"I Don't Recall ..."

Liars, incompetents and people dedicated to the covering of their own asses: Welcome to Washington, D.C.

So, what did Condi Rice know and when did she know it -- and how seriously did she take it? And what, if anything, did the 9/11 Commission bother to know about her knowing?

The revelation in Bob Woodward's State of Denial about a July 10, 2001, meeting between Rice and CIA officials has seen more spinning than a coin-op laundry.

First, Rice scoffed at Woodward's reporting that she had "brushed off" any dire warnings about al Qaeda from then-CIA director George Tenet and then-CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black:

"I don't know that this meeting took place, but what I really don't know, what I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," Rice initially said.

Um, yeah. Right. A State Department spokesman traveling with Rice later confirmed the meeting, but stressed, "The briefing was a summary of the threat reporting from the previous weeks. There was nothing new."

But that spokesman, Sean McCormack, couldn't explain why, if there was "nothing new" in the meeting, Rice then directed the CIA to alert Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to the same information. Was she playing a prank on her colleagues?

Almost as curious is why this entire account somehow failed to make it in the 9/11 Commission Report, even though Tenet apparently had recounted it in a Jan. 28, 2004, interview involving commission member Richard Ben-Veniste -- who, incidentally, had complained over the weekend that "this is certainly something we would have wanted to know about."

Well, golly, Sherlock: You were told about it, although Tenet evidently told the commission he believed Rice took the warning seriously (Of course, the joke was on Tenet, who didn't realize Rice found nothing new in the briefing and just wanted them to stop yapping so she could go workout with the prez).

In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that all of Washington suffers the loss of short-term memory. Hell, if there weren't videos and pictures of the World Trade Center attacks, who knows if anyone inside the Beltway would even remember it.