Condi’s “Position of Responsibility”

These two YouTubes really ought to be watched in tandem.

In both, Condi stops breathing, having been asked a pointed question about her own failures.

It’s especially sickening to watch Condi talk about "unless you were there, in a position of responsibility, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas we faced in trying to protect Americans" in the bottom video (at around 1:15) and contrast that with her famous "I believe the title was ‘Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States"(at 2:48).

I’d be curious to hear Condi describe what she means by "position of responsibility."

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174 replies
    • Mary says:

      Yeah – and where were those mentions during the run up to war in Iraq?

      Oh well – she slid in that “Abu Ghraib was not policy” and that it was illegal, and yet the memos she was privy to set up that policy that all those kinds of things were “legal.”

      I guess some people in a position of authority might have actually focused on capturing Bin Laden and less on invading Iraq.

      Argh.

      Phred@ 4 ” If they were so determined to get the information they needed to “prevent another attack”, why didn’t they consult with professional interrogators? ” And why would you instead implement a policy where someone like Soufan, an FBI agent who was fluent in Arabic and had been working on al-Qaeda prior to the attacks; someone like Coleman, who had also been knee deep in al-Qaeda; someone like Cloonan – ditto on the knee deep and involved in the embassy bombing investigations; why would you implement a policy where all those guys and more are shut out and excluded
      and replaced by Martinez – who had no background in AQ and didn’t speak Arabic?

      • bmaz says:

        Why do you think England and Graner haven’t filed motions to set aside their pleas in light of the torture memos that have been released? (If they have, I am sure not aware of it).

        • Mary says:

          I’m not aware of it either, but neither of them have a lot of deep pockets or non-JAG legal representation until someone comes along and offers I would guess. I’m also thinking that the fact that they were sentenced and tried in front of a Military Commission probably complicates things – yes, some kids could torture, but you never got the order that you could soldier But basically I just don’t know – I would think it would have happened.

      • Kathryn in MA says:

        Re questions why the Bush administration didn’t consult experts = they had cut the experts loose and repudiated them. The Bushies thought they knew everything when it was obvious to us all they were rank amateurs bumbling around without a clue.

  1. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    I’d be curious to hear Condi describe what she means by “position of responsibility for being a synchophantic courteur on behalf of an oligarchic, corrupt political administration devoted to protecting the interests of International Finance and weaponry.

    My preliminary editing suggestion.

    • scribe says:

      Rotl, you need to work on your French, I think.

      Now, I know enough French to get some vin ordinaire and trouble, but I believe that, as applied to Dr. Rice, the noun is not “courteur”. That might be the noun as applied to Mr. Gannon/Guckert when he was demonstrating or participating in the “position of responsibility”, or perhaps the “position of authority”.

      As to Dr. Rice, I think the noun would either be “courteuse” or “courtesan”, the choice depending on either the shade of meaning desired or my crappy French being wrong.

      • LabDancer says:

        I would think the proper term en francais would be “courtier”, with “courtesan”, albeit technically ‘merely’ the feminine version, inapt for connoting a utility which would only be applied to Ms Rice in a clumsy attempt at cartoonish calumny.

        IMO denying the feminine version to Ms Rice would be in keeping with her gender being, while certainly a feature in relation to her being selected, and not utterly irrelevant in relation to the manner and efficacy with which she carried out the duties of her public offices, largely irrelevant to candidacy for those offices — or, to lift from the internet arcade, more ‘bug’ than ‘feature’.

        From the wiki entry: “In modern literature, courtiers are often depicted as insincere, skilled at flattery and intrigue, ambitious and lacking regard for the national interest”

        http://dickensurl.com/7f63/It_…..ever_known

        • scribe says:

          You note that

          In modern literature, courtiers are often depicted as insincere, skilled at flattery and intrigue, ambitious and lacking regard for the national interest”

          Well, allow me to retort: “and courtesans are usually considered a hell of a lot more fun.”

          I’m not going to get into a whole boy/girl thing with Condi. She’s got problems a plenty beyond that. Speaking as a lawyer, it’s painfully obvious she’s the kind of a witness who will collapse in a heap inside of a half-hour of carefully focused, directed cross-examination. She is deep trouble when she cannot control the agenda of the discussion (watch, for a contrary example, how she pushes “but the OSCE said Gitmo was a model prison”), as is the case in cross-examinations where “I’m asking the questions here and you’re answering them. And that means you answer the questions I ask, not the ones you make up as substitutes, beeyotch.”

          Start lining up the narrowly-focused, sharply-pointed “is it not true that” “A” questions – where she can only answer “yes” or “no”. She will want to elaborate, explicate, befuzz and otherwise blow smoke. The problem with that is, witnesses who do that wind up tangling only themselves, when properly crossed.

          The only good advice she gave was the career advice at the end – worry about what’s in front of you, not the long-range.

  2. scribe says:

    “Speaking about diplomacy, you can’t say ‘I’m not going to deal with that country because I don’t like their hunman rights record.’”

    And that does not apply to … Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, why, exactly, Dr. Rice?

  3. phred says:

    Wow. Condi actually asserts that al-Qaeda poses a greater threat than Nazi Germany. Just. wow.

    This clip is damning on so many levels (not the least of which was their cavalier attitude towards al-Qaeda prior to 9-11), but even her panic-stricken you weren’t there response is shocking. If they were so determined to get the information they needed to “prevent another attack”, why didn’t they consult with professional interrogators? And if they were so anxious to prosecute terrorists, why didn’t they use a legal system that was already up and running? At this point these are obviously rhetorical questions.

    But my most favorite part here was her expert (ok transparent and heavy handed) use of condescension (oooo, there we go, how ’bout Condi-scension?) towards the student. When a person has no valid rebuttal, the last card to play is to belittle your opponent. It’s a strategy doomed to failure in the long run, but it frequently allows you to change the subject and rattle your opponent enough to throw them off their game.

    I hope I live to see the day where someone (bmaz? ; ) takes her apart, piece by piece under cross-examination.

    • SparklestheIguana says:

      Wow. Condi actually asserts that al-Qaeda poses a greater threat than Nazi Germany. Just. wow.

