Condi testifies

Oh, dance around me spinning like a top
Oh, Condi, Condi, Condi, don't ever stop
                                  - Steve Earle "Condi, Condi"

Condi, Condi was dancing around the Senators' questions in her hearing Tuesday for confirmation as Secretary of State.  I haven't gone through the entire transcript.  But don't miss the exchange with Barbara Boxer that begins on page 49 of this transcript:  Confirmation Hearing of Condoleeza Rice New York Times 01/18/05. I've linked to page 49.  You can see the whole thing without the pagination in the printer version.

I'm proud of our California Senator Boxer.  She really challenged Condi, Condi in a way that the press and Congress should have been doing a long time ago:

Dr. Rice, I was glad you mentioned Martin Luther King -- was very appropriate, given everything. And he also said -- Martin Luther King -- quote, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. And one of the things that matters most to my people in California and the people of America is this war in Iraq. Now, it took you to page three of your testimony to mention the word Iraq. You said very little, really, about it, and only in this questioning have you been able to get into some areas. Perhaps you agree with President Bush who said, All that's been resolved -- I'm quoting today's Post. Bush said in an interview last week with The Washington Post that the '04 election was a moment of accountability for the decisions he made in Iraq. But today's Washington Post-ABC poll found that 58 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation to 40 percent who approve and only 44 percent said the war was worth fighting.

So in your statement, it takes you to page three to mention the word Iraq. Then you mention it in the context of elections, which is fine. But you never even mentioned indirectly the 1,366 American troops that have died or the 10,372 who have been wounded, many mentally. There's a report that I read over the weekend that maybe a third will come home and need help because of what they saw. It's been so traumatic to them. And 25 percent of those dead are from my home state. This from a war that was based on what everyone now says, including your own administration, were falsehoods about WMDs, weapons of mass destruction. ...

And as much as I want to look ahead -- and we will work together on a myriad of issues -- it's hard for me to let go of this war because people are still dying. And you have not laid out an exit strategy. You've not set up a timetable. And you don't seem to be willing to, A, admit a mistake, or give any indication of what you're going to do to forcefully involve others. 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. ...

We sent our beautiful people -- and thank you, thank you so much for your comments about them -- to defend freedom. You sent them in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later, the mission changed when there were none. I have your quotes on it. I have the president's quotes on it. And everybody admits it but you that that was the reason for the war. And then once we're in there, now it moved to a different mission. Which is great, we all want to give democracy and freedom everywhere we can possibly do it, but let's not rewrite history. It's too soon to do that.

When Condi, Condi blew some smoke about how the claims of Iraq's WMDs were such a big part of the reason for going to war, Boxer responded:

Well, you should you 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 Congressional resolution also specified that the administration had to show a link of Saddam to anti-American terrorism and specifically to the 9/11 attacks.  But they didn't do that, either.

I've quoted a long segment of Boxer's comments here.  But go read the whole thing.  It's a good (but all too rare) example of what a real Congress sounds like.  We hear things like this way too seldom from our Chamber of People's Deputies.

Now, our Potemkin press corps, who knows they're expected to treat Condi, condi as their darling, gave more play to her defensive response:

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.

You know, Condi, Condi may have a point here.  Since her credibility and integrity are obviously as nonexistent as the Iraq WMDs that she hyped so shamelessly, it's kind of unfair to impugn something she doesn't have.

Joe Biden isn't always on his game.  But he did pretty well today.  He asked Condi, Condi how many Iraqi troops she thought had been trained to handle the counterinsurgency war.  She responded:

Senator, I have to rely on what I get from the field. ... We think the number right now is somewhere over 120,000. We think that, among those people, there clearly continue to be questions about on-duty time, that is, people who don't report for duty. And so this is being looked at. ... But I do want to note, Senator, that the Iraqis are making a lot of sacrifices here ... their soldiers, their police, in places like Fallujah, in places like Samarra, in places like Najaf. They have played an active role in their security. But it is a process that takes some time. We believe that we've made some progress. We have more progress to make.

BIDEN: Well, I thank you for your answer. I think you'll find, if you speak to the folks on the ground, they don't think there's more than 4,000 actually trained Iraqi forces. I strongly urge you to pick up the phone or go see these folks. And the reason I press it is not that the Iraqis aren't sacrificing. They are. But that's almost irrelevant in one regard. The exit strategy for America is a trained force of several hundred thousand people. We're talking about a year or more to get anywhere close to that. We should level with the American people about it. But after you take a hard look as secretary of state, I'd like to talk with you more about that. [my emphasis]

Today was the first time I really had the feeling that Congress was beginning to do its job in this war and directly ask the hard questions to the people responsible for the Iraq War disaster.  I certainly hope they keep it up.