Rice Bows Out. California Wins.

At first, Condoleezza Rice appears humble.  Amid considerable criticism of Rutgers University's decision to give a platform to one of the architects of Gulf War II, Ms. Condoleezza graciously decided not to give the commencement speech in spring 2014 at New Jersey's state university. Now according to Politico 

It is a testament to the dormant state of California’s once mighty Republican dynasty that the only GOP candidate either party gives a shot at capturing Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat upon her retirement next year is the one who is resolutely refusing to run: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Last week, Rice topped a statewide Field Poll of 18 potential candidates, drawing the support of 49 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent for state Attorney General Kamala Harris, the only declared Democratic candidate so far. That sparked a fresh flurry of speculation about a Rice candidacy — and the latest emphatic denial from her chief of staff that she has any interest in the race.

Evidently, unless her arm is twisted, the woman affectionately called "Condi" (isn't that sweet!) will not be running for a US Senate seat from California.

Wise decision, that, not to relinquish what little credibility is still attached to the former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.  On January 10, 2003 Secretary Rice gravely warned "there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." She played a leading role in trying, largely successfully, to convince voters of the likelihood that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. But it's not only that Rice was grotesquely wrong about Saddam Hussein's intentions. In March, 2013 the newspaper of the University of Texas-Austin reported

Two days before the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, a conflict that resulted in the deaths of 4,488 U.S. soldiers and thousands of civilians, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed her support for the war and the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein.

“I would have overthrown Saddam Hussein again,” Rice said to a packed house at the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on Monday.

No, Ms. Rice, you did not overthrow Saddam Hussein- the American military overthrew him, Then you and the other propagandists, and architects, of an arguably unprecedented American foreign policy fiasco thoroughly botched the aftermath (Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson with Lawrence O'Donnell in 2013, video below),

The adventure itself was based on false pretenses, and the reconstruction of Iraq suffered because of the rush to war and the blithering incompetence of the Administration, Condoleezza Rice included.

ISIL probably never would have arisen without the Bush's Administration invasion of Iraq. But even before we were alerted to this newest threat in the Middle East, at the time of the Rutgers commencement controversy, Juan Cole summarized 

As for Iraq, she left it a broken country, with hundreds of thousands dead, 2 million displaced abroad, 4 million displaced internally, likely 400,000 badly wounded, where car bombings and sniping still take some 800 lives a month and where radical Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates have established themselves and Iran-linked radical Shiite militias have free play. She hinted around at an al-Qaeda link to Iraq before she invaded it, but there was none. She brought al-Qaeda to Iraq and it has killed far more Iraqis than the 3000 Americans whose lives it took on September 11. Iraq never had anything at all to do with al-Qaeda, but she made it a scapegoat so as to get at its petroleum resources.

Yet, Ms. Rice still claims the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was strategically beneficial to the United States,  She is either delusional, lying, or less aware of foreign policy than your typical dogcatcher, who fulfills one of a many jobs- including US Senator- Condoleezza Rice shouldn't be trusted to perform.

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Condoleezza Rice Is A 23-Year-Old White Male

Writing in Politico magazine (which I praised, apparently prematurely, yesterday), the National Review's Rich Lowry, perhaps still seeing starbursts, is exorcised because Condoleezza "Rice’s speaking gigs on college campuses and her ascension to the board of the Internet company Dropbox have sparked protests calling for her to be disinvited, cashiered and generally isolated and shamed."  Lowry argues that some students and faculty at the University of Minnesota, where she was invited to give a lecture, and at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where she has been invited to give the commencement speech, have been mean to her.

You will remember "Condi," as the mainstream media has affectionately called her for years, as a supporter of the (nationally and internationally) illegal torture regimen carried out by the federal government during the GW Bush administration.   She also was a co-conspirator in ginning up support for the Iraq war, one of convenience conducted, as Rachel Maddow explained in March (partial video of program below), to provide access to Iraqi oil fields to national oil companies.

Thanks to author Ron Suskind, we know that at the first national security meeting held by Bush 43, Secretary of Treasury (not former NY Yankee outfielder) Paul O'Neill and Secretary of State Colin Powell were startled when the President asked Ms. Rice "Well, what do you think the big issue in the region is, Condi?", to which she responded "I think Iraq is the big issue, the destabilizing force and that's going to be our focus."

Soon thereafter, President Bush assigned Vice President Cheney to lead a secret task force, which met privately with energy industry lobbyists and executives of oil companies.   He ordered the National Security Council- headed by "Condi"- to coordinate national security and energy policy with Cheney's task group. Eventually, the task force began to divvy up oil fields among, as Suskind put it, "foreign suitors along with American suitors meaning major oil firms and oil contractors like Halliburton."  As Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) once said, "mistakes were made."  But Rice was not blissfully unaware.

Though her agency was intimately involved with establishment of the economic rationale for going to war against a sovereign nation, National Security Adviser Rice that summer would warn "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."   Four years later, Rice still was making things up, then claiming "There were ties going on between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime," though she later denied ever saying it.

The same foreign policy genius who now criticizes President Obama over Putin policy would at one time summarize her post-Iraq invasion advice as "Punish France, ignore Germany, forgive Russia.”  A good way to energize NATO.

Lowry complains because "The Minnesota professors say that it is 'in the spirit of free expression' that they ask for the reversal of Rice’s invitation. Because nothing says free expression like shutting down someone’s lecture."  To his enduring credit, Lowry has invented a constitutional guarantee: the right to give a speech at a public university.  Perhaps next spring, you too can invoke that right by demanding that your state's public university allow you to speak, for a fee.

Nearing the conclusion of his piece, Lowry contends

If the typical rules applied, the fierce opposition to Rice would be attributed to racism, sexism and any other handy -ism. The stunt by the University of Minnesota Students for a Democratic Society of referring her to the campus police as “dangerous” and including a physical description of her as a “59-year-old African American woman” would prompt a rant by Touré on MSNBC about the dehumanization of a woman of color and a high-flying essay by Jamelle Bouie on The Daily Beast about the hidden racist tropes embedded in japery at the expense of former secretaries of state.

Oh, yes, because the physical description of an individual must exclude age, race, and gender. Perhaps Condi could have been described as a 23-year-old white male, notwithstanding reaction by conservatives who would ridicule liberals as loathe to admit the object of their criticism is young, female, or black. Some conservatives, who accuse liberals of throwing around the charge of "racism," are themselves fond of the tactic.  In the case of Rich Lowry, he has to find something.









