Plan? No Plan? Or Secret Plan?

Harry Shearer Huffington Post

01.12.2007

In the "I thought I dreamed it" department, I was listening to Condi Rice's testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Thursday (Hearings! Blessed hearings!), when I heard her say, in reply to a Senator--I forget who--grilling her on what happens if this plan doesn't work, that she didn't do Plan Bs, the administration preferred to concentrate on making Plan A work.


It sounded, as the Brits say, daft. But I didn't tape it, so I couldn't be sure, until I saw this item, quoting Condi to much the same effect.
What stunned me was not that she, a college grad and all, would say such a bizarre thing. It was that the Senator, obviously unaccustomed to asking followup questions not fashioned by his staff, didn't pursue her with a protocol-correct version of "Madame Secretary, are you shittin' me?"
The question remains: Are we watching an administration so cocksure and dumb they really don't have a Plan B for almost any contingency, or are we watching an administration whose Plan B for Iraq is an attack on Iran and, as Andy Card once memorably said of unveiling the original war plan in August, it was just too early for a new-product intro.