Nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State

NOMINATION OF CONDOLEEZZA RICE TO BE SECRETARY OF STATE--CONTINUED -- (Senate - January 25, 2005)

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in discussing the nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State of the United States. I must confess, after careful deliberation I intend to oppose this nomination.

There is no doubt that Dr. Rice is an extraordinarily talented, capable individual. Her credentials as an academic are impeccable. She has a compelling life story. She has done remarkable things in her life. But I believe the best way to judge what would be her performance as Secretary of State is looking closely at what she has done as a National Security Adviser under this Bush administration. I think in that regard she leaves some very troubling questions unanswered as her nomination comes before us this day.

Most of what she did with the President, obviously, as his National Security Adviser, was confidential and necessarily is not subject to public view. But she has not, in my view, successfully responded to obvious questions about inconsistencies in her statements, about policies she advocated, apparently, and about her role in marshaling information for the President of the United States. In a very simplistic view, I think the National Security Adviser's chief role is to make sure the President has every bit of information he needs to make very difficult judgments--not just the information that favors one side or the other but all the information. Indeed, not just the bold strokes but the nuances. My sense is that this mission was not adequately performed by Dr. Rice.

She has been a key figure in the Bush foreign policy establishment going back years when Governor Bush decided to run for President. She is someone who is very close to the President. Again, I think she has to be judged on the result of that partnership.

One of the aspects that is troubling to me is the fact that Dr. Rice has maintained that Iraq is the central arena in the war on terror, when, in fact, this is a global, international threat to the United States and that, in fact, it appears that Iraq was not the global center, the central arena in this war on terror.

She applied a doctrine of preemption which is applicable to terrorist cells, but I believe she applied it incorrectly in the case of Iraq--at least the administration did, and she was the principal architect or one of the principal architects of that policy.

Many people expressed alternate views about the role of Iraq as a center of terror. Brent Scowcroft, a predecessor as National Security Adviser, pointed out in an editorial:

An attack on Iraq, at this time, would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

To this date I think it certainly has not advanced the policy we are actively pursuing throughout the world.

She suggested on several occasions there are strong links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. On March 9, 2003, on ``Face the Nation,'' Dr. Rice declared:

Now the al-Qaeda is an organization that's quite disbursed, and quite widespread in its effects, but it clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists.

On ``Meet the Press'' on September 28, 2003, Dr. Rice said:

No one has said that there is evidence that Saddam Hussein directed or controlled 9/11, but let's be very clear, he had ties to al Qaeda, he had al Qaeda operatives who had operated out of Baghdad.

That, in my view, is not accurately reflecting what many other sources subsequently confirmed, that, in fact, any ties Saddam Hussein had with al-Qaida were very tenuous if they existed at all.

On June 27, 2003, the New York Times reported:

The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the UN Security Council to track al Qaida told reporters that his team had found no evidence linking al Qaida to Saddam Hussein.

And 6 months later, the New York Times further reported:

CIA interrogators have already elicited from the top al Qaida officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Saddam.

As far back as November 2002, Europe's top investigator of terrorism told the LA Times:

We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda. If there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.

But what I think Dr. Rice did publicly, and perhaps even within the confines of the West Wing, is to make the case for these links when the case was at least highly questionable. None of that questioning, none of that nuance seemed to have been presented effectively to the President, certainly not effectively to the public.

During her confirmation hearings, Dr. Rice asserted her belief, reiterated her belief on the topic of troop strength, that she believed that the levels in Iraq were sufficient from the beginning of the war up to and including phase IV operations. Phase IV operations are those posthostility operations to stabilize the country. In her phrase she said that they were ``adequately resourced.''

What we have discovered in the months since the successful action leading to the fall of Saddam is instability, violence--demonstrating, I think, less than adequate forces there in country to deal with these problems.

It turns out that in March 2003 when a lieutenant colonel was briefing the issue of phase IV, the postoperation activities of our military forces, phase 4-C, the chart was very simple. It said, ``To Be Provided.'' Again, I think this is a glaring error. If you are the National Security Adviser, you have to be able to assure the President of at least a plan for every contingency, thorough, adequate, with sufficient resources and sufficient troops. Since the success of the military campaign, we have been, in my view, plagued by insufficient troops. Indeed, it was interesting to note that Ambassador Bremer, just last October, stated:

We never had enough troops on the ground.

This, I think, is a glaring mistake. It might have been the decision of a principal to overrule their best advice, but that is not the case she is making today as she seeks this nomination for Secretary of State.

There is another troubling issue and that, of course, is the one that received quite a bit of notoriety--the appearance in the State of the Union speech of a reference to Iraq attempting to buy yellow cake from Africa even though weeks before that, many weeks before that, the CIA claimed that such an assertion was unsubstantiated.

In a July 2003 interview with Jim Lehrer, Dr. Rice stated she either did not see or could not remember reading this CIA clearance memo.

I would argue if a piece of information is going to be uttered by the President of the United States in a State of the Union speech dealing with the critical issues of peace and war, of weapons of mass destruction, of the attempt of one nation to obtain nuclear material from another, that is a point of information that has to be of concern to the National Security Adviser.