      Haven’t the neocons been asserting this forever? And Tom Friedman said it again this week.

      • gryphon says:

        I can certainly see how the neocons think this … after all, in their heart of hearts, they all think we picked the wrong side in WW2, and many of them SO look up to their Nazi funding grandparents …

    • pmorlan says:

      Yeah, the condi-scension got me too. She was wagging her finger and telling him to do his homework because he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she goes on to say they didn’t torture. um, hmmm. Yeah, right, Condi.

  4. zhiv says:

    Condiscension it is, phred.

    Just amazing to watch them back to back. And seeing the whole thing from Stanford is extremely worthwhile.

    By the time she disputes the threat from Nazi Germany, she’s cornered and lashing out. The amazing thing is when she starts wagging her upraised finger in front of her. “I promise I won’t ask a question like that again, Mom! Sorry… I didn’t mean it. Yes, I’ll go do my homework now.” She seems surprised, after dispensing with the first kid, when she gets hit, a little more directly, by the 2nd.

    • emptywheel says:

      Assuming she’s going to be faced with more confrontations like this, and by better informed interlocutors, she’s going to crumble at some point. She’s used to winning her arguments by cowing opponents (reverted to it with Benveniste, too), and at some point, it’s not going to work.

      • LabDancer says:

        At “some” point? It didn’t work in either of these examples.

        Moreover, I expect that a day or two cruising the backwash of the toobz would yield dozens and dozens of other displays of her involuntary self-denial of oxygen, her voice disolving in quavers, running towards and through soft flowery fields of endlessly vague and conditioned phrases, etc.
        She appears far more vulnerable as a defendant than she is useful as a witness — a condition which seems common to high level Bush administration officers …

        [but not necessarily all; if the job were left to me, I’d start the entire process with Hadley].

    • Mary says:

      Yeah, she was and that ended up with her “by definition, if the President …” And boy was she pointed everywhichway. There’s a point in there where she goes not just to “the administration” (I was just passing on the administration’s policy to the agencies) but make the culpable group she is burying herself in even bigger — “the US was told” or something like that. Jeeminy.

      I liked it when her minder tried to get her out and she wouldn’t leave.

      Bellinger played lawyer for her and managed to keep her out of the 2002 meeting with the analyst who specifically informed that many detainees at GITMO were completely innocent (and wrote a report – that’s one that would be good to see) Even though he kept her out of the meeting, the fact that her lawyer knew and a report was written all point to it being pretty easy to prove that she knew.

      She knew, and she conspired to keep them there anyway and use them in the experimental interrogation protocols. Funny that SHE would be mentioning human trafficking, what with all the people we bought off of Pakistan for experiments.

  5. DeadLast says:

    I guess having tenure at a fancy private university means you are immune from war crimes prosecution. You go girl … (to hell).

  6. phred says:

    “If the second guessing had been about 3000 more Americans dying because we didn’t do everything we could to protect them.” At the 1:42 mark. Curious how she uses “more” in this sentence.

    • Mary says:

      I guess Americans dying in Iraq is different – not the “homeland” after all. She makes me lose my cool as much as the students made her lose hers.

  7. Styve says:

    Have to watch the Stanford one again, but it seemed that however many people were standing nearby went completely quiet for a bit.

    Good comments above, and a transcript of the whole thing would be fun to see, for her Condiscending, finger-waving, lying defense of their crimes!!

    They are all going to jail!

    Just saw that Mike Connell’s family wants a probe into his death…once they get Rove off the streets, Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rummy, et.al. will follow!! http://rawstory.com/08/blog/20…..his-death/

    • scribe says:

      Everyone gets quiet and turns to watch when there’s going to be a fight, a scene, or a meltdown.

      You know that from junior high – why would Stanford be any different?

      • freepatriot says:

        Everyone gets quiet and turns to watch when there’s going to be a fight, a scene, or a meltdown.

        You know that from junior high – why would Stanford be any different?

        I’m not sure that stanford, as an institution, is as advanced, mentally, as your average junior high school would be

        ya fotta figure, stanford is raising “young repuglitards”, so they ain’t gonna get much past twelve on a “mental age” scale. and it takes em at least 35 years to “get that smart”

        you want proof ???

        newt gingrich is considered a repuglitard “thinker”, and that pathetic shit bastard couldn’t debate ME, much less some of YOU BRAINIACS

        you guys do know I’m pulling most of this straight out of my ass, right ???

        I’m not really smart, I’m just a lucky bullshitter …

      • greenwarrior says:

        i assumed that someone quietly signaled folks to quiet down so the taping wouldn’t be disturbed.

  8. skdadl says:

    Wow. How many crooked rhetorical moves does she use on an honest student in three minutes or so?

    Seguing suddenly to the OSCE “report” on GTMO is just plain cherry-picking. Yes, I was driven to google (I mean, how many years has it been since most of us have thought about the OSCE?), and I see that in 2006, as international criticism of GTMO was swelling, the admin invited all sorts of groups to take tours of GTMO (one site I found spoke of “flooding” the place with visitors). The OSCE group came at that point. They were not permitted to speak to any of the detainees, but an “expert” among them made the remark that Condi-cension cites. That source says the OSCE was also to produce a report on the visit, and I suppose I could google further, but I feel I’ve seen enough to lose interest in Condi’s tricks.

    It has struck me before that her breathing becomes very tight when she’s confronted, although she persists in interrupting other people’s arguments or questions with personal or tangential details that she claims are centrally important. It’s almost childish — “No, you must let me finish.” Bet that worked with Dick Cheney.

  9. WilliamOckham says:

    Here’s a little fact-checking on Rice’s claim that the OSCE described Guantanamo as a model prison. She’s referring to this statement, made in March 2006:

    But Alain Grignard, the deputy head of Brussels’ federal police anti-terrorism unit, said holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself “mental torture”.

    “At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons,” Mr Grignard said.

    However, the OCSE released a statement the next day that said:

    The OSCE Spokesperson said that, in the light of these reports, he wished to make it clear the Organization itself had not sent an expert to Guantanamo: “The person quoted in several of the stories as “an OSCE expert”, Professor Alain Grignard, accompanied the delegation despatched by the Parliamentary Assembly, based in Copenhagen, but he was not employed or commissioned by the OSCE.”

