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99 Comments
- inactive, on 04/30/2009, -1/+78"Once something has been approved by the Government, It's no longer immoral." - Reverend Lovejoy
- IrishJoe, on 04/30/2009, -4/+72So, if Clinton had authorized blowjobs and lying about it that would have been OK with the Republicans?
- freedomjoe, on 04/30/2009, -2/+66I can't believe she said that out loud. on tape. what an idiot. these people have NO ***** clue about the law or the fact that they had an obligation to the constitution, not to Bush. It's outrageous. She isn't even sorry!
- Hetman, on 04/30/2009, -1/+55How many times can we allow people to use that excuse. Anytime there is torture or Genocide by a country everybody has the same excuse. I was just following orders. Rice is not a soldier she is a politician. She does not have to agree with everything an adminstration says. She is allowed to voice her opinion and even quite the administration with out being charged for deserstion like a soldier. As far as I know she swore an oath to the constitution not the Bush administration.
- charlie6969, on 04/30/2009, -1/+53I'm speechless.
I know, it's amazing huh? - ScienceDoc, on 04/30/2009, -4/+54Rice has always been a complete idiot. The Bushes hired her because "she knows stuff about Russia". Don't forget that she was in charge of National Security on September 11, 2001. There was a Chevron oil tanker named after her. She will forever be a sad footnote in history. Now she just needs to STFU.
- inactive, on 04/30/2009, -0/+42"Im not a crook." -Richard Nixon.
"The one secret no one ever suspected is that i really did stage the moon landing...on Venus! AROOOO!" -head of Richard Nixon - LeftieLucy, on 04/30/2009, -2/+40Come on, Condi, everyone who's seen the trailer for Frost/Nixon know that that's total bullpuckey.
- sandbun, on 04/30/2009, -1/+29Who cares what Rice things anymore? The real problem is Obama seems to agree. How else can you reconcile "No one is above the law" with "This is a time for reflection, not retribution"?
- Suzilla, on 05/01/2009, -3/+31Ok, I have to object. Rice is a war criminal in my book, but she's far from being an idiot. She has a doctorate in Russian studies and speaks the language fluently. Before and after her stint in the White(wash) House, she was and is now a professor at Stanford University.
If she were, indeed, an idiot it might make her actions (or inaction) somewhat excusable. However, this is someone who is highly intelligent, yet amoral. She's of the same ilk as Rove. Both should be behind bars for their crimes. - beautifulady, on 04/30/2009, -2/+28A very clumsy attempt to CYA by saying, "I didn't authorize it, I only conveyed the authorization," as in, "I was only the messenger, I didn't write the message." Sure, Condi, sure. Guess, what, your ass is still showing.
- rotundo, on 05/01/2009, -0/+24That really cuts to the heart of it right there. People get so confused by words. Legal and ethical are two different things. Ideally, legal tries to track as closely to ethical as possible, but when they diverge, you can identify the idiots by their inability to tell the difference.
- hawkeye17, on 04/30/2009, -1/+25That kind of thinking leads to a scary place for America. It's called fascism.
- ThsGuyRightHere, on 04/30/2009, -2/+25We knew all along that Bush was getting his advice from machiavellian neo-cons, thanks for confirming that for us Ms. Rice!
- Ouze, on 05/01/2009, -0/+22It's completely unfair to compare the Bush administration to Nixon.
Nixon ended Vietnam, brought us the EPA, OSHA, the Equal Rights Employment Act, endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment, indexed social security for inflation, approved development of the Space Shuttle, opened relationships with China, and - this is key - when his wrongdoings became public, had the grace to resign the office.
What did the Bush administration do in 8 years? - niradg, on 04/30/2009, -1/+22http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvyDn1TPr8
- pintomp3, on 05/01/2009, -0/+20Just because something was made into a movie doesn't mean it never happened. Do you think Titanic was only a movie?
- beardog4321, on 05/01/2009, -2/+20Ole' Condi forgot this part-
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment-
PART I
Article 1
1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.
