May 1, 2009
Stanford Student Assails Rice On Torture
Former Secretary Of State Defends Guantanamo Interrogations
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Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (CBS)
"If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans jump out of 80 story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people, then you were determined to do anything that you could, that was legal, to prevent that from happening," Rice said, referring to the September 11th terrorist attacks.
The student, who is standing just off camera, listened as the former Secretary of State and Stanford Provost explained her views.
"Foreign policy is full of tough choices, very tough choices," Rice said.
Three and a half minutes into the video, Rice's people try to move her along, but she insisted on continuing.
When the student noted that the United States did not torture during World War II, Rice responded, "With all due respect, Nazi Germany never attacked the homeland of the United States."
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- Thank you Condoleezza Rice for telling it clearly and succinctly. It is all too easy and common for people to say that they are against something that was done and therefore they conclude that it was "wrong" without using logic, knowing all of the facts in the situation, and reasoning in the process.
- Reply to this comment
- Yoad, it's you!
Rice is a classic. Her comments on WWII during the Iraq conflict showed almost TOTAL ignorance of a major part of contemporary world and US history. She was/is an academic idelaogue who had no business in either of her two assignments.
Posted by nancy_naive at 2:54 AM : May 4, 2009
She has the credentials to serve in any politcally natured position. For starters, her first college teachers was Professor Josef Korbel...Not to mention, she has received multiple degrees in the field of political science. Now, I don't doubt for a second that there are plenty of examples of incompetent people with an intense background in their career field. However, Rice is not one of them. Some of her experiences including serving as a fellow for the CFR and assisting the JCS...Also,if she had no business, like you believe, in either previously held assignment (as advisor or secretary), then the Senate would not have approved of her appointment. - Reply to this comment
- Bush and his team of thugs are themselves religious fanatics. As such, they are extremists; we just do not admit it. They declared a "crusade" against "rival" in order to follow their own religious convictions. Over million people have lost their lives, and many more maimed and are in pain-That is even worse than torture.
These ugly thugs must stay reclusive and not be wandering around like that - Reply to this comment
- I love how you Libs only hear what you want to hear.
PMS_NBC Tries to act like she was talking like Nixon. Saying that if the president says so then it isn't illegal.
What she actually said was that Bush assured her that he wouldn't be doing anything illegal. Which he didn't.
Dumping water on some people were are going to eventually hand by a rope is fine with me, and not immoral either.
Its just as immoral for Obama to drop bombs on Pakistan and kill innoncent people. Thats a country we are not even at war with!
This whole torture arguement is a joke.
Thank god we had someone with some balls to keep us safe. When Obama's code pink policies get us hit by another attack we will see what the public oponion is about waterboarding then.
2001 poll december 89 percent of people polled supported water boarding including
John Kerry
Hillary Clinton
and John Edwards
This whole thing is too funny and nothing will come of it, but it will give Chris Mathews (man crush on Obama) Keith Olberman (Never has voted and therefore should not be allowed to voice an oponion on TV) and Rachael Maddow (carpet muncher) something to complain about now that Bush is gone. - Reply to this comment
- Condoleezza Rice is an intelligible and good person. To those who'd prefer to argue otherwise, I would recommend reading about her life. As for the Standford student, who neither shows his face or respect, he seems to think he is superior. Perhaps in hubris, he is.
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- The neo-cons love to post that "Libs" are just squeamish over torture, they dismiss the Constitution and International Agreements we have made and say torture is justified and necessary, I think that 5 minutes under waterboarding would turn all the valiant neo-cons into gibbering idiots ready to tell the world how they sodomized their mothers.
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- So let me get this right Condi, if Bush sent people to rob a bank, it would be legal because he was president, right? Doesn't that sound more than a little like the Nazi defense after WWII, "We were only following orders"?
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- It cracks me up to hear the lib decries torture and then turn around saying they want to torture certain people.
Can you imagined one of the libs getting capture by ther enemy, they'll spilled their guts in 5 minutes. I guess that's why they don't believed "torture" is necessary. - Reply to this comment
- Woo! mcthreeteeth at 5:56 PM : May 1, 2009
Another profound post by mcretard, and the hits keep coming. You, nancy numnuts and poopypants-three tards in a pod - Reply to this comment
- Somebody please correct me, but didn't some U-Boats land on American shores? I believe some Germans were executed as spies. This woman is unbelievably stupid. We should waterboard all the Bush crowd. After all it's not torture and they could demonstrate that. The main reason I'm against torture is that it can be used to justify torture against our people Yes, I know , no justification is necessary for terrorists. Why haven't we heard anything about truth serum. Doesn't that work?
- Reply to this comment
- "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans jump out of 80 story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people, then you were determined to do anything that you could, that was legal, to prevent that from happening," Rice said, referring to the September 11th terrorist attacks.
The problem here - Rice and all the rest knew that what they were doing was NOT LEGAL under US or International law.
We hung people after WW II for doing the exact same things that Rice purports to be A-OK... - Reply to this comment
- Of course, Ms Rice is correct: water-boarding is NOT a near-drowning technique- the subject is never in danger of drowning.
