Sen. Boxer/Condy Rice

[JoeThaNo1Stunna]

But she didn't try to cover it up or not take responsibilty for it. I also don't think she fled the scence and left the person to die.

Exactly.

 

[Lebjwb]

Why are you dodging the issue? Apparently you still have the luxury of the internet access you're using. Probably that expensive broadband too. That money every month sure could help some folks.

Oh wait, that's right. You want other's to pony up with their money. Oh you'll pony up a little, as long as it doesn't really affect your lifestyle.

Hypocrite.

Richard

Hypocrite?

Hmmm... let's see I actually contribute and volunteer my time to causes I believe in and you don't, but I'm the hypocrite...


...have another sip of kool-aid and a bite of crow.

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

Here is the Snopes account of Laura Bush's killing of a classmate. http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/laura.asp

In May 2000, a two-page police report pertaining to a fatal accident that had taken place near Midland, Texas, in 1963 was made public. It contained the information that 17-year-old Laura Welch had run a stop sign, causing the death of the sole occupant of the vehicle hers had struck. According to that report, the future First Lady had been driving her Chevrolet sedan on a clear night shortly after 8 p.m. on 6 November 1963 when she entered an intersection without heeding the stop sign and there collided with the Corvair sedan driven by 17-year-old Michael Douglas. Also in the car with Laura Welch was a passenger, 17-year-old Judy Dykes.

How fast Miss Welch might have been driving is open to question. That part of the police report is illegible, although two biographies of the First Lady refer to her as having been going 50 mph at the time of the collision. The speed limit on that portion of road was 55 mph. According to the police report neither driver had been drinking, but no tests were performed. No charges were filed as a result of the accident.

News accounts from 1963 reported the young man as having been thrown from his car and dying of a broken neck; he was pronounced dead on arrival at Midland Memorial Hospital. According to various biographies of Mrs. Bush, the boy's father had been travelling in a car immediately behind his son's and witnessed the whole thing.

The two teen girls were taken to the same hospital and treated for minor injuries that amounted to bumps and bruises.

Michael Douglas, the young man who was killed, had been a member of Laura Welch's crowd at high school and her friend. He had been a star athlete, excelling in track and football, and was looked up to by his peers not just for his athlete prowess, but for his personality and intelligence too. By all reports, he was likeable, outgoing, and funny. He was nominated as the school's most popular boy while a junior, an honor that almost always went to a senior.

There has always been speculation about the nature of his relationship with Laura Welch. One rumor asserts the two had never dated, but that Laura had been romantically interested in him. Another claims he had been Laura's boyfriend when he died, and another that he had once been her boyfriend but the couple had subsequently broken up. (The latter theory is advanced in the 2002 biography of the Bushes, George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage, which states Laura Welch and Michael Douglas had dated throughout early and mid-1963, but by the fall of that year Michael was going out with Regan Gammon, one of Miss Welch's closest friends.)

The accident is difficult to understand it that it took place on a clear night on dry pavement at a crossroads described as "the middle of nowhere," where the view was unobstructed and the stop sign that faced Laura Welch was clearly visible. (The intersection was a two-way, not a four-way, stop.) Yet looking to only weather and road conditions to explain what happened is to miss the obvious: there were two teen girls in the car, girls who were on their way to a party and thus who likely would have been bubbling over with chatter about who would be there. Laura Welch, the driver, had turned 17 only two days earlier. She and her passenger were still of an age when they could all too easily shut out everything going on around them, even the approach of another car and the recognition of a stop sign.

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

Back to the topic, i.e. whether Condi should be confirmed. I love the Molly Ivins piece. See http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18405

AUSTIN -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helpfully explained it all for us. The problem is that we are living in an alternative reality. What we think we know is not true. We have always had enough troops in Iraq. There are 120,000 trained Iraqi soldiers ready to take over. The president has condemned torture, so what else is there to say? Why torture happened, whose fault it is and why it is still happening at Guantanamo is not a problem because the president has condemned it. Secretary Rice also condemns it, so why raise questions about the fact that she wrote a letter to get an anti-torture clause in the intelligence
appropriation bill taken out?

What, do you want to insult her integrity?

Secretary Rice did say that mistakes were made, but she does not know who made them or who should be held accountable. And, of course, as we all learned during the last election, no matter what happens, it is never, ever President Bush's fault.

