Good one:

From the (NYTimes) Confirmation Hearing of Condoleeza Rice transcript: (emp add)

U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER (D-CA): ... As the nominee for secretary of state, you must answer to the American people and you are doing that now through this confirmation process. And I continue to stand in awe of our founders, who understood that ultimately those of us in the highest positions of our government must be held accountable to the people we serve. So I want to show you some statements that you made regarding the nuclear threat and the ability of Saddam to attack us. Now, on July 30th, 2003, you were asked by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill, if you continue to stand by the claims you made about Saddam's nuclear program in the days and months leading up to the war. In what appears to be an effort to downplay the nuclear weapons scare tactics you used before the war, your answer was, and I quote: It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year. So that's what you said to the American people on television: Nobody ever said it was going to be the next year.

Well, that wasn't true. Because nine months before you said this to the American people, what had George Bush said? President Bush at his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center: If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little longer than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. So the president tells the people there could be a weapon. Nine months later, you said no one ever said he could have a weapon in a year, when, in fact, the president said it.

And here's the real kicker: On October 10th, '04, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, three months ago, you were asked about CIA Director Tenet's remark that prior to the war he had, quote, made it clear to the White House that he thought the nuclear weapons program was much weaker than the program to develop other WMDs. Your response was this: The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear programs; that left unchecked he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year. So here you are, first contradicting the president and then contradicting yourself. So it's hard to even ask you a question about this, because you are on the record basically taking two sides of an issue. And this does not serve the American people. ...

[...]

U.S. SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR (R-IN, CHAIRMAN): Yes. Let me just say that I appreciate the importance of Senator Boxer's statement, that's why we allowed the statement to continue for several more minutes (inaudible) time.

[...]

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NOMINATED TO BE SECRETARY OF STATE: RICE: Senator, I am more than aware of the stakes that we face in Iraq, and I was more than aware of the stakes of going to war in Iraq. I mourn the dead and honor their service. Because we have asked American men and women in uniform to do the hardest thing, which is to go and defend freedom and to give others an opportunity to build a free society which will make us safer. Senator, I have to say that I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It is not my nature. It is not my character. And I would hope that we can have this conversation and discuss what happened before and what went on before and what I said, without impugning my credibility or my integrity. The fact is that we did face a very difficult intelligence challenge in trying to understand what Saddam Hussein had in terms of weapons of mass destruction. ...

Then this: (emp add)

RICE: Senator Boxer, we went to war, not because of aluminum tubes. We went to war because this was the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a man against whom we had gone to war before, who threatened his neighbors, who threatened our interests, who was one of the world's most brutal dictators and it was high time to get rid of him.

UPDATE: Two things. First, we read the transcript and thought we found the Boxer/Rice exchange worthy of bringing to our reader's attention. But it turns out that it was one of the highlights of news reports later that evening. So our 'scoop' wasn't. Also, even though we found an instance (cited above) where Rice said the reason for going to war was WMD, apparently at other times in her testimony she said something to the effect that there were reasons other than WMD which justified going to war. So perhaps Rice was trying to have her cake and eat it too.

As to the Rice testimony, we reccomend a Tom Oliphant cartoon on the subject.

posted by Quiddity at 1/18/2005 05:45:00 PM