Rice: Bush administration was clear about Iraq war

[onehandle]

Source: AP

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday rejected allegations from a former White House spokesman who says the Bush administration misled the American public into going to war with Iraq. Rice would not comment specifically on charges made by ex-press secretary Scott McClellan in a new book, but said President Bush was honest and forthright about the reasons for the war. She also said she remained convinced that toppling Saddam Hussein was right and necessary.

"The president was very clear about the reasons for going to war," she told reporters at a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in Stockholm where she is attending an international conference on Iraq. Chief among those reasons was the belief, shared widely before the war, that Saddam Hussein had or was developing weapons of mass destruction, Rice recalled, suggesting the international community shouldn't have backed harsh sanctions against Iraq if it doubted the threat.

"I am not going to comment on a book that I haven't read," she said, referring to McClellan's scathing memoir, "but what I will say is that the concern about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the fundamental reason."

"It was not the United States of America alone that believed that he had weapons of mass destruction that he was hiding," Rice said, dismissing suggestions that the administration knew the intelligence was incorrect. "The story is there for everyone to see, you can't now transplant yourself into the present and say we should have know what we in fact did not know in 2001 and 2002," she said. "The record on weapons of mass destruction was one that appeared to be very clear."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080529/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice_mcclellan_book

---

[SpiralHawk]

1. "No one could have imagined that a republicon would tell the truth." - Condi

[Wizard777]

19. People did raise objections. But Bush went with "curveball" over Hans Blixx.

The UN Weapons inspector who was IN Iraq. Bush ran the weapons inspectors out of Iraq before they could declare Iraq in compliance with Resolution 1441. They also outted a covert CIA weapons analyst to prevent new conflicting Intelligence from being gathered.

[ixion]

2. Condi, you can run your mouth all you want, that still doesn't change the FACTS

not one bit.

The FACTS are that you and your neocon regime LIED and obfuscated to fire up your illegal invasion of a sovereign nation that was of no immediate threat. It's as simple as that.

To the Hague with thee, shoe-shopper.

[MaineDem]

3. They've been circulating those talking points, haven't they

They're all pulling in on this.

[shadowknows69]

4. She can't feign ignorance

didn't we know all this shit about Scottie's book like a year ago? Pretty much the entire contents was being talked about on here and briefly in the MSM.

[Supersedeas]

49. mushroom clouds mushroom clouds mushroom clouds -- the propoganda could not be more clear

[NC_Nurse]

5. Yeah, clearly lying.

[zbdent]

6. "I am not going to comment on a book that I haven't read,"

I know it's Condascending Lies, but this statement, uttered by Bush, (and quite a few Freepturds) would mean that he wouldn't have an opinion on much ... Wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't be able to say one word about the Bible ...

[EstimatedProphet]

7. For God's sake Condi, do you think we all have amnesia?

Do you think no one in the world remembers 6 years ago? Do you think your words are imbued with some sort of magic, that we will be hypnotized by what you say and simply believe it with no thought on our part? I remember the arguments about going to war with Iraq. Each time you people came up with a reason, it was proven a lie, and then each time you would then come up with another reason. You were all like 6 year olds trying to talk your parents into giving you a cookie.

[lunatica]

44. It's Condi who has amnesia

She has the facts straight in her head. They just don't correlate to anything outside of her head.

[Faygo Kid]

8. War criminal speaks out.

This abysmal excuse for a human being should be tried, convicted and jailed for war crimes.

[rasputin1952]

9. LOL...she's GOT to be kidding!...

All of the aluusions to 9-11 being in Hussein's lap, the WMD's, th e"imminent danger" from Hussein...not to mention that getting bin'Laden was the primary reason for all of this in the first place, and the infamous, "...I don't know where he is, it's not a priority anymore" aboout said mastermind of the entire sitution. Oh..."He tried to kill my dad"...how can I forget that little gem.

As for McClellan being disgruntled...Hell...I'm disgruntled that bush ahs been destroying this nation for 7+ plus years!

