Statement of Senator Levin: Condoleezza Rice

[Moses]

levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=230854

I. Exaggerations and Distortions
II. Rewriting History
III. No Accountability

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The Bush Administration’s pre-war distortions and exaggerations of intelligence concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda were the publicly-stated basis for initiating the war.

Voting to confirm Dr. Rice as Secretary of State would be a stamp of approval for her participation in the distortions and exaggerations of intelligence that the Administration used to initiate the war Iraq, and the hubris which led to their inexcusable failure to plan and prepare for the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein with tragic ongoing consequences.

I believe we must do all we can to support our troops in their efforts to create a democratic government in Iraq, despite the circumstances we are in. But I cannot in good conscience give my approval to the mistakes and misjudgments that helped create those circumstances.

I will therefore vote against the confirmation of Dr. Rice as Secretary of State.

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Senator Levin also submitted for the record a record of his questions to Dr. Rice and her answers in Committee (Exhibit 1) (http://thomas.loc.gov)( Pdf: href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2005_record&page=S388&position=all)

[Moses]

Senator Kennedy's Statement:

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I commend my friend and colleague, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, for the way he conducted the hearings on the nomination for Secretary of State. I think many of us who were not members of the committee but followed the hearings very closely were enormously impressed by the conduct of the hearings, by the flexibility he showed in permitting Senators to follow up on questions so we could reach the real nub of the situation and yet to move the hearings along in a timely way. That is part of the long tradition that is associated with the chairman of the committee, and it is one of the reasons, among others, that he is held in such high regard and respect in the Senate.

   I intend to oppose Condoleezza Rice's nomination. There is no doubt that Dr. Rice has impressive credentials. Her life story is very moving, and she has extensive experience in foreign policy. In general, I believe the President should be able to choose his Cabinet officials, but this nomination is different because of the war in Iraq.

   Dr. Rice was a key member of the national security team that developed and justified the rationale for war, and it has been a catastrophic failure, a continuing quagmire. In these circumstances, she should not be promoted to Secretary of State.

   There is a critical question about accountability. Dr. Rice was a principal architect and advocate of the decision to go to war in Iraq at a time when our mission in Afghanistan was not complete and Osama bin Laden was a continuing threat because of our failure to track him down. In the Armed Services Committee before the war, generals advised against the rush to war, but Dr. Rice and others in the administration pressed forward anyway despite the clear warnings.

   Dr. Rice was the first in the administration to invoke the terrifying image of a nuclear holocaust to justify the need to go to war in Iraq. On September 9, 2002, as Congress was first considering the resolution to authorize the war, Dr. Rice said: We do not want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud.

   In fact, as we now know, there was significant disagreement in the intelligence community that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, but Dr. Rice spoke instead about a consensus in the intelligence community that the infamous aluminum tubes were for the development of nuclear weapons. On the eve of the war many of us argued that inspectors should be given a chance to do their job and that America should share information to facilitate their work.

   In a March 6, 2000, letter to Senator Levin, Dr. Rice assured the Congress that the United Nations inspectors had been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction missile and UAV-related site the U.S. intelligence community has identified. In fact, we had not done so. Dr. Rice was plain wrong.

   The Intelligence Committee report on the prewar intelligence at page 418 stated:


   Public pronouncements by Administration officials that the Central Intelligence Agency had shared information on all high and moderate priority suspect sites with United Nations inspectors were factually incorrect.


   Had Dr. Rice and others in the administration shared all of the information, it might have changed the course of history. We might have discovered that there were no

   weapons of mass destruction. The rush to war might have been stopped. We would have stayed focused on the real threat, kept faith with our allies, and would be safer today.

   America is in deep trouble in Iraq today because of our misguided policy, and the quagmire is very real. Nearly 1,400 of our finest men and women in uniform have been killed and more than 10,000 have been wounded. We now know that Saddam had no nuclear weapons, had no weapons of mass destruction of any kind, and that the war has not made America safer from the threat of al-Qaida. Instead, as the National Intelligence Council recently stated, the war has made Iraq a breeding ground for terrorism that previously did not exist.

   As a result, the war has made us less secure, not more secure. It has increased support for al-Qaida, made America more hated in the world, and made it much harder to win the real war against terrorism, the war against al-Qaida.

   Before we can repair our broken policy, the administration needs to admit it is broken. Yet in 2 days of confirmation hearings, Dr. Rice categorically defended the President's decision to invade Iraq, saying the strategic decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was the right one. She defended the President's decision to ignore the advice of GEN Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, who thought that a large number of troops would be necessary if we went to war.

   She said:


   I do believe that the plan and forces that we went in with were appropriate to the task.


   She refused to disavow the shameful acts of torture that have undermined America's credibility in Iraq and the world.

