When I heard that Condoleezza Rice was about to join the Board of the International Rescue Committee, I almost plotzed. Here's a letter I just wrote to the IRC:
Dear International Rescue Committee:
About a week and a half ago, on the Nicole Sandler show, I heard an interview with Ms. Janet Harris, Vice President for Development of the International Rescue Committee. She described how you were formed about 75 years ago at the suggestion of Albert Einstein to aid Jewish refugees fleeing Europe. She went on to say that you now work in 40 different countries, and that one of your biggest efforts was assisting refugees from the "Iraq crisis," both within Iraq as well as hundreds of thousands who have fled across the Jordan and Syrian borders. I believe she also said you were the largest refugee agency working with the United Nations.
I applaud you for your tireless work over the years. However, I was surprised -- more accurately, shocked -- to hear that soon to join your Board is former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
We all have heard of the "revolving door" between industry and government employment. All too often officials charged with regulating a particular industry leave government service and go to work for the industry they fomerly regulated. Or officials who created a market for a certain product, e.g., weapons, leave the government for lucrative jobs in companies which benefited considerably from those officials' actions while in public service.
But inviting Condoleezza Rice to serve on your Board takes this "revolving door" to another level. Presumably, your organization exists to solve the problem of refugees. And here you are honoring with a Board position someone who played a major part in an Administration that created a big chunk of the problem you are trying to solve. As Ms. Harris said, one of your biggest efforts is working with refugees from Iraq.
I surely hope you are not honoring Ms. Rice with this position because she has helped the IRC stay in business. That would be a horror beyond the horrors with which you no doubt deal on a daily basis.
You may ask, "Did Ms. Rice contribute significantly to the Iraqi refugees?" There is no doubt that she did. Leading up to the invasion of Iraq, she was a major spokesperson in the attempt to create an atmosphere of fear and hatred, and an atmosphere based on spin and false statements at that. In short, she helped lie us into this war.
As a member of the elite White House Iraq Group, Ms. Rice was at the center of the spin/lies that led up to our invasion of Iraq. She stirred up the greatest of unfounded fears saying, "We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Now, hundreds of thousands of deaths later, she doesn’t want to take responsibility for her role. Ms. Rice was instrumental in ginning up support for the war with multiple misstatements, exaggerations and lies.
In a Jan. 23, 2003, New York Times op-ed, Ms. Rice wrote of "Iraq’s efforts to get uranium from abroad," when she had multiple reports that the story was not true. She also attempted to prohibit Department of State employees from appearing before staff of a Congressional committee investigating this false allegation. And knowing full well the British report had been based on forged documents, she approved the infamous 16 words in President George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech about the Niger-uranium connection crucial to our invasion of Iraq.
On multiple occasions, Ms. Rice repeated the Bush Administration claims of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. She also testified to the "established connection between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein," knowing full well there was none. Late last year, Representative Wexler said to her at a House Committee hearing where she was testifying, "A recently released study by the non-partisan Center for Public Intregrity revealed that you, along with President Bush and top Administration officials, made a total of 935 false public statements in an orchestrated attempt to take this nation to war....This study has found that you, Madame Secretary, made 56 false statements to the American people, where you repeatedly pump[ed] up the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and exaggerate[d] the so-called 'relationship' between Iraq and al Qaeda."
And I am not even going to elaborate on her complicity in torture. Simply said, the evidence is overwhelming that 1) she discussed torture tactics in the "Principals' Meetings," 2) she was one of the first Bush Administration officials to authorize torture, and 3) she still refuses to admit that our government ever tortured anyone (contradicting numerous human rights organizations, General Counsel to the armed services, FBI interrogators, and the convening authority of the Military Commission tribunals).
If Ms. Rice is going to join your Board as an act of admitting her criminal complicity in creating the problem you are trying to solve, I commend the IRC. I sincerely hope that you encourage her to make a public statement to that effect. Her standing and the standing of the United States would soar around the world if that were to happen. I dare say that even a surge of support for the IRC would likely result.
But if Ms. Rice is standing by her previous positions and actions, your elevating her to this position of honor puzzles me, troubles me, and angers me greatly.
Sincerely,
Chuck Turchick
Minneapolis, Minnesota