[mdmc]

10. they tried to kill my daddy

[izquierdista]

11. Jedi mind trick

Unfortunately for her, it loses its effect over time.


These are the WMDs you are looking for.

[Captain Hilts]

12. Was not. nt

[Vote4Change]

13. Just "saying it's so" doesn't make it true!

Just how damn stupid do you think Americans are, Condi? I'm not talking about the incurably brain dead twenty-something percent who, to this day, blindly pledge allegiance to King George the Prevaricator and his Court of War Criminals (yourself included, Condi). I'm talking about intelligent people, people able to accurately recall King George's lies that they heard with their own ears, people who don't accept your repeated lies as somehow converting your fantasy into our reality.

It was all lies. You know it. Scott McClellan knows it. Intelligent Americans everywhere know it. It is just refreshing to see that Mr. McClellan, in spite of his role in perpetuating the lies, apparently has a thin vein of decency in his body and is willing, albeit for his own profit, to reveal the truth about this deceitful administration.

[SammyWinstonJack]

30. 935 LIES! And those are just the documented lies. No telling how many more LIES these

LYING LIARS TOLD!

[Alcibiades]

14. They were absolutely clear on this!

The policy was war with Iraq no matter what. Pretty much eveyone was able to see that except for those Democrats cowardly enough to vote for authorization out of political fear.

[Virginia Dare]

15. Yes Condi, clearly lying....n/t

[LynnTheDem]

16. rotflmao!!! That rice is a superb comic!!! Funny as fucking hell.

Stupid. Liar.

But fucking hilarious.

[Hugin]

17. Yup, as clear as a Mushroom Cloud... eh, Condi? n/t

[L0oniX]

18. She is a pathological liar.

[Imagevision]

20. What exactly did Condi do for them to name the oil tanker after her...?

Was this a George H.W Bush move?

[onehandle]

24. Chevron (and other corporations) owned her pre-Bush disaster era.

And once her time is up, she'll go right back to them for the mother of all payoffs.
_____________________________________________

"In 1992, Shultz, who was a board member of Chevron Corporation, recommended Rice for a spot on the Chevron board. Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan, and as a Soviet specialist, Rice knew the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She traveled to Kazakhstan on Chevron's behalf, and, in honor of her work, in 1993, Chevron named a 129,000-ton supertanker SS Condoleezza Rice.<20> During this period, Rice was also appointed to the boards of Transamerica Corporation (1991) and Hewlett-Packard (1992)."

snip...

Rice headed Chevron's committee on public policy until she resigned on January 15, 2001, to become National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. Chevron honored Rice by naming an oil tanker Condoleezza Rice after her, but controversy led to its being renamed Altair Voyager.<27>

She also served on the board of directors for the Carnegie Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the Chevron Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Rand Corporation, the Transamerica Corporation, and other organizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice

[primavera]

31. Interesting, I just thought she was one of Rand's creatures

... doing commissioned "research" for the armaments industry. I didn't realize that she'd sold her positions to quite such an array of corporate interests. Thanks for the info!

[AlbertCat]

21. It was not the USA alone who believed....

Blah Blah Blah! Everyone else was doin' it too!

What! Are we in the friggin' 4th grade, Condie????

Just because the sad and tiny "collation of the willing" were eager to make a buck off of war too doesn't mean it was OK. I remember what other "big" counties thought too...France, Germany....

[clixtox]

40. You had a misspelling...

It should be a "coalition of the BILLING"!


Ms Rice is perfect for handling the Kool-Aid spigot for the willfully ignorant, or brain dead, Amerikkkan sheeple.

Her tell-all biography ought to be a riveting read, especially if she includes her many sexual peccadillos and major crimes and fascist conspiracies.

[leftyladyfrommo]

22. How does she define "clear?"

I was watching Chrlie Rose one day and there was a British expert on who said that Britain knew in 1998 that Iraq did not have nuclear capability - and so did the US.

He said they did not know the status of their biological warfare capabilities.

All those wonderful Condi references to that "mushroom cloud" were just lies.