   When Senator Dodd asked her whether in her personal view, as a matter of basic humanity, the interrogation techniques amounted to torture, she said:


   I'm not going to speak to any specific interrogation techniques ..... The determination of whether interrogation techniques are consistent with our international obligations and American law are made by the Justice Department. I don't want to comment on any specific interrogation techniques.


   This is after Senator Dodd asked about water-boarding and other interrogation techniques. She continued:


   I don't think that would be appropriate, and I think it would not be very good for American security.


   Yet, as Secretary of State, Dr. Rice will be the chief human rights official for our Government.

   She will be responsible for monitoring human rights globally, and defending America's human rights record. She cannot abdicate that responsibility or hide behind the Justice Department if Secretary of State.

   Dr. Rice also minimized the enormous challenge we face in training a competent Iraqi security force. She insisted 120,000 Iraqis now have been trained, when the quality of training for the vast majority of them is obviously very much in doubt.

   There was no reason to go to war in Iraq when we did, the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given. As a principal architect of our failed policy, Dr. Rice is the wrong choice for Secretary of State. We need, instead, a Secretary who is open to a clearer vision and a better strategy to stabilize Iraq, to work with the international community, to bring our troops home with dignity and honor, and to restore our lost respect in the world.

   The stakes are very high and the challenge is vast. Dr. Rice's failed record on Iraq makes her unqualified for promotion to Secretary of State and I urge the Senate to oppose her nomination.

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thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:17:./temp/~r1090hf1Yk:e28035:

[Moses]

Senator Dayton's statement:

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Mr. DAYTON. .... I rise today to oppose the nomination of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State. I do so because she misled me about the situation in Iraq before and after the congressional resolution in October of 2002 authorizing that war, a resolution that I opposed. She misled other Members of Congress about the situation in Iraq, Members who have said they would have opposed that resolution if they had been told the truth, and she misled the people of Minnesota and Americans everywhere about the situation in Iraq before and after that war began.

   It is a war in which 1,372 American soldiers have lost their lives, and over 10,000 have been wounded--many of them maimed for life. Thousands more have been scarred emotionally and physically. All of those families and thousands of other American families whose loved ones are now serving in Iraq are suffering serious financial and family hardships, and must wonder and worry every day and night for a year or longer whether their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are still alive, will stay alive, and wonder when they will be coming home. For many, the answer is: Not soon.

   I read in today's Washington Post that the Army is planning to keep its current troop strength in Iraq at 120,000 for at least 2 more years. I did not learn that information as a Member of Congress. I did not learn it as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee where I regularly attend public hearings, classified meetings, and top secret briefings. I did not learn it from the U.S. military command in Iraq with whom I met in Baghdad last month. I read it in the Washington Post, just as I read last weekend that the Secretary of Defense has created his own new espionage arm by ``reinterpreting an existing law,'' without informing most, if any, Members of Congress and by reportedly ``reprogramming funds appropriated for other purposes;'' just as I learned last weekend by reading the New York Times that the Administration is exploring a reinterpretation of the law to allow secret U.S. commando units to operate in this country.

   I also learned of official reports documenting horrible abuses of prisoners, innocent civilians as well as enemy combatants, at numerous locations in countries besides the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which directly contradicts assurances we have been given repeatedly by administration officials in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

   I might as well skip all the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings and meetings and top secret briefings and just read the papers--and thank goodness for a free and vigilant press to ferret out the truth and to report the truth, because we cannot get the truth from this administration.

   Sadly, the attitude of too many of my colleagues across the aisle is: Our President, regardless whether he is wrong, wrong, or wrong, they defend him, they protect him, and they allow his top administration officials to get away with lying. Lying to Congress, lying to our committees, and lying to the American people. It is wrong. It is immoral. It is un-American. And it has to stop.

   It stops by not promoting top administration officials who engage in the practice, who have been instrumental in deceiving Congress and the American people and, regrettably, that includes Dr. Rice.

   Dr. Rice, in a television interview on September 8, 2002, as the administration was launching its campaign to scare the American people and stampede Congress about Saddam Hussein's supposedly urgent threat to our national security, shrewdly invoked the ultimate threat, that he possessed or would soon possess nuclear weapons. She said that day:


   We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.


   Soon thereafter she and other top administration officials cited intercepted aluminum tubes as definite proof that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program underway. Dr. Rice stated publicly at the time the tubes:


   ......are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.


   In late September of 2002, shortly before we in Congress were to vote on the Iraq war resolution, Dr. Rice invited me, along with I believe five of my Senate colleagues, to the White House where we were briefed by her and then-CIA Director George Tenet. That briefing was classified. What I was shown and told conformed to Dr. Rice's public statements, with no qualification whatsoever. Now, of course, we have been told, after an exhaustive search for 18 months by over 1,400 United States weapons inspectors, that Saddam Hussein did not have an active nuclear weapons development program underway and that he apparently possessed no weapons of mass destruction of any kind. We have also been told that in the fall of 2002, right at the time of my meeting in the White House, right at the time of the Senate and the House's votes on the Iraq war resolution, the top nuclear experts at the U.S. Department of Energy and officials in other Federal agencies were disagreeing strongly with Dr. Rice's claim that those aluminum tubes could only have been intended for use in developing nuclear weapons materials.