    Mr. Grignard was not allowed to speak with prisoners or witness interrogations. He wasn’t speaking on behalf of the OCSE. He also made it clear that indefinite detention was mental torture. On the whole, I think we can safely call bullshit on this claim.

  10. phred says:

    oregondave pointed this out on an earlier thread, but Spencer’s post points out that the authorization of torture that the student asked about is the July 17th authorization she gave CIA to go ahead, subject to OLC approval (which didn’t come through until July 24-26th). So, if she just “conveyed” the information, then it had to come from W or PapaDick.

    I’m gonna get whiplash from all the finger pointing going on these days. So who points next? W to PapaDick or PapaDick to W?

    Her argument that if the President approves it, that makes it legal suggests W, but I’m don’t think PapaDick is gonna sit still for W getting all the credit, when he’s been the one out there pounding the pavement telling the world what great info they got. So who’s gonna be first to have the Jack Nicholson moment (You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!)?

    • emptywheel says:

      I think the interesting thing about it is that they are now trying to protect themselves. The Bush Administration made concerted efforts to give Bush plausible deniability on this and other matters. Which means Condi probably doesn’t have documentary proof that she was conveying the authorization (and yes, as you point out, it was probably PapaDick who made the authorization).

      Let’s hope they keep hitting out at each other because it’ll loosen some things up.

      Also on the Condi as approval thing–remember that CIA, DOD, and DOJ had all signed off on the declassification of that SSCI narrative before the Obama Administration. But NSC refused (even though Condi was long gone). Not sure what that means, but I find it interesting.

      • bobschacht says:

        I think the interesting thing about it is that they are now trying to protect themselves. The Bush Administration made concerted efforts to give Bush plausible deniability on this and other matters. Which means Condi probably doesn’t have documentary proof that she was conveying the authorization (and yes, as you point out, it was probably PapaDick who made the authorization).

        EW,
        I think they’ve kinda painted themselves into a corner. The conventional Executive M.O. is to conduct all actions to provide plausible deniability to The Boss. However, with the Bush Admin, they had this Unitary Executive ideology, which said that The Boss can do anything. He doesn’t need plausible deniability because… (wait for it) …he’s The Boss! Isn’t this essentially what Condi was saying? So, when the trail of cookie crumbs leads to your door, and it doesn’t look like you can plausibly deny your culpability, then you just try the artifice that “I was just conveying The Boss’s orders,” and He’s the Boss, so anything he orders is Oky-Doky, right? After all, he’s the U.E.!

        Now, migrating to all the fun some of you are having with Condi’s “tells,” I suggest finding the videos of some of Condi’s testimony before Congressional committees. As I recall, she did a lot of filibustering and evading, but I don’t remember the score card on her “tells,” in those sessions.

        Bob in HI

      • Mary says:

        The thing is, Cheney has very little legal authority as VP to be giving policy to anyone. They’d be crazy to rely on something that came from OVP instead of WH unless there was a delegation from W to Cheney or something similar.

        Cheney is a bit of a Iago (except I can’t put W in the Othello role) but if you were doing something illegal – something that’s a criminal assault and war crime – I can’t believe that the same people who were squeezing for OLC opinions would be ok with a policy directive signed out by only the OVP’s office. Maybe, but it would surprise me.

        • Hmmm says:

          They’d be crazy to rely on something that came from OVP instead of WH unless there was a delegation from W to Cheney or something similar.

          Welp, there’s always that super-unproven notion that on the morning of 9/11 Dick claimed to arrogate himself emergency powers. I mean, what’s the hired help to do in the face of that, given that they’re all persons of such clearly inferior character?

        • Rayne says:

          There’s a way around the lack of authority on Cheney’s part, and it’s also the reason why Ackerman may overstate Rice’s possible acknowledgment of POTUS/VP as ultimate authorities on torture.

          The National Security Advisor, which Rice was during the first GWB administration, was a functionary of the National Security Council, established by National Security Presidential Directive 1 (NSPD-1).

          When Rice refers to the administration, she may actually be referring to the NSC as the body which made all decisions on national security and intelligence.

          Roots of the aspens, if you will…

          • Rayne says:

            Damn. I guess that’s the REAL reason former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was fired so ignominiously.

            He would have been part of the National Security Council, and a straight arrow like him who was struggling with outcomes being tailored to policy would not have been able to get their backs when torture came to the table.

            If I were a member of the House Judiciary, I might want to have a chat with O’Neill to hear what he’d seen before he was exited in 2002.

          • Mary says:

            63 – but if you are being asked to commit a crime, it still does nothing much for you to have an authorization from the NSC. If they demanded OLC opinions, I can’t help but think they required a Bush sign off.

            There aren’t any signing statements that try to reserve to the “NSC” (or OVP, NSA, etc.) the power to interpret the legislation to exclude impermissible limits on their powers – the arguments, bad as they are, only line up under one signature. Bush’s

            So Cheney is in this great position of being able to instigate, and yet no one was ever really “required” to do what he said (absent some delegation we haven’t seen – which might exist) And so pinning on him is going to be almost tougher than on Bush in some ways – otoh, bc he is so insulated, he can run the most interference for Bush to keep him from having the cat walke back to the WH.

            • Rayne says:

              You know, I’ve just written 5 paragraphs to respond and it’s just pointless, an exercise in futility.

              These guys simply didn’t give a shit about the law; we continue to try and look at this from the perspective of law-abiding, reality based citizens, and it just doesn’t work.

              Cheney naturally did this as Fourth Branch, under cover of the loosey-goosey authorizations by the circle-jerk called NSC. It’s Iran/Contra on a crack-and-steroids cocktail, all the previous cast and crew now having perfected their game.

              • Mary says:

                I agree that Bush and Cheney et al didn’t care about the law, but there’s a reason for the push for the OLC opinions. Muller wanted to protect his guys (remember from pre-9/11 that the CIA had participated in blowing up a plane carrying a US missionary and killing his wife and infant and they were catching a lot of heat). So did Rizzo. So they got OLC opinions bc that was the “form” of protection (if not the substance of it) and but something from Cheney wouldn’t give them form or substance. They’d be just as well off with nothing as something from Cheney.