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She Just Won't Go Away

In a column in the neo-conservative opinion page of The Washington Post, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice grudgingly concedes

Diplomatic isolation, asset freezes and travel bans against oligarchs are appropriate. The announcement of air defense exercises with the Baltic states and the movement of a U.S. destroyer to the Black Sea bolster our allies, as does economic help for Ukraine’s embattled leaders, who must put aside their internal divisions and govern their country.

From there, she goes on to be unceasingly critical, claiming even

But even those modest steps did not hold. Despite Russia’s continued occupation ofAbkhazia and South Ossetia, the diplomatic isolation waned and then the Obama administration’s “reset” led to an abrupt revision of plans to deploy missile defense components in the Czech Republic and Poland. Talk of Ukraine and Georgia’s future in NATO ceased. Moscow cheered.

I will be making an appointment with an audiologist; you should, too, if you did not hear "Moscow cheer."  In 2008, Rice's boss, President George W. Bush, did in fact advocate admitting Ukraine and Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as have many experts. It has been opposed by Germany and France, though they're evidently "old Europe."

It takes a special kind of arrogance for a Bush 43 foreign policy adviser to charge, in 2014, "Most important, the United States must restore its standing in the international community, which has been eroded by too many extended hands of friendship to our adversaries, sometimes at the expense of our friends." It has not been quite seven years since Brent W. Scowcroft, national security adviser for President George H.W. Bush, told the National Journal

This Bush administration assumed that power is always resented anyway, so they would just use it unilaterally and people would forgive the United States as long as we succeeded. That just runs contrary to human nature...

That the international community no longer trusts our motives is a new phenomenon, and I see it as one of many warning signs of a possible lasting realignment of global power...

This is the Bush administration Rice so loyally served and still refuses to question.  And it was while serving as Secretary of State for Bush 43 that the woman affectionately known as "Condi" took to the CNN airwaves (video of statement here; CNN article by Wolf Blitzer here) to manipulate public opinion with "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."





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Rice's primary argument for the invasion of Iraq, before and after one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in American history, has been the "threat" posed by Saddam Hussein.     But maybe from the standpoint of the Administration it was not a blunder.  We pick up Rachel Maddow's groundbreaking report from late 2002/early 2003:

Back in the U.S., the Bush administration is also denying a "Wall Street Journal" report that administration officials held meetings about the war with oil industry executives. But British documents now reveal that in the fall of 2002, ahead of the invasion, BP`s Middle East director held a week of meetings with officials from both the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon, including with Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld`s second in command.

At the Pentagon with just two months until the invasion, attention turns to who will run Iraq in the immediate days and weeks after the fall of Saddam. Retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, a man with deep experience in the region, gets the call from Donald Rumsfeld.

LT. GEN. JAY GARNER, U.S. ARMY (RET): He said, we need right now is somebody to come in, put a staff together, operationalize the plans we put together. You know, you think if you`re going to put that together you`d have office space and desk and computers and telephones and all that. I didn`t even have a chair.

MADDOW: That lack of planning when it comes to basic post-Saddam governance stands in stark contrast to the level of planning that`s already well under way for Iraq`s oil sector.

(then-Defense Department adviser Gary) VOGLER: There was a very strong sense of urgency. It was 12, 15- hour days from what I remember. They knew where every pipeline, where every refinery, gas plant, oil field, gas oil separation plant was.People said we didn`t plan very well for Iraq. I would take exception to that when it came to the oil sector.

(U.S. Representative Henry) WAXMAN: We are spending more time thinking about how to deal with the oil fields in Iraq than we were about our own troops when we went to war in Iraq.

BUSH: All Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people.

MADDOW: As the invasion of Iraq gets under way, months` worth of detailed planning aimed at securing Iraq`s oil resources gets put into action.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade who are guarding key facilities in the oil fields right now. Because we know we want to get the oil flowing as soon as possible.
GARNER: I remember several times the statement that we want to make sure that we don`t give an optic that makes the American people we`re going in there for oil -- we`re not doing that. I mean, that was -- I knew that from day one.

MADDOW: Despite that stated goal, as the U.S. military arrives in Baghdad, with heavy looting under way, Marines protect Iraq`s oil ministry, to the exclusion of other critical Iraqi government buildings and institutions.

(chief of staff to Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence) WILKERSON: We let the museums go. We let the art and culture go. We let the telephones go elsewhere. We let the administrative office go, ministry of the interior, ministry of justice. We let all those things go and we protected the oil ministry.

MADDOW: The perception that the U.S. has launched a war for oil is further stoked when the U.S. Army`s 101st Airborne Division crosses the border into Iraq and establishes two refueling stations in the Iraqi desert. The Army names the two desert outposts after Exxon and Shell, unbeknownst to the companies, themselves.

Maddow, with the help of her staff, demonstrated that the USA government invaded Iraq to increase the world supply of oil. "Condi" Rice is still walking around a free person, still maintaining the war was fought because of some threat from Saddam Hussein. She gets to propagandize freely, apparently because there is a constitutional right to editorialize in The Washington Post. And she is welcomed to deliver a paid commencement speech at a major university, whose president (Chris Christie's guy) is once again demonstrating his complete lack of integrity.

It's a great country, but one in which there are over 4,000 dead soldiers in part because of "Condi" Rice.


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Enough Already

Do we really have to hear from her again?

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under Bush 43, has four books available for purchase from the Amazon website.  None of the books is specifically about the Middle East and the Persian Gulf and, therefore, it might be harsh to conclude that she has written four books too many.  But this is Condoleezza Rice, and we have heard from her too much already.

"The main reason we went into Iraq," President Bush eventually would admit, "is we thought the had weapons of mass destruction. Turned out he didn't..."  Despite considerable evidence the Administration knew before the invasion that Saddaam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice eagerly frightened the American people in September 2002 by warning "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But like a bad habit, "Condi" is back, or soon will be.   In March, exactly ten years after the USA invaded Iraq, Rice announced

She’s going to write a book. To be published by Henry Holt, it’s being billed as “an examination of democracy at home and abroad.

“My travels both at home and abroad have underscored the promise and the challenges of democracy,” Rice said in a news release issued by Henry Holt. “The task of building it is never done.  I look forward to further exploring these ideals and working with Holt to convey those messages.”

According to Henry Holt, the book will discuss “the never-ending process of building democracy as citizens -- and their governments -- strive to attain and secure the ideals of self-rule.”

After 4,000 American lives- and probably over a hundred thousand civilian deaths- were lost in war launched by the President still lauded by Condoleezza Rice, the situation in Iraq appears even worse than before Saddaam Hussein was deposed.