The fact that Bush and Condi can not admit that they made mistakes and America is less safe due to these mistakes is a major reason that Condi should not be confirmed.

 

[septbride2002]

Hope you have a good evening...I oppose your opinions but you sure do come across very well with intelligent, thought provoking commentary and some pretty darn good rebuttals.

Thanks.

~Amanda

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

The GOP is pissed that the Senate Democrats have delayed Condi's confirmation. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/21/politics/21congress.html?oref=login In defending their actions, the Democrats noted

In delaying Ms. Rice's inevitable confirmation, Democrats said it was only reasonable to give their senators the chance to express their views given Ms. Rice's crucial role in developing the administration's Iraq and antiterror policies. Under an agreement, the nomination will be open to nine hours of debate beginning Tuesday with a vote expected Wednesday.

"Questions of foreign policy and particularly the Iraq war really center on her decisions in the first four years, and they want to speak to that," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip. "I don't believe that waiting a few days will create any hardship."

Democrats have also delayed a vote on the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, to be attorney general. Democrats did agree to the confirmations of Mike Johanns as secretary of agriculture and Margaret Spellings as secretary of education without requiring roll-call votes, and more nominations are expected to be cleared next week.

I wonder if Senator Boxer will have some to say about Condi next week.

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

I love this editoral on the hearings and exchange between Senator Boxer and Condi. See http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5195168.html

The two-day dialogue between Condoleezza Rice and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at times resembled material from "Catch-22" and at other times seemed to reflect "Dr. Strangelove." Other than a few hard questions from Democrats Joe Biden and Barbara Boxer, at no time did it remotely resemble reality.

You'd have thought from the way committee members treated Rice that she'd just arrived in Washington and had no part to play in, and no real knowledge of, the foreign-policy disaster that was President Bush's first term.

What alternate reality do these senators inhabit? Rice is a principal architect of the Bush foreign policy. She was an ardent supporter of going to war in Iraq. Her statements in the run-up to war about "mushroom clouds" and aluminum tubes were preposterous. And yet in a hearing on whether she has the stuff to be secretary of state, she had the temerity to lecture Boxer, asking her to "refrain from impugning my integrity." Well if not now, when?

Even in front of the committee, Rice couldn't refrain from telling what would generously be called fibs. Biden caught her out in one when she said 120,000 Iraqi military personnel had been trained to date. A more reliable figure from a more reliable source, he said, is 4,000.

Iraq is a quagmire killing Americans troops every day and costing American taxpayers billions each month. America's standing with allies, friendly nations and not-so-friendly ones has been badly damaged. We are seen abroad as bullying, arrogant and frequently just plain stupid. Rice was at the center of decisions which created that not-so-rosy scenario, and yet, as Biden said, played her confirmation hearings as a version of "Don't Worry, Be Happy."...

In the end, only Boxer and Sen. John Kerry did the principled thing and voted against Rice. Perhaps it was a symbolic vote, but it mattered. Kerry wasn't very pithy, but he was right when he said, "Dr. Rice is a principal architect, implementer, and defender of a series of administration policies that have not made our country as secure as we should be and have alienated much-needed allies in our common cause of winning the war against terrorism. Regrettably, I did not see in Dr. Rice's testimony any acknowledgment of the need to change course or of a new vision for America's role in the world."

With that the committee voted 16-2 to continue steady as she goes toward the next disaster.

I am really looking forward to a real debate on the senate floor next week.

 

[superbird]

Condi lied about the reasons the US went into Iraq and Senator Boxer called her on it. Come on, it is clear Bush and Condi lied about WMDs and now want to pretend that WMDs were not the reason the US invaded Iraq.

Here is a great site for thanking patrioits like Senator Boxer. See http://thankyoupatriot.com/

You people reall don't get it!!! If Bush and Condi lied that means Kerry lied as well as Clinton, the UN, Kennedy and even Boxer. When Clinton was in power they all claimed even name calling Boxer, that Iraq had WMD's. Sean Hannity just played a clip of Boxer saying it. So did Bush lie or was he mislead like everyone else?? Becasue most Dems like Kerry said they would have acted before the president to take out Iraq's wmd program. You know he voted for it before he decided to vote against it guy. :jumping4:

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

You people reall don't get it!!! If Bush and Condi lied that means Kerry lied as well as Clinton, the UN, Kennedy and even Boxer.