  11. SparklestheIguana says:

    In both, Condi stops breathing, having been asked a pointed question about her own failures.

    Do we know if Condi underwent SERE waterboarding? She seems to have the stop breathing and recovery thing down to an art.

  12. Leen says:

    Turley refers to Condi as a potential “target” or an investigation on torture tonight on Hardball.

    The Hardball report is not up yet at the Hardball site. The go around was between Jonathon Turley and Pat Buchanan. Turley hit another home run.

    Matthews has been referring to the EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) as torture for several weeks.
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#30488930

    When it comes up it was a great run in between Turley and Buchanan

      • Styve says:

        Good clip of Tweety refereeing the Buchanan/Turley bout! Did you notice Buchanan’s statement about Bush defending the country, from”in effect, an enemy missile”? Had to play it a couple of times, because the “in effect” is somewhat said as an aside. He almost tripped up, methinks?!

    • scribe says:

      I wish to hell someone would start reminding these clowns that it was the Gestapo who came up with the term “Enhanced interrogation” to describe torture. Every stinking time.

      I, for one, am quite sick of the euphemism.

      • Styve says:

        How about Condi’s saying that, “Germany didn’t attack the American Homeland”? She must have looked nice in her little SS uniform, with her Prada boots!

        • Hmmm says:

          “Germany didn’t attack the American Homeland”

          Need I point out that the word “Homeland” — never commonly used here before the W administration — reads (like “enhanced interrogation”, per above mention) better in the original German?

          • Ishmael says:

            And unless Condi is saying that the Hawaiian Islands were the same status as Guantanamo in 1941 (which it wasn’t!), there was definitely an attack by the Japanese on the “Homeland” at Pearl Harbour, and definitely on the USS Arizona, California, etc…..and there was no authorized torture of Japanese POWs (I don’t think so, anyway.)

          • cinnamonape says:

            She’s also simply wrong about the Nazi’s not attacking the “Homeland”.

            Immediately after Pearl Harbor Nazi U-Boats began torpedoing ships in US waters, sometimes even in US harbors. This was called “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_happy_time">The Second Happy Time” because of the ease in the U-Boats picking off American merchant ships.

            In addition, one has to wonder if Condi was asleep when it was pointed out by the Bush Administration lawyers and Cheney that they had the right to military tribunals because “FDR did it to Nazi saboteurs in WW2″. There were at least two incidents, in 1942 and 1944, when U-Boats dropped off saboteurs who attacked US facilities “in the Homeland”.

            They were armed German military men, in disguise, caught in specific acts of terrorism on our territory during a declared war.

            None of those individuals were water boarded for information. They were not placed in stress positions, slapped, put into small boxes with the air supply cut off. They were not forced to go naked in freezing cells. They were not driven to near madness by the constant playing of death metal for days on end so they could not sleep.

            They were not indefinitely and infinitely detained without habeas corpus. They were even accorded the opportunity to dispute the military trials up to the Supreme Court. They were treated well, obtained legal representation, and when convicted, several were executed.

          • posaune says:

            Well, per Operation Drumbeat (1942), U-boats were operating and attaking in US territorial waters: eastern seaboard, from Maine to Florida, and also the Gulfcoast near Texas. Innumerable attacks on US flag vessels at sea.

            No Nazi attacks on the American Homeland? BUNK!!! Go do your homework, Condi.

  13. Leen says:

    Forgot to mention that Chris Matthews reported that Congressman Sestak has not ruled out a run for the Dem senate seat. good news

    Specter took quite a beating for jumping ship on Hardball tonight. They were referring to David Broder’s article
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..04016.html

    Specter the Defector/David Broder

    “Specter’s history shouts the lesson that he will stick with you only as long as it serves his own interests — and not a day longer.”

  14. freepatriot says:

    don’t shoot me, I’m just the piano player

    I don’t recall seeing that defense at Nuremberg

    maybe the condiliar should try that next

  15. maryo2 says:

    If not the US Supreme Court then who does Condi think is supposed to make judgement about the legality of military tribunals? She hisses out “the Supreme Court” as if she feels that they had overstepped their Constitutional bounds.

    • Mary says:

      Hisses – that’s the perfect word for it. She hissed it. “Supreme Court” She didn’t even hiss al-Qaeda with that venom.

      • jackie says:

        Still, odd timing for Judge Souter to leave.. Could be he knows what is coming? and doesn’t want to have to see and judge on just how low BushCo took this country?
        The Bush family will not just roll over and let Jr get put on trial. Too many secrets. They will push this to the Supreme Court and beyond to stop Jr from War Crime trials in the Hague. Interesting times..

  16. SparklestheIguana says:

    Brian Ross just reported on ABC News (under the headline “Tough Tactics” – what, Torture wasn’t alliterative enough?) that Mitchell and Jessen were paid $1,000 a day to oversee the Tough Tactics. He then shows previous footage (but not audio) of John Kiriakou and says today’s report “contradicts our previous reporting”. And he quotes from the report that says Mitchell and Jessen’s “expertise was probably misrepresented.”

    No mention of Condi and her monarchical positions, though.

    • Mary says:

      The thing that bugs me on that is that NYT has gloated a bit, a year ago when THEY were quoting Kirako too, they BURIED the info that the had then. They say in that story, over a year old (but buried after their references to Kirakou and Zubaydah and 35 seconds) that KSM was waterboarded 100 time over a two week period.

      Glad to see them call ABC on him and to see Ross try to swab the decks, but it would be better still if NYT cleaned their own house first.

  17. TheraP says:

    So….. according to Condiscencion, they did “everything we could do… to prevent 3000 MORE Amricans dying” NOT! They went to war in Iraq – and over 3000 more died! A needless war! Needless deaths! Disgusting!

    Watch her body language. Watch again. Listen to her voice. Watch when she crosses her arms. Watch how she cuts the student off. Insists he answer HER question. The interrogator is She! I can see her as the Dominatrix!