That applies especially, though not exclusively, to women.   In a special to CNN, Zainab Salbi, who is the founder of Women for Women International and was raised in Baghdad, writes

...women are no longer guaranteed equal treatment under one law in terms of marriage, divorce, inheritance and custody. That law, the Family Statutes Law, has been replaced one giving religious and tribal leaders the power to regulate family affairs in the areas they rule in accordance with their interpretation of religious laws.

This not only is making women more vulnerable, it is giving women from various sects (Sunni or Shia) or religion (Muslim or Christian) different legal treatments on the same issues.

Economically, women have gone from being visibly active in the Iraqi work force in the 1980s -- particularly in the farming, marketing and professional services sectors -- to being nearly non-existent in 2013.

The women who could afford it withdrew from the public space due the violence dominating the streets. 10 years ago Iraq produced much of its own food and had a productive industrial sector -- but now Iraq imports practically all of its food, and farmers and factory workers simply found themselves out of a job as industry ground to a halt. And while both women and men suffered as a result, the impact on women was greater due to their limited mobility in the face of poor security.

Iraq suffocates in cloak of sorrow.   Violence against women -- and the lack of legal protection for women -- is also on the rise. Women's rights groups blame the increase in violence on the social and economic pressure that families face, the lack of public and political will to stop it, and the increase religious conservatism that often justifies the violence.

The saddest part of the story is the lost memory of what Iraqi women once were. I grew up in Baghdad with a working mother who drove herself to the office and always told me that I could anything I wanted with my life. My mother's friends were factory managers, artists, principals and doctors.

It has been just over 20 years since I left Iraq. Today, female college students ask me if it is true that the streets of Baghdad were once full of women driving, that women could walk around in public at all times of the day without worry, that university campuses were once filled with women who did not wearing headscarves.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ultimatealy was given the boot by President George W. Bush.    Dick Cheney has been lambasted and berated for his performance as vice-president, in no small measure because of his effort at promoting the war.  And Mr.  Bush himself has wisely refrained from commenting about his successor's handling of foreign affairs, a reticence for which he ought to be lauded.

But Condoleezza Rice has escaped all but the slightest criticism for her role in a major foreign policy blunder. She is asked  for her opinions on international affairs (as on the Today show, from earlier this year; video below). Now she is planning a book.  She would do the nation a favor by just going away.

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Weapons Of Mass Disinformation


"I’d come to realize that all our troubles sprang from our failures to use plain, clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak—and to act—quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track."

- Tarrou in Albert Camus' The Plague, 1947



President Obama has sent to Congress the draft of a resolution authorizing military force against Syria.  The seventh of its whereas(es) argues "The objective of the United States' use of military force in connection with this authorization should be to deter, disrupt, prevent, and degrade the potential for, future uses of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction."  

The President

is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines is to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria in order to-

(1) prevent or deter the use or proliferation (Including the transfer to terrorist groups or oehr state or non-state actors) with, to or from Syria, of any weapons of mass destruction, including chemical or biological weapons or components of or materials used in such weapons; or

(2) protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.

Here we go again.  Three days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003, President Bush gave a speech from the White House in which he claimed

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

Characteristically bellicose, he warned

It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction...

Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."

In May, 2003 President Bush claimed "we found the weapons of mass destruction."  In July, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer contended "I think the burden is on those people who think he (i.e., Hussein) didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."

Visions of mushroom clouds were to be imagined. September, 2002 had brought the loathsome implication by Bush's loathsome National Security Adviser that the invasion would prevent "a mushroom cloud" unleashed by Saddam Hussein.  Usually, however, the Administration argued that the Iraqi tyrant possessed chemical and/or biological weapons.

That did not stop Bush and his supporters from frequently referring to Baghdad as wielding "weapons of mass destruction" or, in the more trendy terminology, "WMD."  And now Damascus- which no one has suggested is even planning to develop nuclear weapons-  is purported to have "weapons of mass destruction." The Administration asks to be authorized to use the armed forces to respond to the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of "mass destruction because the "regime" (an interesting and significant substitute for "Bashir Assad") "has already used weapons of mass destruction..."

No, it has not.  Very likely, the "regime" already has used chemical weapons, though it is less certain recent use was authorized by Assad or the upper echelons of his military.Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction.  In this instance, the WMD dodge is intended to minimize the horrific use of conventional weapons by the Assad regime, which has been largely condoned by the Obama Administration.  It also diverts attention from the unpleasant reality that only one nation in world history ever has used nuclear weapons.

But in a larger and more critical sense, the conflation of chemical and/or biological weapons with "weapons of mass destruction" serves to panic the intended audience, to convey the false impression that human life is being exterminated on an extraordinary, perhaps even unprecedented, scale.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic in October, 2002 explained

The phrase "weapons of mass destruction," then, obscures more than it clarifies. It lumps together a category of truly terrible weapons (atomic bombs) with two other categories that are either less dangerous than conventional weapons (chemical arms) or largely an unknown quantity (biological agents). This conflation, moreover, muddies the American rationale for military action against Iraq. That rationale should be to prevent Saddam from acquiring atomic weapons. This alone is reason to go to war. 

Though chemical weapons are associated with gruesome mortality, in actual use they have caused horrible choking and blisters--see the poetry of Wilfred Owen, the World War I British soldier whose famed work concluding "The old Lie: Dulce de decorum est/Pro patri mori" concerns troops being gassed--but have proven less deadly than bombs or bullets. Fewer than 1 percent of battle deaths during World War I, the only war in which chemical arms were extensively employed, were caused by gas. As John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, and his son Karl, a RAND Corporation analyst, have written, "In the First World War, only some two to three percent of those gassed on the Western front died while, by contrast, wounds caused by traditional weapons were some 10 to 12 times more likely to prove fatal." American fatalities followed exactly this ratio: 2 percent of those gassed during the war died, compared with 24 percent of those struck by bullets, artillery shells, or shrapnel. 

Moreover, during World War I the Germans and British expended one ton of gas on average to achieve a single fatality on the opposite side. Chemical weapons were used in huge amounts to small effect because they are hard to deliver and hard to control. They waft on the wind, missing their targets and attenuating to the point that they cease to be lethal. Sunlight breaks down many chemical agents. And artillery shells don't carry chemicals well, because impact tends to immolate the chemical. Finally, in close combat, chemical weapons are as likely to blow back onto your position as to remain behind enemy lines.