Article 2
1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
Condi also missed Article 2.3 - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+16He kept us free from tiger attacks since the last tiger attack!
- Suzilla, on 05/01/2009, -1/+17Gerald Ford faced similar criticism for pardoning Richard Nixon, though I'd say BushCo surpassed Nixon in the number and severity of their misdeeds.
As much as I'm displeased with Obama's choice to "move forward" and not bring BushCo to account, I can understand his strategy and I can see how, ultimately, the country might be better off for it. Consider the following:
1) By not going after them he robs the loony right whack-jobs and their Faux Noise cheerleaders of any real issue to yammer about and rally folks around. So far, their best show has been those staged "teabag" parties. I think it's safe to say they sputtered onto and off of the map with not so much as a tea leaf landing on the White House lawn. This, in turn, robs them of the ability to distract public attention in any substantive way from the problems created and left by BushCo that we must now focus on solving. Put another way, what BushCo did was awful. But in the grander scheme of things, the economic mess they left us with far outweighs those crimes.
2) Ask people living overseas -- other than those in predominantly Muslim countries, that is -- how much of a priority they think it is to go after BushCo and most of them will tell you the far greater priority is to get the economies of the world back on track. Mostly, they'll tell you they're glad Bush is gone and that they're looking forward to things returning to normal, or, at least as they were before Bush usurped the presidency.
3) There is NO statute-of-limitations on war crimes. Notice the articles lately on Damjanyuk -- the former German soldier who's been living here since after WWI, who's now being deported back to Germany to stand trial for his crimes? He's old, he's ailing, but justice has caught up with him and he will stand trial, regardless. Obama's got a law degree from a very good law school. You can bet he's thought this all through.
4) I keep hearing it said that in order for the US to restore it's moral standing in the world we must prosecute those who have committed these crimes. They should be prosecuted, yes. But moral standing? Puh-leeze! US foreign policy is known the world-over for being the most hypocritical and self-serving of all nations. Before BushCo came along, and still, though they now be gone, we're telling other countries that they cannot have nucliear weapons, even though the US remains, as of this writing, the ONLY nation on earth that has ever used such a weapon in anger. Put simply, the rest of the world already knows we're morally bankrupt. But, fortunately for us, they like us -- or, at least they like our money -- anyway.
5) What Obama did was to defer going after BushCo, but, he didn't foreclose the possibility. Unlike Ford, Obama hasn't pardoned Bush or any of the others, nor has ANY talk of this even come up, ever. Obama may not ever go after BushCo, but he's none the less left the door open for them to be brought to justice, someday. - JoeMondo, on 05/01/2009, -4/+19That's what you get when you put a glorified admin assistant in a position of power under a bunch of sociopaths.
- mikehe12, on 05/01/2009, -0/+14No wonder our national security and foreign policy were such a mess for 8 years, when a top official makes arguments like these:
1. Al Qaeda was more dangerous than Nazi Germany. Really? A ragtag band of insurgents located in one of the poorest countries in the world, versus an industrialized, militarized world power that had already conquered entire countries? And why? Because they managed an attack actually on US soil? Apparently, she's already forgotten about Pearl Harbor. (I know it was the Japanese, but WWII is about the Axis alliance as a whole, not just Germany.)
2. Paraphrasing on torture: "Everything we did was legal" and so "by definition, if it was authorized, it was legal". How circular can you get! She completely ignores the fact that this definition comes from their legal memos, which are atrocities of legal logic, and which they asked for specifically to justify torture! And how about the fact that when legal memos arguing the opposite case were presented, they were silenced:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/22/723201 ...
