November 12, 2008 C-SPAN
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice talked about the election of Barack Obama as president and her tenure as the 66th United States secretary of State. Topics included: the impact Barack Obama's election has had on how the U.S. is viewed worldwide; The mistakes made in Iraq and lessons for the next administration; the threat of terrorism; her personal experiences of racism in America, growing up in Birmingham, Alabama; and her plans for the future, as she prepares to return to Stanford University and begin work on three books. This was the secretary's first television interview since the 2008 elections. It was conducted in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department.

OK, it's not like we didn't know about it, but it's still horrifying.

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Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators. Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods...read on

Alex Gibney, the Academy Award winning director of  "Taxi to the Dark Side" discusses this revelation with Rachel Maddow.

Fallout from the Georgian conflict is still widening, in what may become the defining foreign policy issue of the 2008 US elections. 

In yet another example of Bush administration "diplomacy", Condi Rice is seemingly refusing to talk to her Russian counterpart about escalating tensions in Georgia - even over the phone.

Two and a half years ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. ties with Russia were the best they had been for "quite some time."

Now she and her Russian counterpart are barely on speaking terms over Georgia, and foreign policy analysts are worried that the soured relations will curtail Washington's diplomatic clout around the world.

... U.S. officials said on Friday Rice had not spoken to Lavrov for nearly two weeks -- since a ceasefire was negotiated that Washington accuses Russia of disobeying.

She has not visited Moscow either, but she went to Georgia to show support for beleaguered President Mikheil Saakashvili.

"There's no need to pick up the phone and talk to the Russians right now," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

Meanwhile, Russia is saying it will respond in kind to any Western measures against it, meeting sanctions with sanctions or aggression with aggression.

"Russia does not want confrontation with any country. Russia does not plan to isolate itself," Medvedev said in an interview with Russia's three main television stations.

But he added: "Everyone should understand that if someone launches an aggressive sortie, he will receive a response."

The comment may well have been aimed at bellicose rhetoric from Republican candidate John McCain and from his campaign proxies. By now, in normal times, the crisis in Georgia would be calming down. But it hasn't and Russia has explicity accused the Bush administration of hyping the conflict to aid the Republican election campaign. That has been denied, of course, but Russia has pointed to an American passport (h/t Kat) - belonging to a Texan named Michael Lee White - which was found in a building occupied by Georgian commandos as circumstantial evidence that US advisors were aiding Georgian troops during the fighting. (EDIT: White has denied involvement and said his passport was stolen on a flight from Moscow back in December 2005.)

  Condi Rice went on the Sunday talk shows this morning to send out a little propaganda to the peoples on the Russia/Georgian front and she had the usual help from everyone. There wasn't much background on the US involvement that has fueled Russia's anger.

Kevin Drum and JPM has some thoughts on what actually happened. The Sunday Shows backed up McCain's position as much as they could and gave no context to Putin's response that I saw. (Please let me know in the comment section if anyone did)  I heard Gregory read Condi a NY Times quote and it seemed like he was going to include real background on the issue, but that didn't happen.

As PublEuS says: Since when does the Bush Admin think international "reputation" matters a lick?

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 Condi: ...this forward leaning modern Russia, well, you know, that reputation is frankly in tatters and so, that in itself is a significant consequence...

Yes, Europe grabbed a newspaper and hit Russia on the nose with it and said: Bad Russia, you're a very bad Russia. Stop making messes in Georgia...

  At a press conference today in Tbilsi, Georgia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a six point deal brokered by French President Sarkozy that would require the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the disputed territories.

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"The Russian attack on Georgia had profound implications and will have profound implications for Russia's relations with its neighbors and with the world. But our most urgent task today is the immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russian armed forces and the return of those forces to Russia. France has brokered a six part cease fire accord that will achieve that result if it is indeed honored."

Local Georgian news outlet Civil has more.

UPDATE: Georgian President Saakashvili has signed the cease-fire deal.