The Syrian regime's weapon of choice, according to Secretary of State Kerry, is sarin gas.   Easterbrook continued

Though more frightening than the mustard gas of the Great War, modern chemical arms such as sarin also fare poorly in pound-for-pound comparison. Writing a decade ago for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in an article presciently titled "The Myth of Chemical Superweapons," Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson estimated it would require one ton of sarin delivered under perfect conditions to inflict substantial casualties on unprotected civilians. And perfect conditions for gas--no wind, no sun, a very low-flying plane that no one is shooting at--almost never happen. A terrorist crop duster trying to spray sarin over a city, for example, would have to fly at least several hundred feet above the ground to avoid hitting buildings, meaning most of the gas would waft away harmlessly. A 1993 study by the Office of Technology Assessment found that one ton of perfectly delivered sarin, used against unprotected civilians, could kill as many as 8,000 but that even light wind or sunlight would drop the death toll by 90 percent. Eight hundred dead would be horrible, surely, but not "mass destruction" compared with what conventional arms do all too readily. A single U.S. bomb dropped against one Iraqi bunker during the Gulf war, for example, killed 314 civilians.

Words matter, as very smart people who use them inaccurately understand.  If they did not, politicians and their allies would not obfuscate their words and would speak plainly with more clear-cut language. Whenever a policy-maker or his/her apologist invokes "WMD," he or she is trying to pick your pocket.  Whatever the merits of any resolution authorizing President Obama to employ military force against Syria, members of Congress would be exceedingly irresponsible to vote in favor of anything which conflates chemical weapons with "weapons of mass destruction."


                                                     HAPPY LABOR DAY

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And Now A Rice Has To Pay The Price?



They seem deadly earnest- but could John McCain and Lindsey Graham really be serious?   Or is this just some kind of joke?

On CBS' This Morning on Wednesday, the Arizona senator asserted "the American people deserve the truth" because the "consulate in Benghazi was turned into a death house and somebody has to be held responsible."   He pledged to block any nomination of U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to head the Department of State, accusing her of "not being very bright, because it was obvious that this was not a 'flash mob' and there was additional information by the time she went on every news show...in America."

Graham also addressed yesterday Rice's possible appointment, maintaining during a press conference

Somebody has got to start paying a price around this place.   I don't think she deserves to be promoted. There are a lot of qualified people in this country the president could pick, but I am dead-set on making sure we don't promote anybody that was an essential player in the Benghazi debacle.

Acceptance of blame.   Responsibility. Accountability.  Thank goodness some people are looking out for these virtues.

The pair, joined to the hip in foreign policy, are new to the game.    When in 2005 President Bush nominated National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State, McCain charged

Also, I thought that some of the remarks — and I’m not going to mention my colleagues’ names — some of the remarks aimed at her during the hearings challenged her integrity. We can disagree on policy and we disagree on a lot of things, but I think it is very clear that Condoleezza Rice is a person of integrity. And yes, I see this, some lingering bitterness over a very tough campaign. I hope it dissipates soon.

When Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton identified Ms. Rice as a "liar," Graham responded "Yes, that's even more unfair. Because it was all in terms of weapons of mass destruction and misleading us about the war and what was in Iraq. Well, every intelligence agency in the world was misled. And to connect those two to say that she's a liar is very unfair, over the line."

Oh, how easily they forget- or at least pretend to.      In his State of the Union address in January, 2003, President Bush- as part of the ongoing effort to gin up support for the attack on Iraq- infamously claimed "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."   With the White House likely aware that the British intelligence was inaccurate, Bush's remark was probably a lie. Moreover  

Then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on July 11, "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President .This was a mistake." On July 22, Deputy National Security Advisor Steven Hadley said that he deleted a reference to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa from President Bush's October 7, 2002 Cincinnati speech based on a telephone call from DCI Tenet and two CIA memos sent to himself-one of which was also sent to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley said that this second memo detailed some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence . . . based on what we now know, we had opportunities here to avoid this problem. We didn't take them . . . having been taken out of Cincinnati, it should have been taken out of the State of the Union.

(Sarcasm Alert) Ever forthright, Rice in April of 2007 "rejected, on grounds of executive privilege, a House subpoena regarding the prewar claim that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger."

In her post-conservative but pre-Huffington Post Days, Arianna Huffington noted on Salon

Condoleezza Rice has been the worst offender. Now that we know that Tenet personally warned Rice’s deputy, Steve Hadley, not to use the yellowcake claim back in October, and the role NSC staffers played in manipulating the State of the Union, Rice’s widely publicized claim that at the time of the State of the Union, “maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery” has been revealed for what it is: A bald-face lie.

And even now as the truth comes flooding out, Rice continues to play fast and loose with the facts — and stand by her man. “The statement that he made,” she said on Sunday, speaking of the president, “was indeed accurate. The British government did say that.”

Condoleezza was a liar and terrible foreign policy official in the Bush administration.  Susan Rice, fortunately, has a long way to go before living down to the record of the other Rice.




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Total Failure, Total Disgrace

Maybe we have been a little too harsh on former President George W. Bush.    Perhaps it wasn't only Mr. Bush who was grossly ineffective in his/her job prior to the Obama Administration, and played a key role in the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history.

Today, not coincidentally on September 11, a commentary appears in The New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald, a Vanity Fair editor and former reporter for The NYT.    Eichenwald says he read excerpts from the (not released) presidential daily briefs preceding the famous one of 8/6/11, as well as other recently declassified reports, and found

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Neoconservatives believed Saddam Hussein was more dangerous than Bin Laden, whom they argued merely was pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration. On September 8, 2002- a year after the terrorist strike and prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq- CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who maintained

We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon.  And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

To be fair to Rice, it was neoconservatives at the Defense Department who downplayed the threat of  bin Laden and played up the that from Saddam Hussen.   However, even after the terrorists struck on 9/11/01, the National Security Adviser, who had been lauded as the individual who taught Bush everything he knew about foreign policy, radically exaggerated the threat presented by the Iraqi dictator.   And it was partly on that premise that the Bush Administration began Gulf War II and minimized the menace posed by the leader of Al Qaeda- after largely ignoring those presidential daily briefs which warned of a possible attack by the evil Saudi national.

At the first GOP convention following his departure from office, George W. Bush is ignored at the party's national convention by all but his brother, who lamely protests "My brother, well, I love my brother" and claims- more bizarrely than ostentatiously- "during incredibly challenging times, he kept us safe."

Condoleezza Rice, however, was honored by being given a time-prime speaking slot during which she rhetorically asks "where does America stand?’ ... Indeed that is the question of the hour."   She answers "You see when the friends or foes alike don't know the answer to that question, unambiguously and clearly, the world is likely to be a more dangerous and chaotic place.