[kay1864]

23. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

"weapons of mass destruction"


So is she going to be trotting out this phrase next year, in all the $peeche$ she gives to adoring neocons?


What a pathetic sycophant.

[leftyladyfrommo]

25. She really is pathetic, isn't she?

It's sad. She could have done so much - and didn't.

[kaygore]

26. It is so much harder to rewrite history now that we have

movable type, a fairly literate population, and, most important, YouTube!

[Seabiscuit]

27. Try and convict this filthy, lying POS for war crimes. Then throw away the key. n/t

[Supersedeas]

28. Condi Mushroom Clouds Rice chimes in: on chimes made in Hiroshima

[fascisthunter]

29. Both You and Bush are War Criminals.....

not patriots. Your short-lived fame will be forever shrouded in shame and treason. Oh and thanks for destroying your own political party and the conservative movement.

[BrotherBuzz]

32. Condoleezza Rice is the poster girl for the reich.

She is a powerful icon that only Madison Ave rats could envy. In substance her persona is completely impotent, delivering the PR message designed by her corporatist puppet masters.

Having an Afro-American Secretary of State for a fascist junta imposed by sequential coups is the ultimate hypocrisy. She is the perfect disguise. How does one address a walking, talking, living, breathing lie? She is an animated programed Potemkin village for a society and foreign policy based upon brutal force, inequity, racism, and class warfare.

[buckrogers1965]

33. One thing I have noticed.

They don't refute a single point that he makes in his book.

They attack him plenty. They attack the publisher. They say they are bored and that nobody will read the book.

Yet not one of them has refuted a single word of what Scotty typed.

[sakabatou]

34. I'm suprised her pants haven't exploded yet

[kiranon]

35. Derision and scorn should be the response to her speeches

I'd just get up and walk out of any speech she gave.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

36. Bush wanted to go to war to be a War President and win re-election

something his daddy couldn't achieve. That was Karl Rove's reason as well in pushing the Chimp with dreams of grandeur and a glorious legacy. Rove and Bush thought it would be a short and successful mission accomplished with flowers and candy showered on the troops and a successful 2004 election and the permanent Republican majority that would ride on his coattails to victory in the Congress in 2004 and 2006. Bush and Rove were motivated purely by domestic political aspirations in the "permanent political campaign" that McClellan describes.

Cheney and his junta had other aspirations beyond Bush's visions of War President greatness, ones more sinister and I think they exploited the maleable Chimp who can easily be won over by flattery due to his giant ego. Lying about phoney evidence was the main agenda for Cheney and his private clique, and the Chimp would have done and said anything to win re-election in 2004 and accomplish something his father wasn't able to do. How could a man like Bush, who had never left the country before becoming President, didn't even know the names of heads of state around the world, had no ideas about the Middle East and didn't even believe in nation building suddenly formulate on his own a plan to restructure the Middle East unless it had been spoon fed to him and packaged by the likes of Dick Cheney? Bush still probably hasn't awakened to the reality that he was cynically carressed and fluffed by Cheney into a state of war ardor based on facts Cheney and his gang knew to be untrue.

[Solly Mack]

37. clearly wrong, clearly lying, clearly corrupt, clearly full of shit

but then that's their definition of transparency...

[sutz12]

38. Yep...he was clear all right...

Every time he changed to a new reason to invade, he was very clear about that reason, each and every one of them, until he found one the M$M would pimp for him and the American sheep would buy into.

