All of the administration's big guns were out in force over the weekend. It was my unfortunate experience to stumble over Condoleeza Rice on Face the Nation and once engaged being unable to change the channel. Overall, her performance might still be perceived as convincing by the thirty-five per cent of the nation who still believe her to have any credibility. In fact, the Department of State actually posted her comments on its official website. But any serious analysis on a sentence by sentence basis should indicate that the administration would be better served by erasing her laughably dishonest and inaccurate rhetoric.
crossposted at:
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No member of the Bush administration has been given more of a pass than Condoleeza Rice. Her glib dismissal of pre-war intelligence and mindless denial involving Iraq has gone virtually unchallenged in the mainstream media. Her appearances usually resemble a filibuster in which she responds to any question with predictable talking points that are offered regardless of relevance. This has gone on for years. Perhaps because of the incompetence exhibited during the recent Lebanese conflict and the undeniable deterioration in Iraq, the press has recently gotten a bit bolder.
Even Bob Schieffer, not exactly a hard nosed critic of the administration, started off with a pointed question basically asking if we invaded Iraq because of WMD's that didn't exist and Al-Qaeda had no connection to Iraq, (based on Friday's Senate Intelligence Committee Report) wasn't the invasion a "colossal" mistake?
Secretary Rice: "Well, first of all, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is very important and better for the world."
This is the third generation of the explanations given for the Iraq invasion. The WMD argument was rendered false within weeks of the invasion. The "spreading democracy" concept rapidly replaced this as a justification and an attempt to portray the Bush administration as having an overall strategy that was very complex and weighty. After years of chaos and more combat deaths and countless billions, this explanation is not very convincing, either. Hence the Rovian bumper sticker concept that "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein." Perfect for its simplicity, it's a tough rationale to combat. But obviously it has a limited shelf life because "better for the world" is a very amorphous, simplistic concept that portrays George W. Bush as a kind of Mr. Rogers policing an international Neighborhood. Taxpayers and military families will not indefinitely sit tight for something that is merely "better for the world".
Condi then reiterated a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Despite Friday's Roberts committee report, she states to believe otherwise is "simply not the case." She seems to have adopted the Cheneyesque tactic of stating that something is a fact merely because she says it is.
Then this astounding reach which underlines the desperate rhetoric that Secretary Rice routinely employs:
"What did we know? We know that Iraq was a state sponsor of terror, had been -- of terrorism, had in fact been listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. We know that Zarqawi ordered the killing of an American diplomat from Iraq, that he ran a poisons network in Iraq; that the Abu Nidal organization, the terrorist organization, had operated out of Iraq. So there were clearly links between terrorism and Iraq."
Yup, Iraq had been listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. Currently, North Korea is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. They've also test fired a missile system with clearly hostile intent. But the Bush administration has maintained that North Korea will be dealt with diplomatically and not be subject to an American invasion. Libya was also a state sponsor of terrorism including an incident which killed hundreds of Americans, yet the Bush administration has rewarded Libya with diplomatic status, not an invasion.
Yes, an American diplomat was killed in Jordan in October of 2002. Condi contradicts the conclusions of the CIA who have maintained as long ago as 2004 that Saddam and Zarqawi had no connection. A poisons network in Iraq? Secretary Rice offers no specifics and certainly no proof of the type of operation that seems crafted by the likes of Ian Fleming, again employing the "it's true because I say it's true" technique.
Abu Nidal? Are you kidding? He left Iraq in 1981. He orchestrated most of his activities with the help and cooperation of Libya and Qaddafi, residing in that country until 1999. He fled to Iraq, having not participated in any known terrorist operations in over a decade. Condi is cynical enough to realize that the average American is probably only dimly aware of who Abu Nidal is or was. Any mention of Abu Nidal as a potential justification for an invasion of Iraq is absurd on its face and a boldfaced lie.
Condi then gets the "our planes being shot at in the no-fly zones" bullet point into the discussion, again omitting that for a full year the US Air Force was operating in a de facto pre invasion stance that both entities understood. True, Saddam had violated the "no-fly' zone agreement imposed on him by the UN for many years, but would that justify or even explain an invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation?
Schieffer follows up with a question asserting that Saddam wasn't really a threat to anybody and had been contained.