Noting that allies and enemies both have more respect for the U.S.A. under the current President than the one who was si disastrously served by Rice, Slate's Fred Kaplan responds "a top adviser in the most disastrous, reputation-crippling foreign-policy administration in decades—has no business lecturing anybody on this score."

Obviously, George W. Bush was a dreadful president in more ways, especially in the economic sphere, than in turning a figurative blind eye to Osama bin Laden.  But he has been, justifiably, pilloried; the individual who advised him first as a Director of the National Security Council and then as Secretary of State has been given a pass by her party, Augusta National Golf Club, and in the media reports following her speech at the Republican National Convention.   It is more than "chutzpah,"a term ably applied to Rice by Kaplan; it is virtual collective amnesia.




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The Preposterous Ms. Rice


If at first glance, the following statement appears stupid, remember: this individual has been, unofficially, given immunity from criticism by American media. Media Matters, with emphasis, has reported this exchange (video, below) between GOP TV's Brian Kilmeade and former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

BRIAN KILMEADE: The president in his speech — did a great job on his speech Sunday night — talked about coming together like we did on 9/11, he wants to see it happen again. Do you think a nice gesture would be to invite President Bush out on Thursday when he comes down to Ground Zero to greet the families?

RICE: Well, obviously, I'll leave that to the two of them and to the administration. But President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history. It was when this wounded nation watched their commander-in-chief stand on that rubble and say that they will hear us, we are going to avenge this. And it's not just avenging Osama bin Laden, as important as that is. But it's all the field generals that have been brought to justice over the last years, it is improving now the prospects for an Afghanistan that might actually be stable, it's a worldwide net against al Qaeda, it's victories of democracy in places like Iraq. And so, slowly but surely this is all coming into place and President Bush began that with that call to the nation — that clarion call to the nation at Ground Zero.

In December, 2001 the Administration (with the advice of General Tommy Franks) let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora into Pakistan as it outsourced the operation to local Afghan warlords. Four months later, President Bush declared of bin Laden, "We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run." In June, 2005 the C.I.A. closed "Alec Station," the unit dedicated to tracking down bin Laden. Three months later, Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes commented President Bush "just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources."

And now, the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee exclaims "We thank President (George W.) Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory." The House Majority Leader says "I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing Bin Laden to justice."

Republicans are not speaking with one voice and their remarks about the bin Laden kill have varied dramatically. But only one person has:

-with hearty machismo, paraphrased George W. Bush as declaring "we are going to avenge this" as the President was preparing to use the attack as an excuse to invade Iraq;

-refered to "victories of democracy in places like Iraq" (places like Iraq- were there several?), now the beneficiary of a regime friendly to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran); and

-claimed "President Bush began that with that call to the nation — that clarion call to the nation at Ground Zero." The eloquence of that "clarion call"- an effective use of the bully pulpit- led to two wars paid for with borrowed money as the President ran up a huge debt so he could bestow tax breaks on the wealthy. Bush neglected to use his "clarion call" to ask of Americans any sacrifice while he ran two wars- and the more important one, Afghanistan, on the cheap.

There always will be persons of teflon, such as General David Petraeus. But the mainstream media has a couple excuses there- Petraeus is a man in uniform (see Powell, Colin) and he did enjoy considerable success in Iran. But why no scrutiny of Condoleezza Rice? The mushroom cloud woman was a failure as a foreign policy figure in the Bush Administration. That didn't prevent her, however, from incomprehensibly claiming "President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history." Posting at DailyKos, Joan McCarter nails it:

Gettysburg, Yorktown, Pearl Harbor, 4 July 1776, 20 July 1969.... Bush shouting inanities. Yeah, that seems right.

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Wrong Again, "Condi"


It isn't only education. When she appeared (clip from Real Clear Politics) Thursday on Morning Joe to tout her new book, "Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me," Condoleezza Rice actually remarked

the tea party is a grass roots movement that is saying to people the conversation in Washington and the conversation out in the country isn't the same and washington you need to listen to the concerns of the people, you need to listen to our anxieties, you need to listen to the fact that we're worried about the size of government, and the debt we're passing on to our children. That's how I see the tea party.

The tea party is a grass roots movement. So saith the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

It is the message most of the mainstream media has chosen to push to the American electorate. But it's wrong.

Coordinating the tea party movement are two main groups: Dick Armey's Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity, the latter a front group started by David Koch and Richard Fink, a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, headed by Mr. Koch and brother Charles. According to the Guardian of the United Kingdom, this largest of privately-owned gas companies in the U.S.A. "has donated at least $5.9m to political candidates, some 83% of which was set aside for Republican candidates, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics (and) since 1989 has spent more than any other oil and gas company on finding favour in Congress, paying $50m to lobbying firms."

As an astroturf group, Americans for Prosperity is well experienced in hiding its consistently pro-corporate activities behind a veil of secrecy, even creating industry-friendly groups such as the ironically-named Patients United Now and Patients First, which loudly and aggressively protested the effort at reforming health care.

All along, the Kochs have denied funding Americans for Prosperity or having anything to do with the tea party movement, brother David even telling New York Magazine a few months ago "I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me."

Perhaps he never has been at one of the innumerable gatherings where mostly well-meaning, albeit naive, citizens have gathered to protest government and liberalism. Nor is it clear that he would have spoken directly to any tea party activist when he has the industry's (Koch and others) representatives do the talking for him. No need to get your own hands dirty when you're worth, oh, approximately $21 billion.

But a new documentary, "(Astro)Turf Wars: How Corporate America Faked a Grassroots Revolution" (video clip below), has blown the lid off that claim, with representatives of AFP explaining at a convention their success at organizing rallies on Tea Party Tax Day. (Whether the traditional media will pay any attention is another matter.)

Although the evidence is presented dramatically and conclusively, it ought not to have been a surprise to anyone, even to Condoleezza Rice. The Guardian notes that Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks put up their Facebook page and began organizing tea parties a mere one day after the rant on the board of the Chicago mercantile exchange by CNBC personality and former hedge fund manager Rick Santelli.

Is Condoleezza Rice aware of any of this? When she promoted fear among the American people to justify impending war against one of Al Qaeda's fiercest enemies (Sadaam Hussein) or made ignorant comments about American education, did she really understand the issues? The woman media figures like to call "Condi" may be nefarious or instead stunningly ignorant, but she has managed to portray herself as a credible, legitimate public official. And that is no mere feat.

