Nice dodge. Another example of "everybody knows" turning into "only nuts would believe that" when the facts come in.

Sorry, but this particular memo has been sold extensively for many months in many places as the "smoking gun," a specific warning of an attack by hijacked planes on buildings that proved Bush dropped the ball on 9/11

...

And pretending that nobody ever said it isn't going to work.

Hey, don't look at me, I'm so totally oblivious (by choice) to conspiracy theories that Condie's testimony was the first I'd heard of that memo.

As for the "historical memo" business, obviously the vast majority of it is, in fact, historical..

Clever word-splitting. Rice dismissed the memo as nothing but old news, and clearly she lied. It contained historical context for current warnings. Whoever wrote it did that to add emphasis in the (futile) hope of being taken seriously. And geez, this was the President's Daily Briefing--do you think they routinely contain idle gossip and lectures on historical trivia? Just being the subject of the memo--in fact, the only subject for that day--should tell any reasonably intelligent person that the information's important and requires Presidential action.

Oh wait, I forgot, we're talking about Duhbya. Never mind.

You know, I just noticed that a reasonable person might think that 70 ongoing investigations might be interpreted as the administration "doing something" about the threat. As would the CIA and FBI investigations mentioned.

Another bit of semantic sleight-of-hand is to suddenly start referring to "the Administration", when it's specifically the White House and its staff that's under the microscope. We already knew that there were a few investigations that turned up clues, but up to now we've been told that the FBI failed to put the clues together. But now in this memo we find out that the FBI knew that it was conducting 70 investigations directly addressing Al Qaida's activities, and tried to bring that fact to the attention of the White House. And they were ignored.

If you were President, what other action would you have taken in August of 2001 given this same information?

Well gee, first of all I'd comprehend what I'd been told in simple English, something that evidently nobody in the White House did. From that simple comprehension many things flow logically, like telling the FBI "Holy shit, dudes, throw some resources into those investigations and get me some answers now!". It's already come out that some of the investigations turned up blatant clues, like aircraft school attendance. Ya think maybe the President could've lit a fire under the FBI and motivated them to put together the pieces in time to do something?

When did Harry Truman's famous dictum that "The buck stops here" become invalidated? By the election of a Republican President?