   That expert dissent and honest disagreement--a different point of view--was not communicated to me then nor was it brought to me later. I received no phone call or letter saying: Senator Dayton just wanted to correct a mis-impression that I unintentionally gave you at that meeting. I now have information that contradicts what we were told then. I still believe in my own views but I want you to be aware of others before you cast the most important vote of your Senate career or even a call or communication after that vote was cast. There was nothing.

   When Senator Boxer rightly pressed Dr. Rice on this point in the Foreign Relations confirmation hearing, there was no admission even then of any mistake. In fact, she replied: ``I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you, very much.''

   There is a saying that we judge ourselves by our intentions; others judge it by our actions.

   I don't know what Dr. Rice's intentions were, but I do have direct experience with her actions. There was no slight misunderstanding, or a slip, or even a mistake that was limited to one meeting. This was a public statement made repeatedly by Dr. Rice and similar words by Vice President Cheney and even by President Bush as part of an all-out campaign, which continues even today, to mobilize public support and maintain public support for the invasion of Iraq and for continuing war there regardless of what the facts were then, or are now, and it has been done by misrepresenting those facts, by distorting the facts, by withholding the facts, by hiding the truth, by hiding the truth in matters of life and death, of war and peace, that profoundly affect our national security, our international reputation, and our future well-being--and will for many years to come.

   I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity. But I really do not like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is un-American, and it is dangerous. It is very dangerous, and it is occurring far too frequently in this administration.

   This Congress, this Senate must demand that it stop now. My vote against this nomination is my statement that this administration's lying must stop now. I urge my colleagues to join me in this demand, Democrat, Republicans, Independents. All of us first and foremost are Americans. We must be told the truth--for us to govern our country and to preserve our world. That is why we must vote against this nomination.

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thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:17:./temp/~r1090hf1Yk:e48266:

[Moses]

Statement of Senator Bayh:
Mr. BAYH. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for her courtesy, and I pledge I will do my best to finish in 10 minutes or less.

[Page: S389] GPO's PDF

   It is a pleasure to be on the floor today with my friend and colleague from Indiana. I have often thought that events around the world, and particularly in Iraq, would have gone so much better if those in a position to make policy for our country had listened to his wise counsel and advice. It is not often I find myself in disagreement with my friend, but on this occasion I do.

   I rise to express my opposition to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice and her proposed promotion to that of the position of Secretary of State--not because I object to her personally; I do not; not because I oppose the mission of establishing freedom and democracy in Iraq; on the contrary, I support it; but because I believe she has been a principal architect of policy errors that have tragically undermined our prospects for success in this endeavor.

   Those in charge must be held accountable for mistakes. We must learn from them, correct them, so we may succeed in Iraq. If the President of the United States will not do this, then those in the Senate must.

   The list of errors is lengthy and profound, and, unfortunately, many could have been avoided if Dr. Rice and others had only listened to the counsel offered from both sides of the aisle.

   From the beginning of this undertaking, we have had inadequate troop strength to accomplish the mission. The mission was, of course, not to simply realize regime change in Iraq but, instead, to recognize and accomplish nation building at its most profound. We violated a fundamental tenet of planning for war, which is to plan for the worst and hope for the best. Instead, all too often in Iraq we have hoped for the best and, instead, are reaching the worst.

   The advice to have greater troop strength was not partisan. Our colleagues, Senator McCain, Senator Hagel, and others, virtually pleaded with the administration to provide for greater security through troop strength on the ground. Those pleas fell on deaf ears.

   We have never had a realistic plan for the aftermath of this conflict. The State Department made plans. They were disregarded. The CIA warned of the potential for a growing insurgency. Their concerns were dismissed. Senator Lugar held hearings that were prescient in this regard, pointing out the importance of planning for the aftermath and the inadequacy of the preparation for the aftermath before the war. The results of those hearings were ignored.

   This is no ordinary incompetence. Men and women are dying as a result of these mistakes. Accountability must be had. We dismissed the Iraqi Army.

   In my trip to Iraq in December, one of our top ranking officials told me there that things today in Iraq would be 100-percent better--100-percent better--if we had only not dismissed the Iraqi Army; not the generals, not the human rights violators, not those who should be held accountable for their own actions, but the privates, the corporals, the lieutenants, the captains, those who should be on our side providing for stability and security in Iraq and now, tragically, are being paid to kill Americans because we sent them home and said they had no future in the Iraq that we were hoping to build.