Secretary Rice: "Well, perhaps people can disagree. But I do not consider a Saddam Hussein who was still firing at our aircraft, who was still threatening his neighbors, who had caused 300,000 deaths in his own country, having used weapons of mass destruction, who was breaking the embargo, the so-called Oil-for-Food program that had turned into an enormous scandal where the people of Iraq were being hurt but certainly not Saddam's regime, I don't consider that contained."
Gotta get in those weapons of mass destruction and the 300,000! Please cue the footage of WMD bearing special envoy Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam six months before this event to place Condi's concern in the appropriate historical perspective. That Oil-for-Food program, another great talking point justifying invasion. Condi omits criticism of the corporate entities that were assisting Saddam in this monstrously huge international scandal, including the two American oil companies still functioning unscathed as far as I can tell.
Then Schieffer gets down to the unthinkable and what couldn't possibly have been anticipated by Spin Control at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He runs a clip of Jay Rockefeller maintaining that the world might be a better place if Saddam were still in power and that the US wouldn't be depleting its resources in the war on terror.
Clearly, Condi hasn't had time to develop standard bullet points for this one because she merely repeats the "no-fly zone-embargo violation-threatening his neighbors" spew and tosses in the "million deaths in the Iran-Iraq war" cake icing. Bob Schieffer does not ask Condi which American administration provided Saddam with WMD's to use in this war, which administration fully encouraged him to attack Iran in this war and which American administration fully financed and sold weaponry to Saddam to continue this war.
Condi adds: "because what we learned with September 11 is not to let threats fester until they come back to haunt us."
Oh, like in Saudi Arabia which provided hundreds of millions of dollars from every level of Saudi society to fund Al-Qaeda? Like in Afghanistan which seems to be festering along pretty well these days? Or Korea? They seem way beyond festering at this point. And God forbid anyone even anticipates a situation like Somalia, which seems well on its way to becoming the next Club Med for any extremist group which would attempt to put down roots in beautiful downtown Mogadishu.
Condi then refers to the difficult going in Iraq and the "Iraqi people struggling to build a stable democracy on the ruins of an old tyrannical dictatorship..." I so feel for the Iraqi people including the hundreds of thousands of folks who recently marched through Baghdad screaming for "Death to America!" Every American taxpayer should be delighted over this wonderful struggle for a new government, especially those lazy slackers sitting in the rubble of New Orleans (or Houston).
Schieffer follows up with the supposition that Iraq is now a terrorist haven that previously didn't exist. Like something out of Westworld, Condi merely reiterates verbatim what she said only seconds before:
"Well, Saddam Hussein -- the State Department and the United States Government had said that Iraq was a state sponsor of terror going all the way back to the 1990s. So he was a state sponsor of terror. He had terrorists operating in his country, including Zarqawi, who had a poisons network in the country. And I would just remind that at the time the Director of Central Intelligence talked about these contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And in fact the 9/11 Commission talked about contacts."
And, by the way, it's all true because I say it's true.
Schieffer then gets on with another relatively hostile issue: the operation of secret CIA prisons and the decision to move prisoners from them to Guantanimo. He is uncharacteristically dogged in trying to get Condi to admit her knowledge of these prisons and establish when she became aware of them.
Their exchange leads to this gem:
Secretary Rice: "After September 11th, it was very clear that the big missing link in our abilities to fight the kind of attack that took place on September 11th was information."
That's not really true. Attorney General Ashcroft had plenty of information which is why he stopped flying commercial in July of 2001. The FBI had plenty of information but field agents were told to not bother with terrorism but focus on much more important issues like pornography. George W. Bush had plenty of information but decided to focus instead on his vacation. No, lack of information was not the root cause of 9/11.
The interview ended with Secretary Rice characterizing the behavior of the administration and its legally tenuous trampling of civil liberties and international law as the "give and take" that routinely goes on in a democracy and closed by saying that the "President is cooperating with Congress to do that." Which President did she mean?
I offer this possibly tedious breakdown if only to demonstrate that when you pull apart the shallow rationale that Condoleeza Rice routinely offers on this kind of venue the component parts are either lies, distortions or unsubstantiated generalities. While the tone of this interview remained typically civil at least Schieffer offered some degree of backbone and even occasionally interrupted the filibuster. Maybe one of these days somebody will grow a complete spine and blow this dishonest incompetent completely out of the water.