3. She claims the ICRC found Guantanamo to be a "model medium security prison" without signs of torture. This one is just a blatant lie, easily disproven by anyone with an Internet connection.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4267297.stm
http://www.markdanner.com/articles/show/151
The actual report: "The ICRC clearly considers that the allegations of the fourteen include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques... that amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf
4. Her whole argument is about how torture was used to save American lives. But what about the fact that it was used to try to provide a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to justify a war? And when no such link was found, EVER, they decided to continue anyway. How is that about defending American lives?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
When you torture (in March 2003) to provide justification for a war you've already been authorized to wage and are just about ready to launch, that's for political reasons, not moral ones. Especially when you come into office and instruct your administration to begin looking for ways to start this war 10 days after being inaugurated, before Sept. 11.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minute ...
So with all due respect (very little), Condi Rice is the one that needs to do her homework. - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+12Look right above you to learn how debates are conducted between civilized people.
- publiclurker, on 05/01/2009, -3/+15Try again, and this time leave your superstitious invisible friend out of it.
- clankster, on 05/01/2009, -0/+10There's balls, and there's blind adherence to dogma at the expense of intellectual rigor. The reason the Republican party has imploded is that it lost the ability to tell the difference.
- egoideal, on 05/01/2009, -1/+11I think it would've been ok with everyone.
- TekTrixter, on 05/01/2009, -0/+9The real question is: can the president define oral sex as not being sex?
- gipp, on 05/02/2009, -0/+9Nixon... really DID say that, you know.
- utopianlady, on 05/01/2009, -2/+11Condoleezza Nixon, very sad.
- GBPACKGB, on 05/01/2009, -0/+9You wacky republicans!
- seltaeb4, on 05/01/2009, -3/+12The crooks of the Bush Administration make the Nixon crowd look like choirboys.
- gemlarin, on 05/02/2009, -0/+8Is there ever a convenient time to pursue criminals? You don't blow off punishing criminals because of convenience.
- FredFredrickson, on 05/01/2009, -0/+8Another sore loser trying to pretend like nothing has changed, or that liberals think Obama is some kind of a Messiah. You guys are a dime a dozen these days, and worth half as much.
Liberals have been some of Obama's harshest critics since he became president. If anything, they address issues and take him to task on them, instead of constantly blurting out the same old useless ***** like you conservatives do.
As far as the economy is concerned, we're all in this together. Either the system got fixed with a stimulus / recovery plan, and we pay it back gradually, or the system got fixed with a full-on crash, which we'd all have to pay for in one big hit. Obama chose the former plan, and I think that was the right thing to do. - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+8Yeah, but she needs to tell herself something to sleep at night, doesn't she?
- NotAChickenHawk, on 05/02/2009, -0/+6"assassination of three incompetent black teenage Muslim pirates who hadn't hurt anyone".
Assassination? How is it an assassination if, at the moment they are killed, these non-U.S. citizens have an American citizen at gunpoint whom they have threatened to kill repeatedly?
Incompetent? They seemed plenty competent when it came to boarding the ship. They seemed plenty competent when they tricked the rest of the crew to give back the 4th pirate under the false pretense that if the crew did so, they'd return the captain.
Hadn't hurt anyone? Wow. It really takes some balls to make an argument like that. Too bad there's no brains behind it. There were only three ways that situation could end. Death/capture of the pirates and/or rescue of the captain, death of the captain, or the pirates voluntarily released him probably after receiving a ransom. "Assassinating" them, as you put it, ensured they didn't hurt anyone, despite the fact that they were quite willing to do so.
In any case, since your friend Mr. Bush and his stooges seemed, on multiple occasions, quite willing to kill people whose identities were no more known than looking at tiny specs on the video camera of a Predator drone - far from people we could say with any degree of certainty had hurt anyone either.
Frankly, the entire conservative argument on the whole torture issue wilts under even the slightest bit of scrutiny. When we break our own Constitution - when we deny people (even terrorists) the freedoms and rights in guarantees, we erode those very same freedoms and rights. Since eroding those freedoms and rights is in large part what the terrorists themselves are trying to achieve, by torturing them we may be hurting some individual terrorists, but we are greatly benefiting their cause and in so doing harming ourselves.