   Likewise, we disqualified all former Baathists from serving even in lower levels of the bureaucracy in that country. They could have helped us run the nation. They could have helped us to reassure the Sunni community that we wanted to reincorporate them in the future of Iraq. Instead, many of them are fighting us today in Iraq as well.

   All of these mistakes have substantially undermined our prospects for success, and tragically so. The chaos that has arisen from the lack of security and stability has fed this insurgency.

   I asked one of our top ranking officials in Iraq in December which was growing more quickly, our ability to train Iraqis to combat the insurgency or the insurgency itself? His two-word response: The insurgency. Unfortunately, in some regards we have even succeeded in discrediting the very cause for which we are fighting and dying today. I listened intently to the President's inaugural address on the steps of this Capitol in which he

   spoke repeatedly about the need to advocate freedom and liberty and democracy around the world, not only because it is in our interest but because it is in the interest of peace and stability across the planet as a whole. In that regard he is right.

   But I could not help but recall the words of a member of the Iraqi Electoral Commission, a Turkoman from Kirkuk, who finally looked at me in Baghdad and said: Senator, you do not understand. For too many of my people, when they hear the word ``democracy,'' they think violence, they think disorder, they think death and economic disintegration.

   It does not get much sadder than that. It is heartbreaking that the sacrifices that have been made, the idealism of our troops, America's prospects for success in Iraq, our very standing in the world, have too often been undercut by ineptitude at the highest levels of our own Government.

   I think of a visit, 6 months ago, with some of our colleagues to Walter Reed Army Hospital to visit with some of the soldiers who have returned. They are constantly on my mind. I think of their idealism, their heroism, their perseverance in the face of an adversity that those of us who are not there can hardly imagine.

   We have a moral obligation to provide better leadership than that which has been provided in this conflict. Too often this administration has suggested that the refusal to admit error, to learn from error, to correct error is a virtue. When lives and limbs are at stake, it is not.

   As a former executive of our own State, I have always believed that accountability for performance is vitally important to success. If this President will not provide it, then it is up to those of us in the Senate to do so.

   I believe with all of my heart that our country is strongest when we stand for freedom and democracy. We are attempting to accomplish the right thing in Iraq. We have been the authors of much of our own misery. As a result of that, I cannot find it in my heart or in my mind to vote for the promotion of Dr. Rice. Accountability is important. I will vote no and urge my colleagues to do the same.

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thomas.loc.gov (January 25, 2005, pg s389)

[Moses]

enator Byrd’s Statement:

[January 25, 2005; Page: S393] GPO's PDF : frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2005_record&page=S393&position=all
[Doctrine of Pre-emptive War, and Unconstitutional assertion of Executive Powers]
I commend the Foreign Relations Committee for its work in bringing the
nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice to the Senate. Chairman Richard Lugar conducted 2 days of hearings for this nominee and the debate that began in the committee on this nomination is now being continued on the floor of the Senate. Senator Biden also provided a voice in great foreign policy experience during those hearings. I was particularly impressed by Senator Boxer who tackled her role on the committee with passion and with forthrightness, as did Senator Kerry.

   
   ....The vote that the Senate will conduct tomorrow, however, is not simply a formality to approve of a nominee's educational achievement or level of expertise. I do not subscribe to the notion that the Senate must confirm a President's nominees barring criminality or lack of experience. The Constitution enjoins Senators to use their judgment in considering nominations. I am particularly dismayed by accusations I have read that Senate Democrats, by insisting on having an opportunity to debate the nomination of Dr. Rice, have somehow been engaged in nothing more substantial than ``petty politics,'' partisan delaying tactics. Nothing, nothing, nothing could be further from the truth.

   The Senate's role of advice and consent to Presidential nominations is not a ceremonial exercise. Here is the proof. Here is the record. Here is the document that requires more than just a ceremonial exercise.

   I have stood in the Senate more times than I can count to defend the prerogatives of this institution and the separate but equal--with emphasis on the word ``equal''--powers of the three branches of Government.

   A unique power of the legislative branch is the Senate's role in providing advice and consent on the matter of nominations. That power is not vested in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it is not vested in any other committee, nor does it repose in a handful of Senate leaders. It is not a function of pomp and circumstance, and it was never intended by the Framers to be used to burnish the image of a President on Inauguration Day. Yet that is exactly what Senators were being pressured to do last week, to acquiesce mutely to the nomination of one of the most important members on the President's Cabinet without the slightest hiccup of debate or the smallest inconvenience of a rollcall vote.

   And so, Mr. President, we are here today to fulfill our constitutional duty to consider the nomination of Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State.

   I have carefully considered Dr. Rice's record as National Security Adviser in the 2 months that have passed since the President announced her nomination to be Secretary of State, and that record, I am afraid, is one of intimate--intimate--involvement in a number of administration foreign policies which I strongly oppose. These policies have fostered enormous opposition, both at home and abroad, to the White House's view of America's place in the world.