    Notice too. Americans = innocent. Detaineees = guilty.

  18. bgrothus says:

    Some day somebody is going to tell her to “do your homework, dear.” I mean, ignorance of the law is no excuse, just following orders, the Nuremberg trials, etc.

    From this minute on, you can bet there will be Stanford students of teh Google who will find the information she blew on the “inspectors said it was fahbulous.”

  19. pdaly says:

    If I recall, the deaths in the Twin Towers included citizens from many nations. Not just Americans died that day.

    However, as noted above, over 3000 American soldiers have died since that day fighting a vanity war in Iraq– a war that Rice helped to instigate with her “mushroom cloud” adverts of fear.

    • pdaly says:

      Condi with the rest of the Bush Administration failed to protect Americans and visitors to America before 9/11 and then callously sent our would be protectors (US servicemen and servicewomen) to their deaths in Bush’s needless war of vanity in Iraq. Yet again failing to protect American and foreign lives.

      • RevBev says:

        I want to point out that I was ridiculouly criticized on a previous thread for the error of saying they were “sent” since we all know “there has been no draft since ‘71.” Reading your comments, which are very similar to mine, I see again how they were sent as a result of lies and the impulse of their own honest courage and belief that they were doing something for our country; sent my their own sense of duty, but by cynical exploitation and lies. Thank you for the opportunity to repeat my earlier response to the stupid argument of a mindless troll.

        • Raven says:

          Anyone who thinks they were not “sent” because they volunteered has no idea what they are talking about.

          • RevBev says:

            I love when someone agrees with me. I was so shocked when the troll nit-picked the “sent” words. There are lots of “sent” examples, including all the stop-loss folks and the kids in high schools where recruiters hung out in order to make a lot of new friends. The damage we have seen….

        • pdaly says:

          Yes, when a soldier is willing to forfeit her life to defend her country, it behooves the commander-in-chief to choose wisely when and where to deploy that person. Putting a soldier in harm’s way for Bush’s vanity war of choice was needlessly sending soldiers to their deaths–and makes a mockery of those soldiers’ honorable sacrifices.

  20. KayInMaine says:

    According to the neocons…

    War crimes good. Check.

    Torturing good. Check.

    Tying a young gay man to a fence, bashing his head in, torturing him for hours, robbing him, and then leaving him for dead is good. Check.

    But….

    Joe Biden saying he wouldn’t want his family to go to Mexico right now or would rather they use their cars to get to work rather than take the subway or go on a plane………..IS BAD, TREASONOUS, AND PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!

    • demi says:

      For anyone on the west coast, if you’re going to watch Rachel tonight, I heard that Mattew Shephard’s mother will be on the show.

        • demi says:

          Oh, you’re right. I was making dinner and lost track of the time. Thanks. Now, the question is, do I want to risk blowing my cool, bumming my high, by watching. Am I am mouse or a man?

          • KayInMaine says:

            Mrs. Shepard will be a better person than Virginia Foxx could ever dream of being, so if you don’t watch it you can bet on it it was a great interview for this reason alone.

  21. Mary says:

    Wow – listening to the Turley/Buchanan bit on MSNBC. When did McCain sign on to the Rove talking point that prosecutions would MAKE us a bannana republic?

    I like Buchanan’s bit on the Peru case “well, he was convicted, of course he’s guilty” Actually, I agree with Buchanan that if Obama wants to protect the torturers, he needs to hand out pardons and put his imprimatur directly on the action.

    What planet does Buchanan live on, though, where he thinks that America would fall apart over Dick Cheney being prosecuted for actual crimes?

    • Ishmael says:

      Agreed – pardons for the actual tortures are far preferable on Obama’s part to usurping prosecutorial discretion and deciding that charges will not be laid – that is the corollary to “if the President does it, it’s not illegal”, “if the President says that there will be no charges, there is no crime”. Pardons would at least make it clear that the torture was a crime.

      • Mary says:

        Even with also giving a gov indemnification for civil damanges too – make it clear it was a crime, there is an allocution of at least some sort, and go on to do what can be done with people like Arar and el-Masri to address damage issues and apologies.

        The biggest problem isn’t that “mistakes were made” (Obama channeling Bush) but rather that our leaders have encouraged the public and the perpetrators to be arrogantly REMORSELESS. Still no nod, despite numerous court cases that have now found numerous detainees at GITMO to have never been enemy combatants, still not public nod by leadership to acknowledge that truth. Still no nod in a case like el-Masri’s (if Feinstein really wanted to do the right thing, she’d have one of those reports her committee is supposedly almost done with be about el-Masri, which will change the debate, and would even mention that IG report that Priest referred to when his story came out and which was supposedly looking into 10-30 “oopsie” renditions to abuse).

        I could handle pardons (at lower levels) and indemnifications and a sincere gov effort to make amends, esp if coupled with Obama extending his hand to the whistleblowers and people who did the right thing (Tamm, Taguba, Soufan, etc.) openly and publically. But all the whiffling on torture being just a matter of values and policies makes me really resent all the Dems, not just Obama. It shouldn’t, but it does.

        • Ishmael says:

          Very good point on the “REMORSELESSESS”. Of the various “defences” proffered for the torture, ranging from “it wasn’t torture” to an apparent defence of necessity, I find the ones rooted in American exceptionalism the worst. “It’s not torture if Americans do it” isn’t much different than its not illegal if the President does it, and demeans and accessorizes everyone in the nation.

    • Ishmael says:

      “What planet does Buchanan live on, though, where he thinks that America would fall apart over Dick Cheney being prosecuted for actual crimes?”

      Actually, I have the same reaction to Senator Leahy’s proposal for the T&R Commission on torture. While he may be offering this option out of pragmatism, it is absurd to compare the US after 9-11 to the fragile democracy that was emerging from decades of apartheid and brutality that was South Africa in the 1990s, where there was a real risk of a bloody civil war.

  22. myshadow says:

    ‘Who could have possibly imagined’. They will seal their fate.

