Until someone pins her down by making her take an oath, Rice can make prejudicial statements and cast as much doubt as she can muster on Clarke. Once she's under oath, then she has to substantiate her claims, and she can't. The entire Bush administration can see that she can do damage as long as the media is willing to let her go on the air and condense her statements into little poison sound bites against Clarke.

Do you remember the James Stewart line in the movie Anatomy of a Murder that he delivered right after the prosecutor protested his line of questioning and the judge said he had to stop? His client at the table asked something along the lines of "how can the jury 'forget' that you just asked that?" to which Stewart replied "they can't" and grinned--he knew once he said it the idea was going to stick, even if the judge said to ignore it. That's where Rice is--as long as she's not under oath she's throwing out those ideas that no one can make her correct or take back. And people won't forget that she said them, even if she was lying about it. The Bush administration is BANKING on this.

SRS