   That view of America is one which encourages our Nation to flex its muscles without being bound by any calls for restraint. The most forceful explanation of this idea can be found in the ``National Security Strategy of the United States,'' a report which was issued by the White House in September 2002. Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked to do so.

   There is no question, of course, that the President of the United States has the inherent authority to repel attacks against our country, but this National Security Strategy is unconstitutional on its face. It takes the checks and balances established in the Constitution that limit the President's ability to use our military at his pleasure and throws them out the window.

   This doctrine of preemptive strikes places the sole decision of war and peace in the hands of a President--one man or woman--and undermines the constitutional power of Congress to declare war. The Founding Fathers required that such an important issue of war be debated by the elected representatives of the people, the people out there, in the legislative branch precisely, because no single man could be trusted with such an awesome power as bringing a nation to war by his decision alone. And yet that is exactly what the National Security Strategy proposes.

   Not only does this pernicious doctrine of preemptive war contradict the Constitution, it barely acknowledges the Constitution's existence. The National Security Strategy makes only one passing reference, one small passing reference, to the Constitution. It states that ``America's constitution''--that is ``constitution'' with a small ``c''--``has served us well''--as if the Constitution does not still serve this country well. One might ask if that reference to the Constitution is intended to be a compliment or an obituary.

   As National Security Adviser, Dr. Rice was in charge of developing the National Security Strategy. She also spoke

   out forcefully in favor of the dangerous doctrine of preemptive war. In one speech, she argues that there need not be an imminent threat before the United States attacked another nation. ``So as a matter of common sense,'' said Dr. Rice, on October 1, 2002, ``the United States must be prepared to take action, when necessary, before threats have fully materialized.'' But that ``matter of common sense'' is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. For that matter, isn't it possible to disagree with this ``matter of common sense''? What is common sense to one might not be shared by another. What's more, matters of common sense can lead people to the wrong conclusions. John Dickinson, the chief author of the Articles of Confederation, said in 1787, ``Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us.''

   As for me, I will heed the experience of the Founding Fathers as enshrined in the Constitution over the reason and ``common sense'' of the administration's National Security Strategy.

   We can all agree that the President, any President, has the inherent duty and power to repel an attack on the United States. He doesn't have to call Congress into session to do that. That is a matter that confronts the Nation immediately and the people and our institutions are in imminent danger.

   But where in the Constitution can the President claim the right to strike another nation before it has even threatened our country, as Dr. Rice asserted in that speech? To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the President holds far more of the warpower than the Constitution grants him.

   This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has ``fully materialized'' was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released.

[Moses]

Senator Byrd’s Statement: (continued)
[Page: S394] GPO's PDF: frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2005_record&page=S394&position=all
Hyping Danger as War Pretext, and waging a war that created the very conditions that the Admin purportedly sought to prevent
   Beginning in September 2002, Dr. Rice also took a position on the frontlines of the administration's efforts to hype the danger of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the administration used to scare the American people into believing there was an imminent threat from Iraq. On September 8, 2002, Dr. Rice conjured visions of American citizens being consumed by mushroom clouds. On an appearance on CNN, she warned, ``The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he,'' meaning Saddam, ``can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.''

   Dr. Rice also claimed that she had conclusive evidence about Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program.

   During that same interview, she also said:


   We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into ..... Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes ..... that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.


   Well, my fellow Senators, we now know that Iraq's nuclear program was a fiction. Charles Duelfer, the chief arms inspector of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, reported on September 30, 2004 as follows:


   Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf War. [The Iraq Survey Group] found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.


   But Dr. Rice's statements in 2002 were not only wrong, they also did not accurately reflect the intelligence reports of the time. Declassified portions of the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 make it abundantly clear that there were disagreements among our intelligence analysts about the state of Iraq's nuclear program. But Dr. Rice seriously misrepresented their disputes when she categorically stated:


   We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.


   Her allegation also misrepresented to the American people the controversy in those same intelligence reports about the aluminum tubes. Again, Dr. Rice said that these tubes were ``really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.'' But intelligence experts at the State Department and the Department of Energy believed that those tubes had nothing to do with building a nuclear weapon, and they made their dissent known in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. This view, which was at odds with Dr. Rice's representations, was later confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and our own CIA arms inspectors.

   Well, Dr. Rice made other statements that helped to build a case for war by implying a link--a link--between Iraq and September 11. On multiple occasions, Dr. Rice spoke about the supposed evidence that Saddam and al-Qaida were in league with each other. For example, on September 25, 2002, Dr. Rice said on the PBS NewsHour:


   No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11, so we don't want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clear, and we're learning more. ..... But yes, there clearly are contact between Al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there is a relationship there.


   Well, what Dr. Rice did not say was that some of those supposed links were being called into question by our intelligence agencies, such as the alleged meeting between a 9/11 ringleader and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague that has now been debunked. These attempts to connect Iraq and al-Qaida appear to be a prime example of cherry-picking intelligence to hype the supposed threat of Iraq while keeping contrary evidence away from the American people, wrapped up in the redtape of top secret reports.