Lets look at one particular lie where there is proof that Condi is a liar. Stating something as being an absolute truth when one knows that there is substantial doubts about the fact is still lying. One can lie by making a statement and then failing to disclose need information necessary to keep such statement from being misleading. See http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0501/S00142.htm

Here is the first question the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should pose to Condoleezza Rice Tuesday at her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State: Is it ''lying'' to say that something definitely is true when it is your understanding that this something ''might'' be true?....

But on September 8, 2002, shortly after the Bush administration launched its campaign to scare Americans to death over the threat of Iraqi WMD, Rice told CNN that those aluminum tubes Iraq was trying to covertly import are "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,” adding ominously that “we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3716-2004Oct3?language=printer )..

At the very time she made that statement, she knew that experts within the government differed over the purpose and suitability of those tubes.
A truly ethical church-goer, armed with the same information, would have told CNN something like this: “The aluminum tubes are either for a nuclear program or for a non-nuclear purpose. One reason we need an aggressive inspections regime in place is so we can get definitive answers about those tubes and other aspects of Iraq’s nuclear program.”

The problem for us citizens back in 2002 is that we didn’t know the extent of Rice’s knowledge. We only found that out last fall, thanks to a lengthy story in the October 3 New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html ) that revealed that key aides to Rice had known for more than a year that nuclear scientists at the Department of Energy regarded those tubes as very poorly suited as components of a nuclear centrifuge (perhaps impossibly so, for a host of technical reasons) but perfectly suited for non-nuclear rockets in Iraq’s conventional arsenal.

Condi lied about the aluminum tubes being only suitable for a nuclear program. Neither President Clinton nor Senator Kerry made any statemetns about the aluminum tubes. It was Condi and Bush who lied about these aluminum tubes in order to hype the threat posed by Saddam.

 

[denisenh]

You people reall don't get it!!! ......(see OP).......Becasue most Dems like Kerry said they would have acted before the president to take out Iraq's wmd program. You know he voted for it before he decided to vote against it guy. :jumping4:

President Bush won the 2004 election. Congratulations to him and all of his supporters.

Now, your comment about Senator Kerry "voting for it before he decided not to" has been explained by the Senator, and quite clearly, I would like to add.

It is a shame that people continue to perpetuate the falsehood that he is a "flip flopper", when in fact he is not. He should be respected and admired for his ability to "change course" when the facts of the matter suggest that he should.
It is frustrating for the people that support Senator Kerry to hear this repeatedly, so if your goal is to make people feel bad and sad, consider your goal met.

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

Last week, more than 70,000 concerned citizens like you came together to sign my petition and demand the truth from Condoleezza Rice. Your support emboldened me during Dr. Rice's confirmation hearings to ask the tough questions that Americans deserve to have answered. I can't thank you enough, and America can't thank you enough.

Perhaps even more importantly, the groundswell of support you created forced the Republican Senate leadership to give us what we wanted -- not a rubber stamp of Dr. Rice's nomination by voice vote last Thursday before the Republicans dashed off to Inaugural parties, but nine full hours of debate on the floor of the United States Senate.

With your support, our voices are being heard -- in the halls of Congress, in the White House, and across the country. So today I ask for your support once more:

Help me add thousands more signatures to our petition to hold Condoleezza Rice accountable. Tell your friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues to sign our petition, so that when I stand up on the Senate floor Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm speaking with the power of tens of thousands of Americans behind me.

White House Chief of Staff Andy Card has attacked me as "small" for seeking the truth. But I won't allow this Administration to try to sweep the facts about our failures in Iraq and the war on terrorism under the rug. I'm taking the "advice and consent" role, granted to the Senate in the U.S. Constitution, seriously.

During the full Senate debate over Condoleezza Rice's nomination tomorrow, I intend to take the floor, joined by many other of my Democratic colleagues, to express my frustration about Dr. Rice's lack of candor during the confirmation hearings -- her unwillingness to level with the American people about the misleading statements she made about aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to try to justify the war in Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice refused to come clean about the actual number of trained Iraqi forces on the ground. And perhaps even more disturbingly, she refused to tell us why she personally intervened to kill an anti-torture provision in a recent intelligence bill.

I refuse to let these misstatements, misjudgments, and poor decisions go unanswered. So I ask you one last time, before the Senate debate Tuesday and final vote on Wednesday, to tell everyone you know about our petition. Help me find thousands more Americans who are willing to sign our petition and stand with us.