Furthermore, torturing in the name of saving lives goes against every principal our country was founded on. How many men and women during the history of our country, from colonial times through today, have sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom? Yes - died to ensure our freedom.
Yet the conservative position on the issue of torture is the exact opposite - they advocate sacrificing some of our freedom in order to save some lives. Why is it that all of you "patriotic" conservatives aren't willing to see some lives sacrificed in the name of freedom? Even your own lives? Do you love your country, and what it represents, or don't you? Is the conservative ideal of a true American a politician who dodged the draft advocating sending others off to war?
I thank God every day that the ideals represented by the modern conservative have not, despite the best efforts of some, eclipsed the very ideals of our national fabric. If Patrick Henry knew that less than 10 generations after he told King George "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!" that a good percentage of our country would have done a 180 and adopted the opposite philosophy, he might not have bothered. He'd probably turn over in his grave if he saw what some of you have become.
It sure is a strange philosophy to trot out Lee Greenwood at a moments notice to sing us a patriotic song about men who died to protect our freedoms, all to gather support to send our sons and daughters off to die in unjustifiable and unnecessary wars that nothing to protect those freedomes, and then sink so low as to go off and erode these freedoms to save some lives that don't seem to matter much to you when you want to go fight a war.
As for the rest of us, who actually believe in freedom and actually do love our country, and who would actually sacrifice for both those things if it were necessary to do so, I'd say we're quite happy to be called "Dopey Liberal Moonbats", even if it is ridiculously misguided. At least when you do that, you too are sharing in the freedoms that we love. - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -2/+9She has always been a spineless sell out
- Seminarian, on 05/02/2009, -0/+7There was a videotape. Unless you're claiming it was forged somehow, it's about as real a source as possible.
- inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+7If you are constantly reading articles about this "techniques" and getting pissed off, PLEASE
Spend 2 minutes and email your congressman
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/ ...
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml - sooner82, on 05/01/2009, -1/+8Condoleeza Rice? Sounds like a mexican dish. Maybe we should put her on a plate so the mexicans can eat her....White Power.
- inactive, on 05/01/2009, -1/+8He kept us free from attacks since 9/11!
/s - clankster, on 05/01/2009, -0/+7Am I the only one who finds her condescending tone as she defends morally dubious acts with circular logic depressing?
- MacEnvy, on 05/02/2009, -0/+7Not exactly surprising. A lot of them are the same people (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc).
- Tryptomine, on 05/01/2009, -0/+6No he didn't, that rock did!
- Napiertt, on 05/02/2009, -0/+6It would be great if the American people and institutions could summon up the courage to investigate this fully for all the world to see that a "nation of laws" takes its obligations seriously.
What happened to America being the "Home of the Brave"? Why is America so afraid of these pathetic fanatics? How could America so quickly abandon what it stood for when things got tough? Why do you allow the Cheneys (who deferred on Viet Nam FIVE times) to be the voice of "toughness" and keep you all in perpetual fear of another attack?
America as a nation will always endure, if it sticks to its principles and values. There may be another attack on U.S soil, but only America can defeat itself.
What ever happened to leaders who said things like "There's nothing to fear, but fear itself"? - SpinningHead, on 05/01/2009, -0/+6He tortured Martians to keep us safe from the invasion being planned on Venus.
- inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+6When who put your dick in their mouth is nobody's business?
- inactive, on 05/02/2009, -0/+5you're so right. bush and his cabinet authorized no torture. it's a left wing conspiracy to turn the US into a socialist, communist, fetus hating, god hating, devoid of white people country.
/s - novenator, on 05/02/2009, -0/+5Feel free to go to Rigg at your earliest convenience.
R-igg | Crowd-Powered News for the Right
http://www.r-igg.com/
While you're at it, maybe citing conservapedia might be up your alley too - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+5Condi bares her own level of responsibility.
- inactive, on 05/01/2009, -2/+7Than Condoleza Rice? Is that a serious question?
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