Talking point:

Partial list -

Rice	CBS' "60 Minutes"	March 28	.. when we went to Camp David to plan our response to the al Qaeda attack; it was a map of Afghanistan that was rolled out on the table.
Rice	Interview by Network Correspondents	March 24	We go to Camp David. It's the map of Afghanistan that we roll out, not the map of Iraq.
Rice	NBC's "Today"	March 22	I can tell you that when we got to Camp David, it was a map of Afghanistan that was unrolled on the table ...
Rice	CBS' "Early Show."	March 22	... when we got to Camp David on Sept. 15, it was a map of Afghanistan that was spread out on the table ...
Rice	ABC's "Good Morning America"	March 22 *	... at Camp David, the first thing that we did was to roll out a map of Afghanistan...
Rice	CNN's "American Morning"	March 22	... the meeting that Dick Clarke, of course, missed -- or was not invited to -- was at Camp David, when I can tell you that we rolled out a map, not of Iraq, but a map of Afghanistan.
s
McClellan	Press Briefing	March 22	... at the National Security Council meeting, what happened? There was a map that was unrolled on the table, and it was a map of Afghanistan.

* - no press report or transcript could be found for this quote. This is our own audio clip taken from ABC's morning program. (Yes, we tape a lot of stuff.)

In developing this post, we searched the web and individual websites looking for Rice's statement this past week. Imagine our surprise, then, when we encountered this photo and caption in a story from September of 2001

ABC News story for 29 September 2001

September 29 - President Bush receives a briefing with CIA Director George Tenent at Camp David. A map of Afganistan is on the table. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Chief of Staff Andy Card also attended. (Eric Draper/White House Photo)

OUR COMMENTARY: It strikes us as mindless to point to a thing - and not a particularly notable thing at that (a map on a table) - and hope that addresses concerns about policies discussed, promoted, and implemented. Rather childish, we think.

Grown-ups in charge? Nah.

NOTE: Rice was on Fox & Friends early last week (22 March?), and (we believe) also on Hannity sometime later. So she might have mentioned a "map on the table" a couple more times than our list indicates. Unfortunately, we can't find transcripts or audio for those events.

UPDATE: We checked, and in Condoleezza Rice's Washington Post Op-Ed of 22 March, she does not mention maps being rolled out onto tables. There is no mention of maps at all.

posted by Quiddity at 3/28/2004 10:49:00 PM