Boxer’s Attack On Rice Based On Lies
January 31, 2005
By Mary Mostert, Banner of Liberty
Condoleeza Rice is probably the best qualified person in America today to become Secretary of State. Before leaving her post as provost of Stanford University to serve as President Bush’s National Security Advisor, on January 22, 2001, she authored several books and numerous articles on foreign affairs issues. She was not chosen for her gender, as was Madeleine Albright in 1996, or her racial identity. Through years of study, determination and hard work, she has become a uniquely qualified asset to America.
And that is what makes the vicious attacks on her in the Senate hearings by people like Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy simply unacceptable. For example, Boxer accused Dr. Rice of being a dishonest salesman for President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. Boxer said during the Senate hearing: “Your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth…. And I will be placing into the record a number of such statements you made which have not been consistent with the facts.”
Boxer attacked Dr. Rice for the entire ten minutes she was allotted without once giving Dr. Rice a chance to respond, and tried to end the attack with: “As a matter of fact, you've said more misstatements: that the territory of the terrorists has been shrinking when your own administration says it's now expanded to 60 countries. So I am deeply troubled. Thank you.”
Dr. Rice then addressed Senator Lugar, the Republican Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with: “Senator, may I respond?”
Sen. Lugar said “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.” (Boxer had exceeded her allotted time.) Lugar, addressing Dr. Rice went on to say: “But, clearly, you ought to have the right to respond. And then, at that point, we're going to have a recess. But will you please give your response? “
Rice responded:
“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. We knew something about him. We knew that we had gone to war with him twice in the past, in 1991 and in 1998. We knew that he continued to shoot at American aircraft in the no-fly zone as we tried to enforce the resolutions that the U.N. Security Council had passed. We knew that he continued to threaten his neighbors. We knew that he was an implacable enemy of the United States, who did cavort with terrorists. We knew that he was the world's most dangerous man in the world's most dangerous region. And we knew that in terms of weapons of mass destruction, he had sought them before, tried to build them before, that he had an undetected biological weapons program that we didn't learn of until 1995, that he was closer to a nuclear weapon in 1991 than anybody thought. And we knew, most importantly, that he had used weapons of mass destruction.
“That was a context that, frankly, made us awfully suspicious when he refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction programs, despite repeated Security Council resolutions and despite the fact that he was given one last chance to comply with Resolution 1441. Now, there were lots of data points about his weapons of mass destruction programs. Some were right and some were not. But what was right was that there was an unbreakable link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.”
Sen. Boxer was given even more time for her attack, charging Dr. Rice with, “Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that particular vote.”
Actually, the first authorization for the use of force in Iraq was made, not under President Bush, but under President Clinton when Barbara Boxer’s friend, Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State. In 1998 the #1 reason for authorizing President CLINTON to use force in Iraq was “that Iraq was then in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations and thereby threatened the vital interests of the United States and international peace and security.” That resolution became Public Law 105-235.
The first resolution introduced to urge the president to take military action in Iraq was introduced by then Democrat Majority leader Tom Daschle, on September 26, 2002, and the first reason given for taking military action was Public Law 105-235 passed in the Clinton administration. The resolution that finally did pass, Joint Resolution H.R. 114, referred to Public Law 105-235 and has 22 more reasons for authorizing military action against Iraq.
The liar here is not Condi Rice. The liar is Barbara Boxer, as proven in the Congressional Record by her own arguments on the floor of the Senate. |