And water-boarding is NOT torture- there is no physical harm to the subject.
The snarky student that attempted to confront her was a typical self-righteous Obot, with sweeping generalizations and ?knows? an awful lot of stuff that isn?t true.
Condi did the right thing in the now defunct War on Terror, and has nothing to hide. She doesn?t need to take any crap about it from some college kid, either? perhaps he wasn?t aware she was drawn from Stanford, and is quite familiar with his type.
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/
Posted by reaganitegop at 4:36 PM : May 1, 2009 .....................
What the republican party did to this country for the last eight years was appalling,,,,,,and what the democrats are doing now ,,,is just as bad.,,,,,,,,BOTH parties do not care about the people of this country,,,,they are addicted to the lobby dollars and are a worse threat to this country than than anything we face.,,EVERY single economic problem we face is the fruit of 50 years of lobby tainted legislation by BOTH parties.....If our government cared about the people they would not be sending us to bankruptcy by staying in two LIE wars at a cost of 10 billion a month. they would be really trying to help the people instead of robbing us , our children, and their children. - Reply to this comment
- a stanford student told condoleeza rice that the usa never used torture during wwII. and rice said that nazi germany never attacked the usa. oh really! i guess rice was never a student of history. germany put spies on usa soil. there were attacks just off the coast on usa shipping. there was an event on the horseshoe curve caused by the nazis.
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- I know Americans do not believe in torture,I do believe in punishment under our rule of law,, what is making me mad about all this, is they sit in a office, and change our laws to suit them, and say what ever the president does"|Is LAW". This is what infuriates me how arrogant and unlawful they were, to go into a country and say this, and that, is why they are wrong, and whatever papers they have are just that papers, and should be used against them.Why have a congress to set laws if a President and his henchmen can just arbitrarily change laws to suit the circumstances at hand unbelievable and truly a disgrace get rid of the Patriot Act another piece of crap.Our justice dept. will, really be busy for a long time trying to sort out all they did do. We have not heard the last of this
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- Of course, Ms Rice is correct: water-boarding is NOT a near-drowning technique- the subject is never in danger of drowning.
And water-boarding is NOT torture- there is no physical harm to the subject.
The snarky student that attempted to confront her was a typical self-righteous Obot, with sweeping generalizations and ?knows? an awful lot of stuff that isn?t true.
Condi did the right thing in the now defunct War on Terror, and has nothing to hide. She doesn?t need to take any crap about it from some college kid, either? perhaps he wasn?t aware she was drawn from Stanford, and is quite familiar with his type.
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/ - Reply to this comment
- Posted by kansas1946
We aren't in Kansas anymore tootoo - Reply to this comment
- Just another evil apologist for the Bush administration. I wish they would all just stay home and be quiet. They did enough damage while they were in office.
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- I want to see Rice get repeatedly waterboarded. They could do it pay-per-view
Buck-toothed bimbo deserved it.
Posted by mcthreeteeth
Well said mcretard - Reply to this comment
- "In WWII the enemy wore uniforms, those who did not could be shot as spies. Maybe we should have just shot these guys, but then we would have had a second ground zero in LA. This is a different kind of war and requires different tactics." ~~ dknelson353
That second 'ground zero' in L.A. was not stopped as a result of torture - although Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have both said it was. Of course, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are incapable of speaking truth.
Quoted from President Bush in the press release titled Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack, published May 23, 2007: "In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago [March, 2007], KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles."
Oh, and khalid sheikh muhammed (KSM) wasn't waterboarded until 2005 - 186 times in one month. So 186 episodes of torture produced something we already knew - since the alleged perpetrators of the possible attack in L.A. were apprehended (not by Americans) in 2002.
For those who don't get it because your former president and his minions wouldn't possibly tell thousands of lies to further their private agenda (read the "Project For a New American Century", written by Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., well before the election in 2000, which called for the invasion of Iraq for the purpose of controlling Iraqi oil and coercing the obedience of the other countries of the Middle East), torture does NOT produce actionable intelligence...unless there are thousands of operatives in the field to verify each and every statement produced by any given torture victim. People who are tortured do NOT tell the truth. In fact, they lie as a matter of course. They tell lie after lie after lie...each one different. They do NOT lie in order to confuse their torturers, though. They lie because they will say ANYTHING in order to find the one thing they can say which will stop the torture. In other words, for those with no ability to think this through rationally, the individual being tortured will eventually - given enough time and enough torture sessions - say what his torturers want him to say...which is the whole purpose of torture in the first place. - Reply to this comment
- To Questionews:
Posted by Questionews at 2:34 PM : May 1, 2009
======================================
The term 'conspiracy theory' is a loaded phrase that is used to denigrate those who do not accept senseless explanations for situations and events that appear to be more complex than first glance would suggest!
It is especially used by those who are guilty of elaborate conspiracies, to demean those who
are not easily duped into believing their illogical, phony assertions and stories!
If you look into it, research it---you will be shocked at what you discover! Don't allow
South Park depictions of reality to overly sway your worldview!
Finally, I'm not really attempting to persuade anyone---in this case, I was just stating an opinion, nothing more! - Reply to this comment
