During Condoleezza Rice’s Senate confirmation hearings, Dr. Rice reacted angrily to pointed questions from Senator Barbara Boxer concerning Rice’s role in convincing Congress and the public to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rice accused Boxer of impugning her integrity: “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.”
Senator Boxer wouldn’t say it explicitly, but I will: Yes, we question Dr. Rice’s integrity. Not her intellect. Not her academic pedigree and achievements. Not her foreign policy experience. Those are all fine. What we question is precisely her integrity.
Why shouldn’t we, when Rice lied repeatedly and explicitly to Congress and the public about the urgency of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime? Dr. Rice made statements that not only are known now—in retrospect—to be false, but were known by administration officials to be false when she made them.
For example, in a September 8, 2002 interview on CNN, Rice issued this dire warning about Saddam Hussein: “We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into … Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes … that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.” In fact, U.S. weapons inspectors and the CIA had previously concluded that those aluminum tubes were not being used to develop nuclear weapons. It was also well known in the Bush administration that other supposed “evidence” of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, such as the infamous “yellow cake” shipments from Africa, were fake. Rice, as National Security Advisor to the President, surely knew about these prior assessments of the Iraqi nuclear threat. Nonetheless, she ignored them while hawking the Bush plan to attack Iraq. If that isn’t lying to the American public, I don’t know what is.
True, Rice was not the only Bush administration official who lied to us. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush also lied blatantly and repeatedly. But that should not have surprised us: they never had any integrity. Bending the truth and disdain for the public are how they operate.
We expected a bit more from Rice’s predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He began his tenure as Secretary of State as a hero of the previous Gulf War, with integrity on a par with that of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. Through his defense of Bush’s rush into war—which included his infamous false presentation before the United Nations—he ended up with integrity somewhere south of Oliver North’s.
Note to the Secretaries of State, former and current: Integrity, once earned, does not automatically endure for life. It cannot be taken for granted. It must be maintained and renewed. It can easily be lost. Former President Bill Clinton learned that lesson all too well.
Condoleezza Rice needs to understand that Senator Boxer was only doing her sworn duty as a U.S. Senator: challenging a Cabinet nominee’s record of false and misleading public statements. Over 3525 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. They have died at an average rate of about two per day since we started this war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died during the same period, and more die each day. The monetary cost of the war is out of sight and still climbing. Bush administration officials, of which Rice is one, must be held accountable. What is astounding is not that Boxer asked pointed questions during Rice’s hearing, but that more Senators didn’t.
More importantly, Rice needs to understand this: you go into confirmation hearings with the integrity you have, not the integrity you wish you had, or the integrity you once had. By her continued participation in the plutocratic Bush regime, Rice is rapidly throwing away her last shreds of integrity.