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Condoleezza Rice On Education

Back in the early days of the Bush 43 administration, Condoleezza Rice asserted a connection between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda and inferred that if we did not overthrow the Iraqi dictator a mushroom cloud would appear over Washington or New York. It's hard to believe that such a person actually would know less about other topics than about foreign policy but alas, she apparently does.

Appearing Thursday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, "Condi" Rice remarked "I have enormous respect for teachers. My parents were teachers." (Has there ever been a public figure who didn't claim at least one parent as a teacher- before going on to denigrate teachers? Think hard.) She patronized the profession by stating "they have in some ways the hardest jobs in the world." (I might vote for nuclear physicist; "in some ways," coal mining. And that's considering only the U.S.A.). Then Mrs. Rice, who doubtless has visited schools in every district in the country, asserted

it is also true that if you're a teacher and your kids aren't learning, aren't performing, it's not the students' fault.

Now, that's the way to promote academic excellence. First, tell the children that if their grades are poor, not to worry- it's their teachers' fault, not theirs.

Condoleezza Rice isn't the only one spouting the easy, politically safe tripe about education. She may be, however, the only one who gets to say it the morning after she has her posterior kissed by demigod Jon Stewart.



Next up: If only it were just education.

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Incredibly, Not A Joke

Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine recently interviewed Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, then Secretary of State, in the GW Bush administration, at the close of that magazine's Most Powerful Women Summit. Inferring that Rice, with her "eloquent and elegant figure," would be a formidable contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Easton gushed

As Bush's national security adviser at the launch of the Iraq War, she will never appeal to hardcore Democrats. But to those millions of independents and soft Republicans who pulled Obama over the top in last year's election -- a familiar brand of voter at this Fortune gathering -- Rice has allure.

At the end of our interview, as I stood to shake Rice's hand, I glanced over my shoulder at this audience of women-CEO's and senior business and government leaders, media opinion-makers and entertainment stars, ground-breaking academics and committed philanthropists. It was an audience I knew, first-hand, viewed the Bush administration with doubts and, in some cases, outright hostility. So what I saw was telling.

Every single woman in that San Diego hotel ballroom was on her feet-giving Condi Rice a standing ovation.

This couldn't be the same Condoleezza Rice who told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2002

We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

This couldn't be the same Condoleezza Rice who pretended, testifying before the 9/11 Commission, that she was unaware that the Iraqi regime had destroyed its cache of biological and chemical weapons.

This couldn't be the same Condoleezza Rice who skillfully ignored warnings about the threat of terrorism, according to the New York Time's Phillip Shenon, author of THE COMMISSION: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission, who observed

Whatever her job title, Rice seemed uninterested in actually advising the president. Instead, she wanted to be his closest confidante — specifically on foreign policy — and to simply translate his words into action.

No one ever alleged that Miss Rice's area of expertise is economic policy. Or trade policy. Or health care policy. Or anything but foreign policy (Russian studies, specifically). Nonetheless, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in September of 2001 at the World Trade Center. Far more than that now have been killed in a war (Iraq) that shouldn't have been launced and in a war (Afghanistan) which was thoroughly bungled by the administration she served as Director of the National Security Council and as Secretary of State. She was, and remains, a complete failure, as well as someone with nary an acquaintance with the truth. And any suggestion that she would be a legitimate candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States is, really, fairly disgusting.

Rice, Delusional

She may have been an utter failure serving President George W. Bush as Director of the National Security Council and Secretary of State, but Condoleezza Rice is still sought for her opinions on foreign policy.

So there she was being interviewed by Fortune Magazine's Nina Easton and claiming, in a self-serving fashion,

But every day terrorists plot and plan to try to attack us. They only have to be right once. We have to be right 100% of the time.

Once a fear-monger, always a fear-monger, apparently. Still, Rice would deserve credit, if only her remark were true. Fortunately, it is not. Marc Rubin reviewed ("How Bush, Cheney policies killed 3,000 on 9/11") the record on the eighth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil. This may be a lot, but consider: Bush, Rove et al. exploited this disastrous crime (not tragedy- it was no accident or act of God) to gain carte blanche for its policies in the Gulf, and for getting elected re-elected.

During the transition period in January of 2001, Bush had a face to face meeting with then President Clinton in which Clinton told him that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the single biggest threats to US national security in the world. During the same transition period Bush and Rice met face to face with outgoing National Security Advisor Sandy Berger where Berger told both Bush and Rice that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the single biggest threats to US national security in the world....

Continuing during the transition period in January of 2001, Bush was given the usual national security briefings at Blair House given to all presidents-elect by the CIA and FBI. At the CIA briefing, George Tenet and the CIA told Bush that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the single biggest threats to US national security in the world. And in the national security briefing from the FBI, Bush again was told that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the biggest threats to US national security in the world.

When Bush finally took office the first thing he did regarding terrorism was demote Richard Clarke the anti-terrorism czar who served for 20 years under four Presidents from a cabinet level position to a sub cabinet level position....

The next thing Bush did after taking office with regards to terrorism, according to Richard Clarke's testimony before the 911 Commission and stated in his book, was to disband what Clarke called the Principals Meeting. As Clarke described it, in the Clinton administration there was a daily meeting chaired by Clarke and attended by relevant cabinet heads who had a role in fighting terrorism: Janet Reno, the Attorney General, Bob Mueller, the director of the FBI, George Tenet at CIA, and directors of ATF,Immigration and other departments directly involved in anti-terrorism.

According to Clarke, the latest intelligence regarding terrorism collected by each agency in the previous 24 hours was shared among the heads of all the agencies present. ( The 911 Commission found during the Bush Administration there was a lack of sharing of intelligence -- but in keeping with their promise not to fix blame they never stated the obvious -- that Bush's discontinuing of the Principals Meeting was a major contributing factor ).

Clarke testified that after each of these meetings, the heads of these agencies would go back to their respective departments and in his words, "shake the trees" for the latest information on terrorism developed over the last 24 hours and then present it at the next meeting. If this had this been allowed to continue this alone could have prevented 911.

Further,

A year ago the media reported on George Tenet's statements that the intelligence coming to him in July 2001 pointing to a major Al-Qaeda attack was so disturbing he went to the White House for an emergency meeting with Rice. Rice was so dismissive at the time that when asked about the meeting in 2007 she said she couldn't even remember having it though White House logs show that in fact Tenet did have a meeting with her on the date in July that he claimed. Either she is lying or has a selective memory.