    I think the President is playing 3D chess here. There is going to be a Chinese Drip of toxic information coming out, for months. More photographs, more memos and I’m sure more craven missteps like the one dr. rice bumbled into off the cuff. I believe it/they will offend the World, and I’m hoping America. However it is ultimately going to play out on the World stage. I think these guys will be tried in abstentia.

    There is no way the President, last night, could say anything was a crime till the AG makes a determination. Also I don’t think it is safe to try these people with the present supreme court. I lived through US VS Nixon, it is different now, there is a real danger the clowns that appointed bush will exonerate him.

    • tjbs says:

      5/ 28 /09 Torture photos from many different locations have to be released in answer to ACLU suit. It won’t be months but a long hot summer.

  23. behindthefall says:

    Can anybody suggest a book or article, something, detailing Cheney’s childhood, early family life, “formative years”, as the saying goes? Something to read before I plunk down my cash for “Angler”, which I take it is the current book to read on Cheney since, say, 1990.

    In the bio articles I’ve found so far, Cheny flunks, drives drunk, and then — goes into politics. What does not make sense to me is that he would hit upon his particular innovation, the hidden, parallel power structure. This is a man who never wanted to be on the throne, did not want to be the power _behind_ the throne, but instead arranged to be the power equal or even superior to the throne, but operating not through the throne’s chain of command but through his own, concealed power-chain.

    That’s a pattern that I have had no luck finding a parallel to in history. Coups? Yes. Eminence grises (sp?)? Yes. In-power shadow governments? No.

    Was he a younger brother trying to get out from under an oppressive older brother? Was he trying to run the family under the nose of an authoritarian father? Where did this strategy come from? And having invented and adopted this strategy, what else comes along with it? What else ought we to be on the lookout for?

        • Raven says:

          Hi! Doing fine, the Ll Bit is recovering from her cataract surgey and the princess has the garden in full swing!

          • behindthefall says:

            Sounds like the right thing to be doing. We’re banging back and forth between 31 and 90 degrees here. But this year I got to see a wildflower (Dutchman’s Breeches) that I’ve wanted to see since I was about 4 years old, so that pretty much made my Spring. After that, I’m happy to wait for it to find its balance.

            • wavpeac says:

              I could be wrong about this, but I would wonder if Cheney had an alcoholic or absent dad. And whether or not mom “parentified” him at an early age. This can be very subtle and hard to see from the “outside”. He would have developed a sense of grandiosity, a competitiveness with his father, and a tolerance for being powerful, secretive and one down. (but knowing that he was his mother’s real savior and that father was failing in his duties).

              This is a common alliance in alcoholic families. We know bush is an alcoholic per admissions about his life. The two of them made a perfect duo if that disease is running things as I suspect. Cheney took care of business for the alcoholic bush and manipulated things from behind the scenes. My guess is that the closest around them knew bush was “impaired” and that Cheney covered. This would fit in to the childhood pattern. It feeds the grandiosity and passive aggressive patterns toward bush the president and technical boss.

              The disease of alcoholism has certain tell tale symptoms:

              1) secrets
              2) the need for controlling external events; authoritarianism
              3) denial and scape goating
              4) extreme fear and paranoia

              It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Cheney had a dad or mom who liked to drink to excess. Enough that he had to “be the man” behind the scenes at an early age. (maybe the cause could have been depression or some other mental illness, but because bush himself has clear and admitted issues in regard to alcohol dependence, my gut says that alcoholism would be the culprit).

              This is all supposition…theoretical…but having done tons of work with alcoholic families…the bush presidency sure seems to operate like one large alcoholic clan. And in my humble opinion our 2nd and third “estate” in the checks and balances operated just like the members of an alcoholic family. Congress became fearful of retribution so instead of setting clear boundaries enabled the alcoholic. Everyone participated in some denial. Triangulating occurred and no one confronted the elephant in the room for fear of retribution.

              This is what happens in alcoholic families all over America. And if we view this country as one big alcoholic family, the country needs recovery.

              1)admitted we were powerless (over controlling bushco, alcoholics, and drug addicts).

              2) came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (the constitution)

              3) turned our will and lives over to the care of a loving constitution

              4) did a searching and fearless moral inventory

              5) Admitted to ourselves, the constitution, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (substitute another country for human being).

              6) became ready to ask the constitution to remove all our defects of character.

              7) Asked god to remove all our defects of character.

              made a list of all we had harmed.

              9) made amends to all we had harmed.

              10) continued to take a moral inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

              11) continued to improve our conscious contact with the constitution

              12) Continued to spread the program to those in need by way of attraction, not promotion. (being the kind of country others would want to emulate instead of using dominance and force).

              In my view this country really needs recovery and my fear is that mr. o might have a few hidden addiction issues of his own that might muddy the water in regard to the above process that seems pretty valid in it’s effectiveness for evolving the human race to a higher moral ground.

              The therapist will shut up now…

              • behindthefall says:

                Very glad that the therapist spoke. Those are, it seems to me, invaluable insights. Why on earth we do not insist on reliable psych profiles of our candidates for higher/highest offices is beyond me.

              • Leen says:

                Really wish countries around the world would have banded together and demanded an intervention. Demand that we clean up our act and if not they could cut us off in whatever way they were able. The tough love act

      • demi says:

        I’ve read that and it’s a good tool. The hard part is having to refer to it again and again to try to understand, and then further to figure out how that information helps in dealing with them. Sometimes, it feels like a fool’s game.

    • perris says:

      In the bio articles I’ve found so far, Cheney flunks, drives drunk, and then — goes into politics. What does not make sense to me is that he would hit upon his particular innovation, the hidden, parallel power structure. This is a man who never wanted to be on the throne, did not want to be the power _behind_ the throne, but instead arranged to be the power equal or even superior to the throne, but operating not through the throne’s chain of command but through his own, concealed power-chain.

      Cheney was a failure at everything, read rolling stones article on him, very elucidating

      and make no mistake about this;

      Cheney was not the puppeteer, he’s a moron with a good vocabulary and a method for delivery but it is close who is more the idiot, bush vs Cheney

      the real puppeteers are the koch brothers and the Carlyle group, Cheney is their marionette

      he doesn’t want to be the figure head because subconcously he knows he is incapable, a failure

      he wants to take credit when something happens right and shed blame when it goes wrong

      it always goes wrong when cheney was involved

    • bmaz says:

      Can anybody suggest a book or article, something, detailing Cheney’s childhood, early family life, “formative years”, as the saying goes?