Rough transcript below the fold:

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Update: CNN is reporting that the truce has been broken. Not that Russia honored the first one anyway. Tanks are on the move. The Russia-Georgia conflict is getting worse.

Russia responded angrily to President Bush's harsh words this morning about their handling of the situation in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where Russian and Georgian troops have been fighting since last week. "We understand that this current Georgian leadership is a special project of the United States, but one day the United States will have to choose between defending its prestige over a virtual project or real partnership which requires joint action," Lavrov said.

While the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, was meeting at Meiendorf Castle with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, Lavrov minced no words in his criticism of Bush's remarks, calling it the work of "bad speech writers."

It looks like Bush has sent Condi Rice to play piano for Putin and look into his soul.

He announced that he will send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Paris and then Tblisi to help negotiate the peace plan and to show the administration's "unwavering support" for the Georgian government.

"The United States stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected," Bush said.

The pre-emptive doctrine via Bush and Cheney sure has been expanded in this instance.

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Today is the anniversary of the day Harriet Miers handed George Bush an intelligence memo entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.". Ultimately, Bin Laden's determination was more successful than George Bush's intelligence. As of this writing, Bin Laden remains at large. [Never Forget logo by Tengrain.]

And let us not forget how seriously then National Security Director (now Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice took that report: 

Interesting that the Hamdan conviction falls on this anniversary.

We're just changing our position. Can't you notice the difference?

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So when Obama says we should start negotiations with Iran or the Irag Study group says the same thing---they are traitors to America, but when Condi and Bush do the same thing it's really not the same thing. Oh, boy. They just lie, lie, lie. I can't wait to never see her on the world stage again. Condi, why are you a Nazi appeaser also?

During a speech in Jerusalem, President Bush jumped head first into the 2008 presidential campaign by taking a shot at Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, by comparing his willingness to hold diplomatic talks with Iran to the appeasement of Nazis in the 1930's.

See video here.

CSM:

In a surprising development in the tense American-Iranian relationship, the US announced this week that it would send a high-level State Department official to attend talks with Iranian nuclear negotiators in Switzerland over the weekend. This unexpected policy turn comes after a tense, saber rattling summer during which the US, Israel, and Iran have traded threats, staged war games, and tested weapons. But observers suggest that the shift in the US's longstanding tactic of isolating Tehran may be motivated by a desire to ensure that other countries such as China and Russia do not make too many concessions to Iran during the negotiations.

(h/t Silent Patriot for helping with the post too) 

Well, well, well, the girl who ignored the flashing red light from Osama bin Laden right (PDB) before 9/11 is now oh so proud that Bush invaded Iraq. Here she is with Judy Woodruff on Bloomberg.

Faiz:

Rice: Yes, it’s been very, very tough. But I know that great historical events go through difficult phases and often emerge with the world left for the better. And I am proud of the decision of this administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein. I am proud of the liberation of 25 million...

And let's not forget her aluminum tube claim:

Citing Bush administration officials, The New York Times reported Sunday that Iraq tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes. The tubes, Rice said, "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."

Here's here on MTP reminding us all about Saddam back on May 22nd, 2006:

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RICE: I understand that Americans see on their screens violence. They continue to see Americans killed, and we mourn every death. These are very hard things to do. But I would ask that people remember why we are there. We are there because we are trying to-having overthrown a brutal dictator who was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, we're trying to help the Iraqis create a stable foundation for democracy and a stable foundation for peace."

C&L covered this segment from last Friday's Countdown, but I thought an emphasis on Richard Clarke's scathing remarks about the lack of, and the need for, accountability from the Bush administration for the countless lies they told their country and the world about pre-Iraq invasion intelligence, was well deserved.

I have been telling anyone who will listen, that we must watch out for these bad pennies when their names start to creep back into the political arena - names like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who both worked in the Nixon administration. Looking back, we find ourselves wondering how we didn't see this disaster coming, or why more people didn't speak out at the time. I fully agree with Richard Clarke's statements; we must not allow these thugs back into civilized society -- they should not be rewarded for perpetrating so many horrific and destructive crimes against their own people, and other places around the globe.