But the two most damning pieces of evidence against Bush, Rice and Cheney is the August 4th, 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing and declassified in 2004) entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Within the United States" and an August CIA translation of an Al-Qaeda intercept which, when translated, indicated that there was going to be an imminent major attack against the United States and in the words of the CIA memo it was going to be "spectacular."

The first piece of evidence supporting this is the famous Phoenix Memo. An FBI agent in Phoenix had been called by the owner of a Phoenix flying school who was suspicious of two new students. What made him suspicious was that the two flying students were both middle eastern men who wanted to learn how to fly jumbo jets but curiously didn't want to learn how to take off or land. They were also paying for their flying lessons with cash. One of those two men was Mohammed Atta.

The FBI agent agreed the activity was suspicious and wrote up a report. But the report was never sent up the ladder and never reached FBI Headquarters in Washington. Under the old process during the Clinton Administration where terrorism had the highest priority, that information would have been sent right to the top and would have been something Mueller would have shared with Clarke and the others at the Principles Meeting. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what Clarke, Reno and Mueller would have done with this information.

From that moment on, Atta and all of his associates wouldn't have been able to sneeze without the FBI knowing about it. They would have been under surveillance 24 hours a day. Their phones would have been tapped. The plot undeniably would have been discovered and 911 would have been prevented with this one piece of information alone.

And what of the day of the attack itself?

On the morning of September 11, Mohammed Atta and another of the 911 hijackers boarded a flight from the Portland Airport in Maine to Logan for the connecting flight to San Franciso. The ticket taker at the Maine airport was taken aback by the fact that the ticket was a $2500 one way ticket to San Francisco, the kind you get when you book your flight at the last minute. It immediately raised his eyebrows and his suspicions. As he told interviewers, "You dont see one of those ( a $2500 one way ticket) very often". And this was at the Maine airport, not a busy hub so Atta and the other hijacker stood out like sore thumbs to begin with. What would have happened if that clerk had gotten an FAA alert for a potential hijacking and to be aware of any suspicious activity by middle eastern men? What are the odds that an FAA alert, the fact that they were middle eastern and the $2500 ticket might have led to him making a call?

Let's review the Aministration's role:

- During the transition period: the president-elect is told separately by the outgoing president, (with Rice) the outgoing National Security Advisor, the CIA director, and the FBI that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were the greatest national security threats facing the U.S.A.

- Once in office: the President downgrades the office held by the veteran counter-terrorism expert, Richard Clarke from a cabinet-level, to a sub-cabinet level, position. He disbands the daily Principals meeting, in which heads of all agencies involved in intelligence gathering would discuss the latest intelligence any had collected; NSC director Rice is told by CIA director Tenet in July, 2001 of his fear of an impending major attack by Al Qaeda while and Clarke and Tenet feverishly (with their "hair on fire") try to get Rice to arrange a meeting with the President.

- The President departs on August 3 for vacation at his faux ranch, where he stays until September 3. The President receives on 8/6/01 the Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.," at a page-and-a-half disturbingly longer than the usual one-or-two page PDB.

Obviously, CIA Director Tenet- who later received a Congressional Medal of Honor from President Bush- cannot escape blame. When a Principals Committee meeting finally was held on September 4, Tenet neglected to mention that he had been told that Islamic jihadist Zacharias Moussaoui had been taking lessons on how to fly a 747. President Bush and National Security Advisor Rice were not alone in neglecting the threat posed by Al Qaeda.

Incompetence throughout the government, highlighted by the President's apathy, merely demonstrates the outrageous dishonesty of Rice's comment that "They only have to be right once. We have to be right 100% of the time." The gang that left office on January 20, 2009 did not know exactly when and where and how the attacks of 9/11/01 would take place. But its negligence was striking, startling, and devastating. Failure to challenge Mrs. Rice about her role is emblematic of a conservative mainstream media that has ill-served our nation for decades.

On Presidential Style And 100 Days

On the occasion of Barack Obama's 100th day as President of the United States, Thinkprogress.org points out that on April 29, 2001, The New York Times ran a mostly favorable editorial about George W. Bush's first 100 days. Although the editorial board now recognizes the failure of the Bush presidency, on that day exactly ten years ago readers of the Times learned

his sunny self-confidence, even his penchant for bankers' hours and long weekends, seems to sit well with many Americans. It is a relief, they seem to be saying, to have a president who is not so tiring and omnipresent as Mr. Clinton.

And how did that "penchant for bankers' hours and long weekends" work out? A little walk down memory lane is helpful:

January 25, 2001: Counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke "urgently" (his term) requests of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice a Principals Committee meeting to discuss the threat from Al Qaeda; then turns over to Rice a memo (with two Clinton-era documents about Al Qaeda attached) which urged "an immediate meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss broad strategies for combating al-Qaeda by giving counterterrorism aid to the Northern Alliance and Uzbekistan, expanding the counterterrorism budget and responding to the U.S.S. Cole attack."

August 4, 2001: President Bush goes to Crawford, Texas to begin a month-long vacation, where he alternates between clearing brush and contemplating stem cell research. As USA today explained on 8/3/01:

Six months after taking office, President Bush will begin a month-long vacation Saturday that is significantly longer than the average American's annual getaway. If Bush returns as scheduled on Labor Day, he'll tie the modern record for presidential absence from the White House, held by Richard Nixon at 30 days.

August 6, 2001: President Bush receives Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." Bush listens and tells the CIA briefer "All right. You've covered your ass, now." (Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine)

September 4, 2001: The first Principals Committee meeting regarding Al Qaeda of the Bush presidency takes place, only seven days before the deadly terrorist attacks.

This is not only evidence of the benefit of having a president more interested in the affairs of the nation than in vacations. Back in their April, 2001 editorial, the NYT commented

We are not among those who complain that the tradition of measuring the first hundred days of a presidency has turned into an empty ritual. It is a convenient way to demarcate a period in which a new chief executive and the American people learn things that cannot emerge in the campaign vortex. The glimpses we get often can be valuable and even prophetic.

And the editors concluded:

We remain optimistic that Mr. Bush will continue in his basically sound approach to foreign policy and trade. And we remain hopeful that he will grow in compassion for average Americans and his sensitivity to the environment.

Given how (horrifically) the Bush presidency evolved, this should have been a cautionary tale to the traditional- and new- media about vesting importance in the arbitrary demarcation of 100 days. We know little if anything about the long-term, or even short-term, consequences of the Obama economic plan. And dangers lurk in Afghanistan, the Middle East, south Asia and elsewhere, to which the President and his advisers will respond effectively, or otherwise. One hundred days or not, it is unlikely we have seen either the best or the worst of the Obama presidency.

