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Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a difficult audience of students at a dorm reception yesterday at Stanford, where she's lately gone back to teaching. A few awkward exchanges were caught on video by student Reyna Garcia (watch after the jump).
First, a young man tries to compare U.S. treatment of German prisoners of war during WWII to treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, and Condi gets all finger-waggin defensive about the fact that the Nazis never made it to U.S. soil to kill 3,000 Americans in the Twin Towers, and how Guantanamo was deemed a "model medium security prison" by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Then, another guy pipes up and says, "So I read a report recently... that you're the one who authorized torture." And she snaps, "Oh is that what you read?" and he corrects himself and says, "I mean waterboarding..." and she ends up having to say, "I didn't authorize anything." Anyway, no huge revelations here, except it's fascinating to see Condi put in the position of responding to a bunch of twenty-year-olds without a Press Secretary to protect her.
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About time someone confronts them.
She is a monster.
Really? You don't think she was just ShrubCo's token minority hand puppet? I don't like her. At all. But she doesn't give me the heebies like when I hear "The Dick" talk. Maybe she's just a baby monster in comparison to him.
Condi = monster
Dick = Monster
mini-monster. She shopped for $600 shoes while New Orleans drowned. Yuck.
Good for them! I'm still really disappointed that Stanford hired her.
You do realize that Condi taught at Stanford from '81-'93. Why should they not hire her back?
because she doesn't agree with my personal ideologies.
Pretty sure she's the one who spread the rumor about yellow cake uranium from Niger in the lead up to the war.
She's tenured. Getting her fired is a complicated process, and people are working on it, but it wasn't a matter of "hiring her back." She returned from a sabbatical.
Thanks, hadn't considered that.
She's tenured. Getting her fired is a complicated process, and people are working on it, but it wasn't a matter of "hiring her back." She returned from a sabbatical.
I think she handled herself well.
I think her lawyer leapt for the phone.
She comes off as any run-of-the-mill condescending jokster, replete with all of the typical tools of the weak and deceitful including the finger wagging chicken neck and calling the guy "dear." Half way through I was expecting her to pop off with "you don't know me!" Predictable and lame.
The point to note however is that Presidential authorizations are only empowered by the constitution and the law and it isn't the case that a president's written order or verbal command or whatever always stands up as a legal, constitutional presidential authorization.
It isn't the case that the word of the president alone becomes law because the president in a constitutional republic has limited powers and not the unlimited powers of a dictator or a monarch.
I am not a lawyer so I cannot say for sure whether US or international law outlaws waterboarding or not (though I trust it IS outlawed) but if it is illegal then the president couldn't just overrule the law by saying - "it's OK, I'm the president saying you can do it, so that makes it legal".
To summarize I would say it sounds like Condi was fed some flimsy legal arguments in 2002 to justify the "enhanced interrogation" techniques thought to be expedient at the time but which many people would see as torture.
Conveying the president's wishes to the CIA, Condi was acting as little more than a messenger, so don't shoot the messenger.
Condi also mentions that the authorization was subject to the Justice Department's clearance so if they cleared it, and they are the lawyers responsible then it is their fault for not giving better legal advice.
The Justice Department should have said "no way is waterboarding legal" and their failure to do so has brought us to this point.
It needs to be understood that the National Security Advisor job Condi was doing in 2002 has no executive command responsibilities.
Condi could not tell the CIA what to do because only the President gives the orders and only the Director of Central Intelligence, a.k.a. "the Director of the CIA", (then George Tenet), directed the CIA how to interrogate people.
Now although the CIA did wrongly torture a few people, this happened under an administration which did more than anyone to reduce the total amount of torture in the world when they removed Saddam Hussein who tortured people in their thousands.
We should be proud of Condi for standing her ground and fighting this through to a situation where the US government and the CIA are now hopefully torture free.
Condi stopped Saddam Hussein torturing anyone and now she has stopped the US torturing anyone. Condi is amazing because who else could have done that?
Americans should elect Condoleezza Rice as president in 2012.
Peter Dow,
Rice for President Yahoo Group
Congratulations, it's been a while since I've read an apologia so full of self-professed ignorance. "I may be dumb, but my conclusions are solid!"
A Condi alt?
I am so sick of the "Saddam was evil" justification for the Iraq War. Yes, he was evil and tortured thousands of his own citizens. If we invade every country with a leader like that, we're going to need a MUCH bigger army.
And Condoleeza Rice "stopped the US torturing anyone"? WTF?
To summarize I would say it sounds like Condi was fed some flimsy legal arguments in 2002 to justify the "enhanced interrogation" techniques thought to be expedient at the time but which many people would see as torture.
and you want someone who lapped up flimsly legal arguments without protest or disagreement, to be our President? Didn't we just do that for eight years?
.
"Enhanced Interrogation" One thing you have to admire about the right wing, their triple black belt level of spin. No matter how much proof is reveled, these fuckers will go to their graves never having uttered the word "torture" in connection with their actions. I am constantly in awe of their ability to push the rewriting of history ever closer to the present.
"unfit for marriage"
"imperial lady"
chavez is a prick but funny now and then
Congratulations to the young man who questioned her. He displayed courage and persistence. Her only defense against his line of attack was to score debating points by counter-attacking his credibility with questions about obscure points that may or may not have had relevance but nonetheless allowed her to continue to dodge the issue he was raising. Her point about the Organization for International Security in Europe (or whatever it is called) sounded like a rating for the physical environment at Guantanamo. Here was her argument, "Well, maybe the hotel manager murdered one of his guests, but Fodor's gave the place a Five Star rating. Did you know that? Did you know that? Do your homework."
"I was there. You weren't. You don't know what someone else said about this. Well, if you did, you would know that they say I'm right." Do your homework--what a sanctimonious one.
She was a professor of mine a long time ago--and at the time, I thought, a nice person. Then power corrupted her. Too bad--and also too bad for all of us: While everything about the Bush years is defined by the Iraq disaster, that putsch had no foreign policy success of any memorable substance; its entire relationship with the world was infected by deceit and arrogance and the ruthless pursuit of international corporate interests.