Now that the 9/11 Commission Hearings have come to an end, the world got to hear from key officials from both the Clinton and Bush Administrations as to their role in gathering Intelligence and tracking Al Qaeda prior to the September 11th attacks. From former and current Secretaries of State and Defense, to the current and former Directors of the FBI - to Former White House Counterterrorism Adviser Richard Clarke - who sparked major controversy by publishing a book entitled Against All Enemies, where he blasted the Bush Administration's handling of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, each official spent hours testifying in front of the ten-member panel and answering some grueling questions...

...everyone except White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Called to testify by leaders of both parties, Rice refused on the grounds that her testimony would be a, "breach of Executive Privilege," citing that advisors to the President answer only to the President. "There is an important principle involved here," Rice told 60 Minutes yesterday. "It is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress...but nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify."

Huh?

So she wants to testify, but she can't, although she would, even though she won't.

Huh?

The reason that the government and the people want Rice to testify so badly is because she has been accused of ignoring or "shelving" the importance of tracking Al Qaeda prior to September 11th. Her predecessors are saying that they gave her multiple warnings that Al Qaeda was a serious threat and was planning a major attack against the United States - and that Ms. Rice did not act on those warnings. "I would recommend to the commission accepting any testimony Dr. Rice gives us under any conditions," Commission Chairman and Former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean told Fox News Sunday. "But we are still going to press and still believe unanimously as a commission that we should hear from her in public."

I can fully understand Ms. Rice's desire to maintain the longstanding Constitutional Separation between the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal Government, but this is a Commission designed to find out what went wrong that led to the worst terrorist attack in human history, one that literally changed the existence of every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth. The goal of the Commission is not to find a scapegoat or a person to place the blame on, but to find out what went wrong so it does not happen again - and her testimony could be key to not only finding new ways to combat terrorism - but to find out what happened, or what didn't happen, that allowed the unfortunate success of the September 11th atrocities.

When Bush was elected, I was strongly opposed to both him as our president and his administration, but have since become a strong supporter of the President based on his handling of post-9/11 America - and if President Bush would like to keep my support with Election Day only 218 days away - he will make Condoleezza rice testify.

After all - it is the American thing to do...Constitutional Separation be dammed.