      Yeah, I dunno, but there is a movie known as “The Bad Seed”.

      • Rayne says:

        Actually, Joan Didion wrote a phenomenal essay about Cheney for New York Review of Books; I’ve cited it frequently because it captured the essence of the man very convincingly, a man who always “had other priorities.”

        She drew on the following books as research for her essay:

        A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs
        by Theodore Draper
        Hill and Wang, 690 pp., $27.95

        Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror
        by Richard A. Clark
        Free Press, 304 pp., $27.00

        Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence
        by Admiral Stansfield Turner
        Hyperion, 308 pp., $23.95

        Disarming Iraq
        by Hans Blix
        Pantheon, 285 pp., $24.00

        The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money
        by Dan Briody
        Wiley, 290 pp., $16.95 (paper)

        My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope
        by L. Paul Bremer III, with Malcolm McConnell
        Simon and Schuster,417 pp., $27.00

        Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life
        by Mary Cheney
        Threshold, 239 pp., $25.00

        The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
        by Ron Suskind
        Simon and Schuster, 367 pp., $27.00

        Plan of Attack
        by Bob Woodward
        Simon and Schuster, 467 pp., $28.00

        The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History
        by John Nichols
        New Press, 268 pp., $14.95 (paper)

        Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet
        by James Mann
        Penguin, 426 pp., $16.00 (paper)

        Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, with Supplemental, Minority, and Additional Views
        Government Printing Office, 690 pp. (1987)

        31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today
        by Barry Werth
        Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,398 pp., $26.00

        Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror
        by Mark Danner
        New York Review Books, 580 pp., $19.95 (paper)

        Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
        by John W. Dean
        Warner, 281 pp., $14.95 (paper)

        Years of Renewal
        by Henry Kissinger
        Touchstone, 1,151 pp., $24.00 (paper)

        (which reminds me, I need to renew my subscription to NYRB…) Prices shown were probably original retail. I would never recommend the Woodward book; if you have to read it, borrow it from the library.

      • behindthefall says:

        Heh! It does make you wonder, doesn’t it? I don’t buy that he’s stupid, although it makes sense that he not be entirely intelligent (an earlier comment — he’s too bent for that. But there’s an absence of homey, little anecdotes about his beginnings. Stories about GWB’s childhood and family weren’t exactly homey, but they’re there. What do we know about Cheney, though, and how he came to operate as he does? And is there anything else about his operations that we don’t know but should? (’Cause it seems to me that the guy is not going to go away of his own accord.)

    • sojourner says:

      I have not read through all the posts, but my personal opinion is that Cheney is seriously depressed or has some other mental illness. Maybe he flirted with the “dark side” in years past, but it has probably become much more pronounced in the last several years due to this heart issues. I have known people who decided that they had all kinds of power when they were depressed — in some ways it becomes mania. Just my personal opinion, of course…

      • behindthefall says:

        Interesting. As delusional as the Fourth Branch of Governemt idea may have been, his power apparently was not. (We _have_ put that Fourth Branch thing to bed for good, haven’t we … ?)

        • sojourner says:

          We can only hope… I wondered when Cheney came out with that if he was not somewhat delusional at the time. He seems to come up with his own definitions a great deal, and many of his ideas are about 7 degrees out of kilter with the rest of the world, if you get my drift. I strongly suspect he is something of a mental case.

  24. ART45 says:

    If I were a Stanford alum, I’d withhold my support of the place.

    Anyone associated with Stanford should be ashamed of and disgusted with Rice.

    • bmaz says:

      If I were a Stanford alum, I’d withhold my support of the place.

      My reaction is the same as it was to those that thought alumni of ASU should discontinue support of their alma mater because they aren’t going to give an honorary degree to Obama. Listen, universities are getting strangled already these days with the crappy economy and ever higher prices. Our future depends on educating our children. Don’t punish the teachers and students over crap like this. If you are an alumni and are inclined to support your alma mater, whether it be Stanford, ASU, or any other school, PLEASE do so as much as you can. Education is the lifeblood of our future. Seriously.

  25. fatster says:

    Here they are, the true believers:

    “More than half of people who attend [religious] services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified.”

    http://rawstory.com/08/blog/20…..l=home.php

    http://tinyurl.com/djh2b9

    (The saying attributed to Mencken comes to mind: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.)

    • Mary says:

      This is why Obama’s approach is so bad – he doesn’t need to worry about losing the next generation of the Arab world – he’ll have lost America long before then. Equivocating on torture as a policy is just assinine.

    • klynn says:

      I am personally working on addressing that with some seminaries. Torture does not fit into Justified War Theory.

      • fatster says:

        How wonderful that you are doing that. I hope you’ll give us a follow-up. Thank you.

  26. CalGeorge says:

    “If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right.” And from then on he adopted the maxim, “Napoleon is always right,” in addition to his private motto of “I will work harder.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm.

    Way to go, Condi.

  27. ThingsComeUndone says:

    Voice gets higher she gets more frantic with the hand motions arms she is nervous.
    The *cough* facts she states in the second video are discredited she needs new better material for a more believable lie.
    Condi does not do well outside a structured setting.

  28. demi says:

    You’re so right on. I just changed the channel to watch. Switched from soothing meditation music, just to let you know. *g*
    I might have to call Ginny “Tarbaby” Fox (that’s not my term, I think Cbl2 said it earlier) tomorrow and talk to her. Just Christian woman to Christian Woman. See, I could go toe to toe with her any day.

    • bobschacht says:

      Oy vey. You can predict who’s gonna win that debate. I would hope that Geithner would grow a pair and stick it to those fat cats.

      Plus I think we need more high profile fraud cases. There’s a bunch of’em presently in process. Why don’t we hear more about them? IIRC, the FDIC has about 20 cases in the mill.