Of Afghanistan And The Surge

There is something about the mess in the Persian Gulf I don't understand.

On tonight's (7/17/08) episode of MSNBC's "Hardball," guest host Mike Barnicle led a discussion with public relations consultant and Repub strategist Mike Paul and Democratic strategist Steve McMahon. Recent ads by Barack Obama and John McCain were shown, followed by comments by Paul and McMahon. One such ad was put up by "Vets For Freedom," a third-party endorsement of Mccain in which various individuals emphatically asserted that the "surge is working." McMahon argued soldiers "on their fourth tour" are not anxious to remain in Iraq and "there's a political situation over there that hasn't improved very much."

True enough, and kudos to McMahon for asserting what is, or at least was before the presumptive Democratic nominee's obfuscation, the party's position on the war.

But in reports of 6/30/08 and 7/2/08 The New York Times noted:

the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.... Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas (of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan). (Now, there is) a strengthening Taliban insurgency that has menaced NATO forces and reclaimed control over some southern and eastern parts of the country.... (and) more American and coalition troops died in Afghanistan last month (i.e., June) than during any other month since the American-led invasion began in 2001.


So has the "surge" diverted resources from the war in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq? And if so, why haven't opponents of the Bush-Rice-McCain war policy (especially with Obama's emphasis on Afghanistan) not argued that: 1)the military success has resulted from diversion of resources from Afghanistan and 2)the Pakistan/Afghanistan front- not Iraq- is home to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda?

Quote Of The Week

"No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to keep her hands cleans."
Former Bush 43 Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan , in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice, Gun Control Advocate

As a reminder, here is the second amendment to the United States Constitution:

Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791.


A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

And here is Condoleezza Rice speaking on April 20, 2008 in Baghdad, encouraging Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to fight the militias of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr:

But clearly, the prime minister has laid down some ground rules which any functioning democratic state would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state, not to -- not in private hands," she said. "The current circumstances come out of what I think is a very important and indeed appropriate action that the Iraqi government has taken."

To repeat: "ground rules (of) any functioning democratic state (to include) arms belonging to the state.... not in private hands." Exactly.

Good News!

As you will recall, Attorney General Michael Mukasey on March 26, 2008, while speaking at a public affairs forum at the Commonweal Club in San Francisco, claimed the United States government "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody picks up the phone in Iraq and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about."

That led Glenn Greenwald of salon.com to note:

Even under the "old" FISA, no warrants are required where the targeted person is outside the U.S. (Afghanistan) and calls into the U.S. Thus, if it's really true, as Mukasey now claims, that the Bush administration knew about a Terrorist in an Afghan safe house making Terrorist-planning calls into the U.S., then they could have -- and should have -- eavesdropped on that call and didn't need a warrant to do so.

So we knew either that a) the Bush Administration declined to check out a call, thereby ignoring a prime opportunity to thwart the terrorist attack(s) of 9/11/01; or b) Mukasey was lying, in order to assert the regime's claim that the old FISA, which it believes inadequate to spy on Americans, needs to be overhauled.

Now comes reassuring news. Greenwald writes on 4/7/08 on his blog that he has received from Lee Hamilton, vice-chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the following statement (which he believes is accurate):

I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence.

So our President of Swagger (and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice) studiously avoided holding a Cabinet-level meeting, urged by security adviser Richard Clarke on January 24, 2001 to review the Al Qaeda threat and ignored the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001 "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike In U.S." However, it now appears he did not ignore this particular call preceeding that disastrous day- because it probably never took place. Mukasey was merely lying- which, with this crowd, is routine and constitutes, at least in this case, great news.

Rice- Right, But Wrong

In a wide-ranging interview conducted by Nicholas Kralev of the conservative Republican newspaper The Washington Times on March 27, 2008 and published the following day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke of race in American society, her attraction to George W. Bush, the proposed boycott of the Beijing Olympics, and the foreign policy aims of the remainder of the Bush Administration.

And Iraq. Difficulty rebuilding Iraq, the Secretary claimed, has resulted from "how truly broken the society was." For that, she blamed primarily the Saddam Hussein regime but also argued that now "agriculture is virtually dead in Iraq" as a result of United Nations sanctions.

It would have been naive to expect Ms. Rice to assume for the debacle of Gulf War II any of the blame herself or on behalf of the president she so admires. For a failed Cabinet member trying to establish herself as a political figure in the GOP, it is more convenient to allude to the one success of the venture- overthrow of Saddam Hussein- and blame the United Nations, historically a fun target of the Republican right. Perhaps she is modeling herself after this president in the manner of one of his most enduring traits, the ability to find blame anywhere and avoid looking in the mirror.

Remember Those Nuclear Weapons?

As a Democrat, my heart leaped a few weeks ago at very hopeful news. Condoleezza Rice's name was floated as a possible veep selection for John McCain.

Oh, I knew there was almost no chance. Rice is not associated with any state and therefore would be unlikely to bring any particular electoral votes into the Repub column. Further, there is no indication that she has any particular knowledge of, or interest in, anything except foreign policy- not unlike the fellow at the head of the ticket. Presumably, her name was thrown out as a Repub bid for the "political correctnesss" so many of zthem excoriate, figuring that any black at the tail end of the GOP ticket would take some of the wind out of Obama's sails. That's fairly absurd, but the idea of taking black Americans for granted by the party that claims the Democratic Party does so is not surprising.

Recently, though, as the San Diego Union-Tribune's website reported on 3/21/08:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she called Obama to apologize for the unauthorized access to his computerized passport file by three department contract workers, two of whom were fired over the incidents.
“I told him that I was sorry and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file and therefore, I will stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it,” Rice told reporters.

Give her credit for effort here, though given Rice's record (think Middle East peace process and U.S.-Russian relations), I wouldn't assume any effort will be met by success. Far better would be a mere acknowledgement of a mistake that she made a few years ago. I bring you back an interview she had with Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2003, which the CNN anchorman reported on January 10, 2003: "Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world. 'The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'"

The famous "mushroom cloud." Condi Rice in the vanguard of the fear merchants of the Bush Administration. On March 7, 2003, twelve days before the President launched Gulf War II, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei reported in "The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update"

There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.
Although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.
As I stated above, the IAEA will continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

And the relevant conclusion: after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.

What have we heard from the foreign policy "expert" of the Bush regime, Condoleezza Rice? No apology and no acknowledgement that she misled the American people. The idea that this individual could even be considered for national, elective office demonstrates the contempt for the truth- and lack of talent- of the Republican Party.