I can't thank you enough for everything you've done over this past week. Now, in these final 48 hours before the vote on Dr. Rice's nomination, I ask for your help once more. Join me as we continue to fight for what's right -- because the process of democracy is as important as the outcome.

In Friendship,

Barbara Boxer
U.S. Senator

 

[rubyslipperlover]

as you suggested, WWTBAM --

 

[superbird]

President Bush won the 2004 election. Congratulations to him and all of his supporters.

Now, your comment about Senator Kerry "voting for it before he decided not to" has been explained by the Senator, and quite clearly, I would like to add.

It is a shame that people continue to perpetuate the falsehood that he is a "flip flopper", when in fact he is not. He should be respected and admired for his ability to "change course" when the facts of the matter suggest that he should.

Thanks for letting me know Kerry changes course. That's why him and the rest of the liberals will never find land they keep "changing course" or as the dems put it about the rest of the country as "the flyover country". They truly are the dividers!!!!!! This smiley reminds me of Kerry-just changing course!!

 

[dmadman43]

Anyone find it a little offputting that former Klansman Robert Byrd is one of the ones leading the charge against Rice?

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

The Democrats had a fun time today calling Condi a liar and a Bush apologist. See http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050125/ap_on_go_co/senate_rice

WASHINGTON - One Senate Democrat called Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) a liar Tuesday and others said she was an apologist for Bush administration failures in Iraq (news - web sites), but she remained on track for confirmation as secretary of state.

Rice, who has been President Bush (news - web sites)'s White House national security adviser for four years, was one of the loudest voices urging war, Democrats said. She repeatedly deceived members of Congress and Americans at large about justifications for the war, said Sen. Mark Dayton (news, bio, voting record), D-Minn.

"I don't like impugning anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to," Dayton said. "Repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally." ....

Politicians rarely use the word "lie," preferring some of the milder terms other Democrats used Tuesday.

"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," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.

Rice is not directly responsible for intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war that overestimated Saddam's nuclear capability, said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich. "But she is responsible for her own distortions and exaggerations of the intelligence which was provided to her," Levin said.

"Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the administration used to scare the American people," Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va., said.

Rice is wrong for this post and should be rejected.

 

[beattyfamily]

Rice is wrong for this post and should be rejected.

Luckily she won't be rejected!

 

[superbird]

Rice is wrong for this post and should be rejected.[/QUOTE]


Why because someone called her a liar?? If that is the case every democrat should have never been in office. But I forgot it is called "Changing Course"

 

[bsnyder]

Rice is wrong for this post and should be rejected.

What a liar you are!

 

[dmadman43]

The Democrats had a fun time today calling Condi a liar and a Bush apologist. See http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050125/ap_on_go_co/senate_rice Rice is wrong for this post and should be rejected.

This is the typical Democart approach. If you have no substantive argument or rational basis for debate, call the other people liars, over and over and over again. Boxer, Kennedy, Kerry or Bryd can't possibly match wits with Dr. Rice, so they fall back to calling her a liar.


Again I find it ironic that the Demonrats allowed Robert Byrd, a cross-burning, black-hating, sheet-wearing, Klan-recruiting Senator (Racist - West Virginia) to lead the charge against Dr. Rice. Their masks have slipped a bit to show the hoods underneath.


I found these quotes quite interesting:

"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement."
- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed."
- Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002


"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability."
- Robert Byrd, October 2002

LIARS!!!!!!

 

[WWTBAMFAN]

What a liar you are!

You are wrong and evidently have not read or if you did read did not understand the posts on this thread. Condi is a liar. IN particular, Condi lied about the aluminum tubes. See
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0501/S00142.htm She knew that the key experts in the US government had determined that the tubes were not suitable for a nuclear program but she went on using this lie anyway.

The problem for us citizens back in 2002 is that we didn’t know the extent of Rice’s knowledge. We only found that out last fall, thanks to a lengthy story in the October 3 New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html ) that revealed that key aides to Rice had known for more than a year that nuclear scientists at the Department of Energy regarded those tubes as very poorly suited as components of a nuclear centrifuge (perhaps impossibly so, for a host of technical reasons) but perfectly suited for non-nuclear rockets in Iraq’s conventional arsenal.

You may not like it but there is clear proof that Condi is a liar.