The Ad Hominem Defense
Condoleezza Rice isn't used to being interrogated. Like her boss—whom she once referred to, in a telling Freudian slip, as her husband—she has been pampered and coddled and protected from anyone who might challenge her for so long that she can no longer counter ideas with ideas. She must resort to the ad hominem defense, a false victimization tactic that turns any disagreement into wounded rectitude. "Poor me! I'm a good girl, I am!" That's how she responded yesterday to Senator Barbara Boxer's well-documented attacks on her veracity:
BOXER: Well, you should you read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that particular vote. But again, I just feel, you quote President Bush when it suits you, but you contradicted him when he said, Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. You go on television, nine months later, and said, Nobody ever said it was going to be.
RICE: Senator, that was just a question of pointing out to people that there was an uncertainty, that no one was saying that he would have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war.
BOXER: Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope that you will rethink it.
RICE: Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much.
BOXER: I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You contradicted the president and you contradicted yourself.
RICE: Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion. But I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly.
Lightly indeed. Puffed Rice. Full of self-importance, too Bush-loyal to tell the truth. Boxer wasn't implying that Rice takes the truth lightly, she was providing hard evidence that Rice lies. She read the contradictory quotes, and the contradiction is what inpugned Rice's integrity. Boxer, true to her surname, had been leading up to this roundhouse punch with a series of jabs and feints throughout her questioning:
BOXER: I voted to use force against Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Afghanistan, and I assumed that we would focus on that challenge, not stopping until we got bin Laden, dead or alive, and broke the back of al Qaeda.
However, instead, with you in a lead role Dr. Rice, we went into Iraq. I want to read you one paragraph that best expresses my views, and the views of millions of Californians, on the impact of the Iraqi war on the war against terrorism. It was written by one of the world’s experts on terrorism and foreign policy, Peter Bergen, five months ago.
He wrote:
What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure that bin Laden has long predicted was the United States' long-term goal in the region. We deposed the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shia fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a “defensive” jihad that has galvanized jihad-minded Muslims around the world. It's hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terrorism.
BOXER: This conclusion was reiterated last Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA Director’s think tank, which released a report saying that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists. NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said that Iraq is “a magnet for international terrorist activity.”These quotations are significant to this hearing, Dr. Rice, because as a major proponent and spokesperson for the war in Iraq, and as someone who was asked by the President to make the case for this war to the American people, and as the person in charge of the reconstruction effort– you have many questions to answer to the American people.
This war was sold to the American people—as Chief of Staff to President Bush, Andy Card said—like a “new product.” You rolled out the idea and then you had to convince the people, and as you made your case, I personally believe that your loyalty to the mission you were given overwhelmed your respect for the truth.
That was a great disservice to the American people. But worse than that, our young men and women are dying. So far, 1,366 American troops have been killed in Iraq. More than 25 percent of those troops were from California. More than 10,372 have been wounded.
I don’t want their families to think for a minute that their lives and bodies were given in vain. Because when your commander in chief asks you to sacrifice yourself for your country, it is noble to answer the call. I am giving their families all the support that they want and need, but I will also not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth.
Perhaps the most well known statement you have made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America, with the image of a “mushroom cloud.” That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped.
I will be placing into the record a number of other such statements which have not been consistent with the facts nor the truth.
You'd think, if Rice were the academic she purports to be, that a clash of ideas would be just her cup of tea, but it's not. At Stanford she did little research and teaching, acting for six years as provost, an administrative and budgetary post. She also spent much of her time as a member of various corporate boards, including Hewlett-Packard and Chevron, where she had an oil tanker named for her. These are jobs in which political aggrandizement, secrecy, and organizational policy-making are valued, and she was apparently successful; but she was not practicing the public game of ideas, the open debate, that characterizes the academic life.
In addition, Rice's command of language has apparently deteriorated since she left Stanford—she may be spending too much time talking with her boss. Again and again, she refused to answer sticky questions by saying she wished to "dee-myur," meaning demur ("dee-mur"). Whatever her capabilities, Rice is not demure: modest and reserved in manner or behavior. She also continued to tie Hussein falsely to al Qaeda by saying, "We knew that he was an implacable enemy of the United States, who did cavort with terrorists." She meant consort, I suppose, not cavort: to bound or prance about in a sprightly manner; caper.
The hearings, ten hours yesterday and two and a half hours today, were not sprightly. But they were mostly a lovefest. Few of the senators asked Rice the hard questions she deserved about 9/11, the Iraq invasion, and the White House approval of torture. Even those who did raise some uncomfortable points, like Chafee, Biden, and Dodd, muted their criticisms and said they would vote for her confirmation. John Kerry, however, asked Rice about Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article and the report that the US is planning to attack Iran:
SEN. KERRY: And with respect to Iran, are you also denying or discounting any of the allegations in this article?
MS. RICE: The article has -- it is inaccurate.
SEN. KERRY: With respect to Iran?
MS. RICE: The article is, as Defense said, inaccurate.
SEN. KERRY: With respect to Iran?
MS. RICE: Senator, the article does not represent our policies toward Iran or our expectations of policy toward Iran.
Rice decided not to lie outright this time, but she didn't answer the question. She didn't need to; like Bush, she feels that all accountability ended on election day.
Today Kerry and Boxer voted against Rice's confirmation as secretary of state. Unfortunately, they were the only senators who had the courage to do so.
Decades ago it was Paul Simon, in his song "The Boxer," who presciently described the other senators: "All lies and jest. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
On to Iran.
Update, 1/20: Juan Cole states the case against Rice with scathing logic:
In the end, Rice falls back on the same brain-dead rhetorical strategy as George W. Bush. Saddam was a threat because he is intrinsically evil. He is so evil that he can be a threat even though all he had in his arsenal were those spitballs toward which Zell Miller showed such derision at the Republican National Convention. Saddam was a threat to the region, she says. She is still saying this now, today. Saddam was not a threat to the region in 2002. That is ridiculous. Iraq was also not a threat to the US. This turns out to be the Achilles Heel of any doctrine of preemptive war. It would require, in order to be justified, much better intelligence than is usually available on the capabilities and intensions of the enemy. Rice still won't admit this, which means she may drag us into further wars with further gross mistakes in judgment.
