedly sent sexually predatory emails and other correspondence to minors. We've also heard, now, about how the Republican leadership in Congress knew about some of his earlier behavior years ago, yet chose to not investigate further and instead covered it up.

Now we've learned that Congressman Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) chief of staff, Kirk Fordham tried to get ABC to suppress release of the most damaging emails in exchange for getting an "exclusive" interview on Foley's resignation.

Congressman Reynolds let his own chief of staff secretly work for a child predator in an effort to cover-up the worst evidence of the predator's sexual wrongdoing. Without that evidence, this case might not have broken wide open. Add Reynolds to the list, alongside Hastert and Shimkus, of members of Congress who need to resign now.

Which raises the question: how can Republicans be trusted to keep our country safe when they willfully choose to not even keep the ir own summer interns safe from sexual predators?

3. And finally, how about them Taliban? Well, it seems that some Republicans actually want to sit down at the negotiating table with the terrorists. Let me repeat that: while our troops are getting their behinds shot off and blown up by Taliban/Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, Senator Frist says we need to welcome these chaps into the Afghan government.

Maybe we can set them out tea and crackers, too, Senator?

Strangely, after declaiming ponderously for years that those of us who said that the war wouldn't be won militarily were terrorist appeasers, al Qaeda sympathizers, unpatriotic and unAmerican, the much vaunted but military-experience-challenged Republican leadership now flip flops on the issue. Only thing is, they actually want to extend a warm and hearty handshake to the people that have been killing us.

To recap:

1. Condoleezza Rice lied about not being briefed on the danger before 9/11. She most certainly was, (as were Ashcroft and Rumsfeld!) but the White House chose to do NOTHING about it.

2. Republican leadership in the House appear to have been trying to cover up sexual predation of minors by one of their members. Instead, when they had credible evidence of a reason to investigate a danger to their pages, they chose to do NOTHING about it.

3. Republican leadership in the Senate appears to be actively and explicitly championing appeasement of the Teliban in Afghanistan.


Not much more to say, is there?