Taking on al-Qaida was top priority, says Rice

One of the first priorities of the Bush administration after taking office was “the elimination of the al-Qaida network”, US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said today.

In a much-awaited appearance before a congressional commission in Washington, Dr Rice said the dangers posed by Osama bin Laden’s terror group were top of the agenda even before the September 11 attacks.

She said there had been an “insufficient” response to terror threats by successive US governments.

“The terrorists were at war with us but we were not yet at war with them,” she said.

When George Bush took office, he made it a priority to tackle the al Qaida threat, she said.

“We understood that the network posed a serious threat to the United States,” she told the commission probing the September 11 terror strikes on New York and Washington.

“We wanted to ensure that there was no respite in the future against al-Qaida.”

Dr Rice’s appearance was screened on every US television network, and has been hyped for days.

She initially refused to appear in public before the commission, after initially giving evidence in private.

But she relented under public pressure last week after being accused of incompetence by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism adviser to the Bush and Clinton administrations.

In her opening remarks, she said: “We owe it to those that we lost and to their loved ones and to our country to learn all that we can about that tragic day.”

She said that America was attacked by “radical, freedom-hating terrorists” on September 11.

For 20 years the response to the terrorist threat was “insufficient”.

Democratic nations often failed to act on threats until situations became became “too dangerous” or “too late”.

She said the US would “remain at war” until the terror threat to it was over.

Shortly after taking office Mr Bush told Dr Rice that he was “tired of swatting flies” in respect to tackling al-Qaida.

So on September 4, 2001, just a week before the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, a new policy on combating al Qaida was created.

She said this was the first major intelligence document of the Bush administration.

“Not Russia, not missile defence, not Iraq, but the elimination of al-Qaida.”

She said the administration “set as a goal the elimination of the al-Qaida network”.

Dr Rice was giving evidence in Washington as relatives of some of those killed on September 11 watched.

She did not offer an apology for the fact that the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon were not prevented.

She said: “There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

“In hindsight if anything might have helped stop 9/11 it would have been better information about threats inside the United States.

“So the attacks came. A band of vicious terrorists tried to decapitate our government, destroy our financial system and break the spirit of America.

“And as an officer of government on duty that day I will never forget the sorrow and the anger that I felt, nor will I forget the courage and resilience of the American people nor the leadership of the President that day.”

Dr Rice said both she and President Bush believed the so-called war on terror was a ``generational challenge''.

She said: “We are not going to see success on our watch. We will see some small victories on our watch.

“One of the most difficult problems in the Middle East is that the United States has been associated for a long time – decades – with a policy that looks the other way on the freedom deficit in the Middle East, that looks the other way at the absence of individual liberties in the Middle East.

“And I think that has tended to alienate us from the populations of the Middle East.”