      Bob in HI

      • fatster says:

        Just imagine all the massaging going on even as we type: massage the data, massage the formulas, massage the software, massage massage massage until you’ve massaged enough that your “results” can be presented as “the message.”

  29. bmaz says:

    Holy crap. Justice Souter is retiring. Just announced at the end of Maddow’s show. I have always had an abiding fear that Obama will nominate the absolutely, positively, loathsome Cass Sunstein to the first “male” opening to the Supremes. This is not an idle fear either, Obama loves Sunstein and has intimated he is Supreme material before. Yikes.

    • Leen says:

      Do you think Cass Sunstein is the big pusher of the “move forward, turn the page, new chapter” forget about the blood in the streets mantra?

    • Ishmael says:

      The first “male” opening would be a perfect opportunity to increase the female representation – how about Elena Kagan? It will be interesting to see how obstructionist the Republicans will be in the Senate.

      • phred says:

        Given that O’Connor was replaced by a man, one could argue we’re down one at the moment. Here’s hoping Obama chooses to get us back to two women — if only for the sake of sparing us a pinhead like Sunstein.

        • bmaz says:

          If ti is a woman, I think the two leading candidates are Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Don’t like either one of them.

          • phred says:

            Have you ever noticed how you have a habit of raining on my little parades??? ; )

            I don’t think I have heard of Sotomayer and I’ve heard of Kagan, but can’t remember why. Feel free to enlighten me (if not on this thread, then on one that will undoubtedly turn up as the various contenders are discussed).

            For now though, I must bid you goodnight…

  30. SparklestheIguana says:

    Let’s hope Obama doesn’t pick this as a time to be bipartisan…..

    And I hate Sunstein too.

    Patrick Fitzgerald…..?

  31. Mary says:

    fatster – I love your links, but between the stress test issues from your 118 and the worse still news on Souter, I’m bummed. I had just read something about him not selecting clerks, but they were saying oh, don’t worry, he never does until the last minute. *s*

    Obama is going to stack the court with more torture supporters and insider circlers, while we start to lose the likes of Ginsburg, Stevens & Souter.

    I’m gonna go wine.

    • greenwarrior says:

      while you’re wining, is there anything we can do proactively/defensively to convince obama to make a good appointment. i’d be curious, for starters, to hear who the lawyers and others who are well-informed in this area would pick as good choices. any suggestions? seems like it’d be worth a thread or two.

        • greenwarrior says:

          “It is not a whine, it is the freaking truth.”

          i didn’t say whine. i said wine in response to rayne saying she was going to wine.

          just to spell it out for you, i didn’t think she mispelled “whine”. i thought she meant she was going to have a drink of wine. and when i responded “while you’re wining” i was talking about “while you’re having some wine”.

    • fatster says:

      I do hope you picked up some extra lemon squares so you can savor them along with your wine. Wishing you a good evening.

  32. texasaggie says:

    How this woman can live with herself is beyond me. There was a soldier who committed suicide for being required to do things that were less obnoxious than the stuff that Condi is doing. And this woman not only continues to justify what she did, but she is proud of it!!

    The next time someone says that because of the memos it wasn’t torture, ask them Mark Twain’s famous question. If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer: four, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one. By the same token, calling waterboarding enhanced interrogation doesn’t change a thing. It is still torture.

  33. Leen says:

    “Richard Clarke’s testimony about the possibility of an attack against the United States homeland was repeatedly discussed from May to August within the intelligence community and that is well documented. You acknowledged that Richard Clarke told you that Al Queda cells were in the United States. Did you tell the President at anytime prior to Aug 6 of the existence of Al Queda cells in the United States?”

    Blah blah blah blah

    Condi “No recommendation that we do something about this but the F.B.I was pursuing it”

    “I don’t remember the Al Queda cells as something that we were told to do something about”

    Jesus Mary and Joseph
    Did I hear that right?

  34. TheraP says:

    It’ll never happen. She’s not the right one. But in a movie I can imagine, I see Anita Hill as the nominee – Specter, now a Dem, having to swallow that in public on tv – all the programs reviewing the old tapes, Specter having to apologize to her. Then she goes to the Court. And somehow Thomas has to resign in shame.

    Nice movie in my head…

  35. nahant says:

    Read abot these Video’s in the Stanford Daily this morning and the first thing I said was that “Condi is a lying BITCH!!” The writer of the piece agreed with me!! But not in those words…

  36. bmaz says:

    Mary would have my full endorsement. She is somewhat more improbable than even Chemerisnsky, but I would wholeheartedly support her.

  37. SparklestheIguana says:

    Well, this is what he’s looking for. Who qualifies?

    “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom,” Obama said. “The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criterion by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

  38. LabDancer says:

    IMO these things are worth emphasizing:

    [a] by custom the first priority for a successful nominee is the ability to prove facility with the Constitution;
    [b] its in the nature of this particular POTUS to make ‘grand’ gestures which are also smart moves, where he can, and where making such suits his agenda — which suggests a woman;
    [c] from all he’s written and said, the three greatest influences on this fellow have all been women;
    [d] in contrast with the last POTUS, this one has a professional history with and interest in constitutional law, and a personal familiarity with those who evidence strength in that area — which suggests he has a right to feel he’s about as knowledgeable and expert a ‘decider’ on this matter as any individual extant;
    [e] that professional history shows particular focus on voting rights, organizational rights and a number of other issues which get lumped into poverty law programs;
    [f] the main focus of his mother’s career was in micro-banking, and he himself spent a year working in banking mostly with that same focus in mind, and looking towards his next step into community organizing;
    and
    [g] among other things he’s spent time teaching and speaking about publicly is the role of the SCOTUS in the New Deal.

    Here’s my best guess:

    http://dickensurl.com/8424/Fan….._rosy_wine

    • bmaz says:

      Jordan isn’t Ivy League in any regard, which all but eliminates her from consideration by Obama. His track record shows almost exclusive dedication to Ivy Leaguers, and most all of those from Harvard. Secondly, Jordan looks too liberal, Obama will pick someone that is a total centrist like Sotomayor or Kagan.

  39. SparklestheIguana says:

    What about either Charles Ogletree or the guy he accidentially plagiarized from, Jack Balkin.

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