She claims she delegated it to her deputy, Stephen Hadley. But still it is her responsibility. That was a misstatement--a misstatement that had already been pointed out by the CIA before the President made such a statement before our colleagues in the State of the Union Address.

The interesting point to make also is that Mr. Hadley now apparently has been selected to be the National Security Adviser even though if there was a mistake he apparently is the one who is determined to be responsible--at least in Dr. Rice's recollection.

There is another issue, too. In October 2003, the White House announced the creation of an ``Iraq Stabilization Group,'' recognizing that something more had to be done to stabilize the situation. Dr. Rice was charged with leading this stabilization group. This group was designed to coordinate activities there. She was in charge. There were four coordinating committees on counterterrorism, economic development, political affairs, and creation of clearer messages to the media both in the United States and within Iraq.

There has been no product of this committee, no apparent impact on policy. It is a void in terms of what it has done. Yet this was one of her major responsibilities.

I think these are serious issues about her stewardship of the very critical role as National Security Adviser and raises serious questions in my mind of her capacity to do differently as Secretary of State.

She also indicated many times that prior to 9/11 the policy of the Bush administration--and her advice by inference--was a strong focus on counterterrorism. Yet I understand Dr. Rice was scheduled to deliver a speech on September 11 at Johns Hopkins in which she would indicate the cornerstone of the Bush foreign policy was missile defense.

Having served in this body during that period of time, I can tell you the emphasis was on missile defense. It was not on counterterrorism. It was not on the old-fashioned kind of boots on the ground, intelligence, striking brigades. It was a multibillion-dollar effort on developing a national missile system. I think her speech scheduled for that day was emblematic of what the focus was.

Also, before 9/11, the Bush administration was preparing significant cuts in the counterterrorism program. Those cuts were obviously obviated by the terrible attacks on New York on that dreadful day.

Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism expert in the Clinton administration, sent an urgent memo to Dr. Rice directly asking for a meeting of principals about the impending attack by al-Qaida. That was January 24, 2001--days after the President took office. There was no meeting with her on such topic until 1 week before 9/11.

Internal Government documents show that the Clinton administration officially prioritized counterterrorism as the ``tier I'' priority, but when the Bush administration took office, top officials downgraded counterterrorism. Even Dr. Rice admitted, ``We decided to take a different track.''

There again, was the President given the best advice? Was all the information marshaled so he could make good judgments? Were the people who had viewpoints that might be inconsistent with the group think of the time allowed in? That is a special role of the National Security Adviser, and a very difficult role.

These are a few of the issues which I think have to be considered with this nomination. There are other issues, too.

The President, in my view, is basically replicating his inner circle now in the broader context of the Cabinet. This raises an issue that was identified by John Prados, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. What he said is:

The administration is setting itself up for a very closed process of creating foreign policy. It's going to eliminate consideration of wider points of view.

In effect, we are in danger of creating an echo chamber of foreign policy in which one loud voice carries because it reverberates without check. That, I think, would be a very dangerous situation.

There are other areas of concern that I have with respect to Dr. Rice's nomination. She has excellent access to the President. There are friends of hers who say she and the President have a ``mind meld.''

I guess they think alike. But being Secretary of State or being any Cabinet Secretary is not just having access, rapport, and a sense of what the boss wants; it is also having the ability and the interest to tell hard truths which you know are not going to be accepted well. That is something that is important.

Again, I don't know. It is hard to predict these things--whether she possesses that kind of ability to tell someone whose mind is melded with hers that he is wrong, or she will even understand where policy requires a different perspective.

As the New York Times editorial characterized her first term as National Security Adviser, according to their words:

She seemed to tell [President Bush] what he wanted to hear about the decisions he's already made, rather than what he needed to know to make sound judgments in the first place.

That type of approach will not serve a Secretary of State very well.

She has also broken a longstanding precedent recognized by preceding National Security Advisers who refrain from partisan politics. She gave speeches espousing the administration's policy in key battleground States of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania beginning in May 2004. Her actions were sharply criticized by her predecessor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser for President Carter. He stated that ``the national security adviser is the custodian of the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and should be seen as an objective adviser to the President'' and not just another member of the political team.

We have I think serious issues raised by this nomination. No one can deny her ability. But I think she has not successfully explained these inconsistencies of statements and these policy mistakes which I believe have seriously eroded our position in the world.

She has, along with the President, apparently espoused a unilateral policy that has isolated many of our traditional allies. It has us going it alone in Iraq at a huge cost. The President is sending up to us a supplemental budget of $80 billion. Today, the operations officer for the U.S. Army indicated they assume they will have over 100,000 troops in Iraq not just this year but next year. That means--just doing the arithmetic--that we can expect another $80 billion-plus bill next year, and still we are in a difficult and confusing situation.

I think Dr. Rice's nomination recognizes and represents a continuation of a policy which has us bogged down in Iraq while Iran and North Korea continue to advance their nuclear ambitions and while a diminished but still dangerous al-Qaida continues to plot against us.

These facts--this strategic situation--I believe requires if not a change in direction at least a realistic reassessment of where we are and how we got there.

Dr. Rice's nomination does not appear to give hope to this change in direction or realistic reassessment. Therefore, I will vote against this nomination.

I yield the remainder of time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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