See my earlier post -- The Condi Rice VP Craziness -- which includes a video from Real Time with Bill Maher of WaPo's Dana Priest and former terrorism czar Richard Clarke calling Rice the worst Secretary of State and National Security Advisor ever.
Last week Republican strategist and former Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Dan Senor, created a stir when he told George Stephanopoulos that “Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning [to be McCain's Vice President]”.
This comes on the heels of Nicholas von Hoffman warning Democrats in The Nation (online) about the potential strength of a McCain/Rice ticket:
“With Rice on the ticket, the GOP would have somebody to get enthusiastic about. The Secretary of State is immensely popular with Republicans. For a party that up to now has been clueless about how to run against either a woman or a person of color, Condoleezza Rice is pure political gold.”
There were also rumors back in 2005 that Bush would replace Cheney with Rice. And there were even calls from “Condistas” for Rice to run for president this election cycle. There are even multiple websites, like this one, dedicated to getting Rice on the ticket.
And I can't help but wonder if the country is just completely and utterly insane. Setting aside Bush and Cheney, it is difficult to imagine any worse candidate than Condi. Her actions or lack of action led directly to 9/11. She lied repeatedly under oath. She was undoubtedly the worst National Security Advisor ever. She is arguably the worst Secretary of State ever.
Only months after saying that Saddam Hussein was not a threat she warned that “we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” She made at least 56 false statements about WMD and Al Qaeda links to Saddam in the run-up to the war.
She was one of “The Principals” that sat around the White House choreographing how prisoners would be tortured. She is a war criminal.
Thus, it was nice to see WaPo's Dana Priest and former terrorism czar Richard Clarke give a reality check to the Condi for VP rumors on Real Time with Bill Maher (1:36) Friday night:
The first video is the ABC News investigative report, “The Principals”, which tells the story of how the highest ranking Bush admin officials - Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell (not such a good guy after all), Rice and Cheney - had meetings in the White House where they literally choreographed how prisoners would be tortured.
The second video is Countdown's Keith Olbermann interviewing constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley who was fairly clear about what all of this means:
“Well this is one meeting of principal, they are not talking about the Ali kind. And what you have is a bunch of people talking about something that is a crime for those of us that look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is. This is like meeting at The Bada Bing Club. These people are sitting around, regularly talking about something defined as a crime. And you even have John Ashcroft standing up and saying, ”Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this at the White House“. Obviously that is quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far, it was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved at the very highest level. And it goes right to the President's desk.
And it's notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this and they found those lawyers in people like Jay Bybee and John Yoo and those people were handsomely rewarded. In Bybee's case he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.”
All of which makes Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Cheney - WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS!
Jack Cafferty asks the question. The answer, unfortunately, is a lot. She has endlessly lied to help start a war (Iraq) and keep a war going (Israel/Lebanon) for starters. The amount of blood on her hands alone is rather appalling. Oh, and lets not forget that while Americans were stranded by the Convention Center in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, Condi found time to shop in New York, catch a Broadway show and play some tennis. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention her 9/11 failings as well.
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