   Dr. Rice pressed the point even further, creating scenarios that threatened tens of thousands of American lives, even when that threat was not supported by

   intelligence. On March 9, 2003, just 11 days before the invasion of Iraq, Dr. Rice appeared--where?--on Face the Nation. What did she say? She said:


   Now the al-Qaida is an organization that's quite dispersed and--and quite widespread in its effects, but it clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists. And what we do not want is the day when Saddam Hussein decides that he's had enough of dealing with sanctions, enough of dealing with, quote, unquote, ``containment,'' enough of dealing with America, and it's time to end it on his terms, by transferring one of these weapons, just a little vial of something, to a terrorist for blackmail or for worse.


   How scary is that?

   But the intelligence community had already addressed this scenario with great skepticism. In fact, the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 concluded that it had ``low confidence'' that Saddam would ever transfer any weapons of mass destruction--weapons that he did not have, as it turned out--to anyone outside of his control. This is yet more evidence of an abuse of intelligence in order to build the case for an unprovoked war with Iraq.

   And what has been the effect of the first use of this reckless doctrine of preemptive war? In a most ironic and deadly twist, the false situation described by the administration before the war, namely, that Iraq was a training ground for terrorists poised to attack the United States, is exactly the situation that our war in Iraq has created.

   But it was this unjustified war that created the situation that the President claimed he was trying to prevent. Violent extremists have flooded into Iraq from all corners of the world. Iraqis have taken up arms themselves to fight against the continuing U.S. occupation of their country.

   According to a CIA report released in December 2004, intelligence analysts now see Iraq, destabilized by the administration's ill-conceived war, as the training ground for a new generation of terrorists. That is from the report ``Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project,'' page 94.

   It should be profoundly disturbing to all Americans if the most dangerous breeding ground for terrorism has shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq simply because of the administration's ill-advised rush to war in March 2003.

[Moses]

Senator Byrd’s statement (continued)

[Rice’s contribution to Disasterous conduct of the illegal war]

   Dr. Rice's role in the war against Iraq was not limited to building the case for an unprecedented, preemptive invasion of a country that had not attacked us first. Her role also extends to the administration's failed efforts to establish peace in Iraq.

   In October 2003, 5 months after he declared ``mission accomplished,'' the President created the Iraq Stabilization Group, headed by Dr. Rice. The task of the Iraq Stabilization Group was to coordinate efforts to speed reconstruction aid to help bring the violence in Iraq to an end.

   But what has the Iraq Stabilization Group accomplished under the leadership of Dr. Rice? When she took the helm of the stabilization group, 319 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq. That number now stands at 1,368, as of today, Tuesday, January 25, 2005. More than 10,600 troops have been wounded, and what horrible wounds. The cost of the war has spiraled to $149 billion. That is $149 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born. And the White House is on the verge of asking Congress for another $80 billion.

   Despite the mandate of the Iraq Stabilization Group, the situation in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. More ominously, the level of violence only keeps growing week after week after week, month after month, and no administration official, whether from the White House, the Pentagon, or Foggy Bottom has made any predictions about when the violence will finally subside.

   Furthermore, of the $18.4 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid appropriated by Congress in October 2003, the administration has spent only $2.7 billion. Now, with these funds moving so slowly, it is hard to believe that the Iraq Stabilization Group has had any success at all in speeding the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. For all of the hue and cry about the need to speed up aid to Iraq, one wonders if there should be more tough questions asked of Dr. Rice about what she has accomplished as the head of this group.

[Moses]

Senator Byrd’s Statement:

[January 25, 2005; Page: S393] GPO's PDF : frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2005_record&page=S393&position=all

[Doctrine of Pre-emptive War, and Unconstitutional assertion of Executive Powers]

I commend the Foreign Relations Committee for its work in bringing the
nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice to the Senate. Chairman Richard Lugar conducted 2 days of hearings for this nominee and the debate that began in the committee on this nomination is now being continued on the floor of the Senate. Senator Biden also provided a voice in great foreign policy experience during those hearings. I was particularly impressed by Senator Boxer who tackled her role on the committee with passion and with forthrightness, as did Senator Kerry.

   
   ....The vote that the Senate will conduct tomorrow, however, is not simply a formality to approve of a nominee's educational achievement or level of expertise. I do not subscribe to the notion that the Senate must confirm a President's nominees barring criminality or lack of experience. The Constitution enjoins Senators to use their judgment in considering nominations. I am particularly dismayed by accusations I have read that Senate Democrats, by insisting on having an opportunity to debate the nomination of Dr. Rice, have somehow been engaged in nothing more substantial than ``petty politics,'' partisan delaying tactics. Nothing, nothing, nothing could be further from the truth.

