Shortly before being elected US president, George Bush wasn't able to name the president of Pakistan when asked in a televised interview. Yet, according to his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, in the months leading up to September 11, President Bush was fully briefed and supported a detailed plan to help General Musharraf cut off support to al-Qaida in Afghanistan. As Groucho Marx once asked: "Who do you believe - me, or the evidence of your own eyes?"

Dr Rice was in a very difficult position in her testimony yesterday to the September 11 commission investigating the attacks. She had to steer very carefully, between accusations of the administration having done nothing to counter al-Qaida, and its having been able to have stopped the hijackers on September 11. The fact that Dr Rice was testifying at all, after weeks of resistance to a public appearance before the commission, was a recognition by the White House of the danger it faces, with an election looming, a resurgent Democrat party and several telling charges from within the administration itself, such as former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke.

Predictably, Dr Rice's first objective was to protect the president from criticism. But she failed to satisfy those watching her testimony that the received image of the pre-9/11 White House - that it barely feigned interest in foreign affairs - was inaccurate. Her exchange with commission member Richard Ben-Veniste was particularly revealing, over if she had told President Bush there were al-Qaida cells in the US, after that information had been passed to her by Mr Clarke. To say - as Dr Rice did - "I really don't remember whether I discussed this with the president," should be called the Reagan defense, after the former president repeatedly used the phrase "I don't recall" in an inquiry into the Iran-Contra scandal. What is questionable is whether that is a credible defense from someone reputed to be the smartest person in the White House.

The idea that President Bush was fully briefed about al-Qaida, and that the White House understood that it "posed a serious threat to the United States", simply does not ring true. That feeling is supported by the fact that both the administration and Dr Rice were more interested in pushing for a pointless missile defense shield in the months before September 11. To say that a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" did not warn of an impending attack, according to Dr Rice, suggests the administration has begun to lose touch with reality.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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