IT IS a battle that President Bush should never have ended up fighting. The White House’s refusal until Tuesday to let Condoleezza Rice testify before the independent commission that is looking into September 11 was a serious political mistake, and hurt Bush when opinion polls were tilting back in his favour.

In what became a very American row about the obligations of the White House to Congress and to the public, Bush was accused of impeding scrutiny of his policy in Iraq. The controversy has done nothing to help his National Security Adviser, after months of speculation about her vulnerability within the team.

The row has been going on for weeks, since the independent commission on September 11 asked Rice to testify under oath. The White House refused, on the grounds that it would breach the President’s constitutional authority and set a dangerous precedent.

The stand-off hit headlines last week, after Richard Clarke, a former director of counter-terrorism for Bush (and Clinton), savagely criticised the Administration in testimony and in his memoirs, published at the same time.

Rice is one of his main targets. It was inevitable that the commission would want to question her.

In the deal with the commssion, the White House has given way almost entirely. It had to, once the row became a national debate about whether the executive recognised constitutional curbs on its power.

Rice will now testify under oath, perhaps as soon as next week. Bush and Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, will also testify, although not under oath. Their testimony will be in private, but they will be questioned by all ten commission members, rather than just the chairman and vice-chairman, as they had wanted, and there will be no time limit.

The only concession the commission made was that it would not call other White House aides for public interviews, although it can still question them in private.

There is no question that the row — and Clarke’s book — have been damaging for Bush, although pollsters are divided about the impact. It erupted in a fortnight that has otherwise been good for the White House. Polls this week show that the lead that John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, enjoyed at the beginning of March has melted away under the blitz of television advertising by the Bush team.

It would be surprising if Rice’s testimony were as damaging as this row has been. More than the rest of the team, she is expert at giving a fluent defence of the Administration’s position.

All the same, navigating the commission’s inquiries cannot be a trivial exercise for her.

Clarke launches two main charges against the Administration. Rice is the central target of the first — although that is the less damaging one.

This allegation is that before September 11, 2001, the Administration, particularly Rice, failed to respond to many warnings about al-Qaeda, particularly from Clarke. This may well be true. But for a start, it carries the air of pique of an adviser whose advice has been ignored.

What is more, the picture of the White House’s planning before September 11 is messy, but not particularly damning to the Bush Administration or its predecessor. The Clinton team intended to tackle al-Qaeda, but pursued this only intermittently. The Bush Administration, not well disposed to embrace its predecessors priorities, acknowledged the group as a threat, but not an urgent one.

Neither administration had a “plan”, in the sense that would have satisfied Clarke. But, given the world’s ignorance then about al-Qaeda’s ambitions, it is hard to find this completely surprising.

The much more damaging charge from Clarke is that the Bush White House was looking for any excuse to attack Iraq, and quickly bent the War on Terror in that direction, despite the absence of any proven Iraqi role in September 11. In this account, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy, play much more important roles than does Rice. Any testimony of hers could implicate them, if she chose, but is likely to exonerate her.

That is, in fact, part of the “problem with Condi”. There was speculation earlier this year that her position was vulnerable, because she was not central to the Iraq campaign. Her expertise is in Russia, not a priority at the moment. It is not in war, or the War on Terror. She has had more of a role in communicating policy than in forming it.

On the other side, she is a personal friend of Bush, more than almost any other except perhaps Cheney. She has made many visits to his Texas ranch. As a black woman, she is electorally valuable to him.

So it would be wrong to see her as the Administration’s scapegoat in the Clarke row. Very likely, as it happens, her testimony will help her own position. The row of the past two weeks will look more damaging than the evidence itself.

But there is still room for surprises; for all her fluent loyalty, she may find it hard to navigate hours of detailed questions without contributing controversial new details of the decision to go to war in Iraq.

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