Has Condi accomplished anything yet? Just wonderin'. :shrug:

[struggle4progress]

39. Oh, perfectly clear! Pick your favorite from a long list of excuses! Or mix-n-match!

http://www.foreignpolicy.com.nyud.net:8090/issue_septoct_2004/21rat.jpg

21 September/October 2004
Rationales for War
Want a reason for war with Iraq? Here are 21 ...
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2679
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2004/10/21_reasons_for_.html

[Amonester]

41. And the true (basic) reason is: O i L

Plus War Profit$

[struggle4progress]

43. When Ari Fleischer called the war Operation Iraqi Liberation, you can bet

* had such a big smirk on that the top half of his head nearly fell off, and Cheney was about to lose his brains through his nose laughing:

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 24, 2003
Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
1:00 P.M. EST
MR. FLEISCHER: Good afternoon. Let me give you a report on the President's day. The President this morning has spoken with three foreign leaders. He began with Prime Minister Blair, where the two discussed the ongoing aspects of Operation Iraqi Liberation ... http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030324-4.html

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 1, 2003
Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer
The James S. Brady Briefing Room
2:30 P.M. EST
... MR. FLEISCHER: Well, the point the President is making is he is visiting many of the places that are involved in Operation Iraqi Liberation ... http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030401-2.html

[Amonester]

45. It's like these war criminals were chuckling together...

sort of "thinking" to themselves: "Thanks for your sacrifice in our Interest$, slaves."

Now, That's Rich, Isn't It? :grr:

[ckramer]

42. my husband was honest and forthright

LOL

[karynnj]

46. That might be true if Rice were speaking of October 2002, but not March 2003

The Democrats likely missed the boat by too few speaking out in early 2003 when Saddam was letting inspectors into his palaces and even destroying missiles. There were still diplomatic efforts available - a condition Bush said in going to war was satisfied. The inspectors were being productive. The saddest thing is that had they EVER been honest on the process they intended to follow, they were in early 2003 at a point of a real victory. They were near to being able to be assured there were no WMD and they could have lifted the sanctions (as the rest of the world wanted). They could have spun this as doing what GHWB and Clinton failed to do. Their war, in fact, lost them this gain that they could have had for the asking at that point - if there real concern had ever been the danger Saddam represented.

By the time Bush decided to invade, the inspections (per Blix and El Bardai) were coming up showing no WMD - and though you can't prove a negative, it looked like we were more certain than ever that there was no danger. That Rice is wrong, read this David Frum, National Review article from February 2003 that BLM found. It is clear that they wanted their war and they wanted it NOW in early 2003.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3358606&mesg_id=3358606

The entire article - at the link - is worth reading to see how impatient they were. But, here are the last 4 paragraphs that show how they were really angry and argued that some wanted to avoid war all together -

"There was a time when a year was considered a long time in warfare. But although in every other aspect of life things seem to be speeding up, apparently when it comes to fighting, time is slowing down, and what was once considered merely a brisk speed now feels like a dizzying whirl.

Eighteen months after Pearl Harbor, and the United States was already in Sicily; 18 months since 9/11, and every one of the world's terror regimes except Afghanistan is exactly where it was a year and a half ago. Well, not exactly where it was: Libya has been promoted from mere membership of the U.N. Human Rights Commission to actual chairmanship of it. Otherwise, no signs of motion.

If ever any administration has moved with deliberate speed, it is this one. But no matter how slowly it moves, it is never slow enough. No matter how often it makes its case, it has never made the case enough. And no matter how much evidence of Saddam's dangerousness it adduces, the evidence is never convincing enough. When, do you suppose, would John Kerry and President Chirac and the editors of the New York Times think it a good time to overthrow Saddam? After another three months? Or six? Isn't it really the day after never?

It is not the speed of war that disturbs them. It is the fact of war. But this time, the fact of war is inescapable. War was made on the United States, and it has no choice but to reply. But there is good news: If the preparations for the Iraq round of the war on terror have gone very, very slowly, the Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts. The sooner the fighting begins in Iraq, the nearer we are to its imminent end. Which means, in other words, that this "rush to war" should really be seen as the ultimate "rush to peace."

[Canuckistanian]

47. Aluminum tubes. Niger. The "Prague meeting". Mobile bioweapons labs.

UAVs. Reconstituted Nuclear Weapons. Curveball's testimony. Chalabi's testimony.

ALL LIES.

And all debunked even BEFORE the invasion, by people MUCH smarter than the amateurs in charge of national security.

The Hague.

[minnesota_liberal]

48. Clear as that Kool-Ade you've been drinking, Condi (n/t)