   The Senate's role of advice and consent to Presidential nominations is not a ceremonial exercise. Here is the proof. Here is the record. Here is the document that requires more than just a ceremonial exercise.

   I have stood in the Senate more times than I can count to defend the prerogatives of this institution and the separate but equal--with emphasis on the word ``equal''--powers of the three branches of Government.

   A unique power of the legislative branch is the Senate's role in providing advice and consent on the matter of nominations. That power is not vested in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it is not vested in any other committee, nor does it repose in a handful of Senate leaders. It is not a function of pomp and circumstance, and it was never intended by the Framers to be used to burnish the image of a President on Inauguration Day. Yet that is exactly what Senators were being pressured to do last week, to acquiesce mutely to the nomination of one of the most important members on the President's Cabinet without the slightest hiccup of debate or the smallest inconvenience of a rollcall vote.

   And so, Mr. President, we are here today to fulfill our constitutional duty to consider the nomination of Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State.

   I have carefully considered Dr. Rice's record as National Security Adviser in the 2 months that have passed since the President announced her nomination to be Secretary of State, and that record, I am afraid, is one of intimate--intimate--involvement in a number of administration foreign policies which I strongly oppose. These policies have fostered enormous opposition, both at home and abroad, to the White House's view of America's place in the world.

   That view of America is one which encourages our Nation to flex its muscles without being bound by any calls for restraint. The most forceful explanation of this idea can be found in the ``National Security Strategy of the United States,'' a report which was issued by the White House in September 2002. Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked to do so.

   There is no question, of course, that the President of the United States has the inherent authority to repel attacks against our country, but this National Security Strategy is unconstitutional on its face. It takes the checks and balances established in the Constitution that limit the President's ability to use our military at his pleasure and throws them out the window.

   This doctrine of preemptive strikes places the sole decision of war and peace in the hands of a President--one man or woman--and undermines the constitutional power of Congress to declare war. The Founding Fathers required that such an important issue of war be debated by the elected representatives of the people, the people out there, in the legislative branch precisely, because no single man could be trusted with such an awesome power as bringing a nation to war by his decision alone. And yet that is exactly what the National Security Strategy proposes.

   Not only does this pernicious doctrine of preemptive war contradict the Constitution, it barely acknowledges the Constitution's existence. The National Security Strategy makes only one passing reference, one small passing reference, to the Constitution. It states that ``America's constitution''--that is ``constitution'' with a small ``c''--``has served us well''--as if the Constitution does not still serve this country well. One might ask if that reference to the Constitution is intended to be a compliment or an obituary.

   As National Security Adviser, Dr. Rice was in charge of developing the National Security Strategy. She also spoke

   out forcefully in favor of the dangerous doctrine of preemptive war. In one speech, she argues that there need not be an imminent threat before the United States attacked another nation. ``So as a matter of common sense,'' said Dr. Rice, on October 1, 2002, ``the United States must be prepared to take action, when necessary, before threats have fully materialized.'' But that ``matter of common sense'' is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. For that matter, isn't it possible to disagree with this ``matter of common sense''? What is common sense to one might not be shared by another. What's more, matters of common sense can lead people to the wrong conclusions. John Dickinson, the chief author of the Articles of Confederation, said in 1787, ``Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us.''

   As for me, I will heed the experience of the Founding Fathers as enshrined in the Constitution over the reason and ``common sense'' of the administration's National Security Strategy.

   We can all agree that the President, any President, has the inherent duty and power to repel an attack on the United States. He doesn't have to call Congress into session to do that. That is a matter that confronts the Nation immediately and the people and our institutions are in imminent danger.

   But where in the Constitution can the President claim the right to strike another nation before it has even threatened our country, as Dr. Rice asserted in that speech? To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the President holds far more of the warpower than the Constitution grants him.

   This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has ``fully materialized'' was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released.

[/quote]

[Moses]

 Senator Byrd’s Statement (continued)


 [Page: S395] GPO's PDF

[Rice’s Record as NSA & Accountability]

 There are also many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice's record as the National Security Adviser. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser, had leveled scathing criticism against Dr. Rice and the National Security Council for failing to recognize the threat from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack. In particular, Mr. Clarke states that he submitted a request on January 25, 2001, for an urgent meeting of the National Security Council on the threat of al-Qaida.

   However, due to decisions made by Dr. Rice and her staff, that urgent meeting did not occur until too late. The meeting was not actually called until September 4, 2001.



   Mr. Clarke, who was widely acknowledged as one of the Government's leading authorities on terrorism at that time, told the 9/11 Commission he was so frustrated with those decisions that he asked to be reassigned to different issues and the Bush White House approved that request.

   Dr. Rice appeared before the 9/11 Commission on April 8, 2004, but, if anything, her testimony raised only more questions about what the President and others knew about the threat to New York City and Washington, DC, in the weeks before the attacks, and whether more could have been done to prevent them.

