Life's Persistent Questions

Dirty word.

I caught pieces of Dr. Rice's senate confirmation hearing yesterday (Tuesday). The following clip caught my ear:

This was never going to be easy. It was always going to have ups and downs. I'm sure that we have made m-multiple, (slight pause), many decisions, some of which were good, some of which might not have been good, but the strategic decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was the right one.

Transcript is from NY Times, and the italic insertion was made by yours truly based on video file from C-SPAN. So reading the transcript one did not notice anything. However, if you hear the actual recording, and based on the two sentences leading up to it, which I did, one get the impression the m-word that she was going to say was not "multiple" or "many," but rather MISTAKES. I thougth she was going to slip up, but true to her aspiration as the most visible diplomat in the world, Ms. Rice found a way out. You can hear the entire Tuesday recording here, and the clip is about 2:43:19. A search of the transcript text for the tuesday hearing, revealed that Dr. Rice used the word "mistake" only once, and it was only referring to the inaction of pre-Bush administration on al qaeda. Batting 1.000 and counting.

posted by hedgehog @ 12:30 PM