   Why wasn't any action taken when she and the President received an intelligence report on August 6, 2001, entitled ``Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States''? Why did Dr. Rice and President Bush reassign Richard Clarke, the leading terrorism expert in the White House, soon after taking office in 2001? Why did it take 9 months for Dr.

   Rice to call the first high-level National Security Council meeting on the threat of Osama bin Laden?

   As the Senate debates her nomination today, we still have not heard full answers from Dr. Rice to these questions.

   In addition to Mr. Clarke's criticism, Dr. David Kay, the former CIA weapons inspector in Iraq, also has strong words for the National Security Council and its role in the runup to the war in Iraq. When Dr. Kay appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on August 18, 2004, to analyze why the administration's prewar intelligence was so wrong about weapons of mass destruction, he described the National Security Council as the ``dog that didn't bark'' to warn the President about the weaknesses of those intelligence reports.

   Dr. Kay continued:


   Every President who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth. ..... The recent history has been a reliance on the NSC system to do it. I quite frankly think that that has not served this President very well.


   What Dr. Kay appeared to state was his view that the National Security Council, under the leadership of Dr. Rice, did not do a sufficient job of raising doubts about the quality of the intelligence about Iraq. On the contrary, based upon Dr. Rice's statements that I quoted earlier, her rhetoric even went beyond the questionable intelligence that the CIA had available on Iraq in order to hype the threats of aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, and connections between Iraq and September 11.

   In light of the massive reorganization of our intelligence agencies enacted by Congress last year, shouldn't this nomination spur the Senate to stop, look, and listen about what has been going on in the National Security Council for the last 4 years? Don't these serious questions about the failings of the National Security Council under Dr. Rice deserve a more thorough examination before the Senate votes to confirm her as the next Secretary of State?

   Mr. President, accountability has become an old-fashioned notion in some circles these days. But accountability is not a negotiable commodity when it comes to the highest circles of our Nation's Government. The accountability of Government officials is an obligation, not a luxury. Yet accountability is an obligation that this President and this President's administration appear loathe to fulfill.

   Instead of being held to account for their actions, the architects of the policies that led our Nation down the road into war with Iraq, policies based on faulty intelligence and phantom weapons of mass destruction, have been rewarded by the President with accolades and promotions. Instead of admitting to mistakes in the war on Iraq, instead of admitting to its disastrous aftermath, the President and his inner circle of advisers continue to cling to myths and misconceptions.

   The only notion of accountability that this President is willing to acknowledge is the November elections, which he has described as a moment of accountability and an endorsement of his policies. Unfortunately, after-the-fact validation of victory is hardly the standard of accountability that the American people have the right to expect from their elected officials. It is one thing to accept responsibility for success; it is quite another to accept accountability for failure. Sadly, failure has tainted far too many aspects of our Nation's international policies over the past 4 years, culminating in the deadly insurgency that has resulted from the invasion of Iraq.

   With respect to this particular nomination, I believe there needs to be accountability for the mistakes and missteps that have led the United States into the dilemma in which it finds itself today, besieged by increasing violence in Iraq, battling an unprecedented decline in world opinion, and increasingly isolated from our allies due to our provocative, belligerent, bellicose, and unilateralist foreign policy. Whether the administration will continue to pursue these policies cannot be known to Senators today as we prepare to cast our vote. At her confirmation hearing on January 18, Dr. Rice proclaimed that our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue, but 2 days later, President Bush gave an inaugural address that seemed to rattle sabers at any nation that he does not consider to be free.

   Before Senators cast their votes, we must wonder whether we are casting our lot for more diplomacy or more belligerence, reconciliation, or more confrontation. Which face of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foreign policy will be revealed in the next 4 years?

   Although I do not question her credentials, I do oppose many of the critical decisions Dr. Rice has made during her 4 years as National Security Adviser. She has a record, and the record is there for us to judge. There remain too many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice's failure to protect our country before the tragic attacks of September 11, her public efforts to politicize intelligence, and her often stated allegiance to the doctrine of preemption.

   To confirm Dr. Rice to be the next Secretary of State is to say to the American people and to the world that the answers to those questions are no longer important. Her confirmation will almost certainly be viewed as another endorsement of the administration's unconstitutional doctrine of preemptive strikes, its bullying policies of unilateralism, and its callous rejection of our longstanding allies.

   Dr. Rice's record in many ways is one to be greatly admired. She is a very intelligent lady, very knowledgeable about the subject matter, very warm and congenial, but the stakes for the United States are too high. I cannot endorse higher responsibilities for those who helped to set our great country down the path of increasing isolation, enmity in the world, and a war that has no end. When will our boys come home? When will our men and women be able to sit down at the table with their families and their friends in their own communities again? For these reasons, I shall cast my vote in opposition to the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice to be the next Secretary of State.