Clarke: "Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that's been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you're forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way."

"Now, I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they'll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives."

You can rest assured, the day that names like Karl Rove, Tom Delay, Condoleeza Rice or those of anyone who served in the Bush administration creep into the public or political sphere, we, and the rest of the blogosphere, will sound the alarm to make sure none of these people are able to damage our country ever again. More from Think Progress.

Karl Rove's role in building, running and ruining the most corrupt, inept and politically polarizing presidential administration in U.S. history, is the stuff of legends. The below excerpts from Paul Alexander's new book, "Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise And Fall Of Karl Rove", gives a stunning picture of how Rove, within hours of Hurricane Katrina making landfall, put his political machine to work protecting George Bush, his administration and their Republican allies in the Gulf Coast region, by smearing both New Orlenas Mayor, Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor, Kathleen Blanco.

With Karl Rove neutered and disgraced, Alexander found that people (politicians) directly involved in the disaster were finally willing to speak openly about the immoral, disgraceful and unforgivably political nature of the Bush Administration's handling of one the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States -- and was widely viewed as a seminal moment in the downward spiral of George Bush, Karl Rove and the Republican party, from which they never recovered. Excerpts from Salon:

On Monday, August 29, 2005, at about 6:00 a.m., Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A category 5 hurricane until just before landfall, it was one of the worst storms ever to hit the Gulf Coast. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, had been briefed extensively about what to expect when the storm hit, which was why, on the Friday night before the storm reached the coast, she signed papers declaring Louisiana to be in a state of emergency. Based on what she had been told by her advisers and what she knew from being a native Louisianan, she understood that Katrina, creeping gradually toward land with sustained winds of a strength rarely seen in a hurricane, could prove to be catastrophic for Louisiana, and particularly for New Orleans.

If Bush had not seen what was taking place by Tuesday, Karl Rove had. The first evidence of Rove's involvement in the Katrina disaster occurred on Tuesday afternoon. "Rove understood what a nightmare this was for the president," Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, "so he went into high gear on the spin thing they're so good at in the White House. Rove had David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana. I was at a press conference and David Vitter walked up to the mike and said, 'I just got off the phone with Karl Rove.' I looked at the governor and she looked at me, like, 'Why is David Vitter on the phone with Karl Rove?' I mean, he could have been talking to generals, the president himself, but Rove is just a political hatchet man."

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life." Read on...

Wow. Who would have thought that the incompetent Scott McClellan of all people would force the talking heads to re-evaluate their role in the lead up to the war, and make them finally realize that the White House deliberately manipulated them into mindlessly passing along pure government propaganda? To his credit, Chris Matthews today connected the dots and made as clear a case as possible that the White House used, in the case he cited, The New York Times to inject into the national dialogue completely bogus information that Cheney, Bush and Condoleezza Rice would later cite on the Sunday talk shows in order to scare Americans into supporting the Iraq War.

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"There was a lot of salesmanship here....a lot of propaganda."

Chris Matthews and David Gregory seem to get it. Mike Allen...not so much. We'll see how the rest of media handles it.

Of course, for those of us who actually pay attention to this sort of stuff, Bill Moyers chronicled this manipulation extensively in his fascinating documentary, Buying The War.

Memo to the media: Better late than never.

Yahoo:

LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

At one point after passing out, al-Janabi said, he was told by an L-3 translator "welcome to Guantanamo." He said he even asked a cellmate whether he could see the ocean from a window. Read on...

Senator John McCain may look the other way when it comes to torture, but we won't. These atrocities were committed in our name. I hope "Big Steve" and all the rest of these war criminals are punished to the fullest extent -- but we live in Bushworld and it is unlikely any of these thugs will ever be held accountable. Senator Barack Obama has said that if elected he will investigate crimes committed by the Bush regime...we intend to hold him to that.

VetVoice:

Sitting bravely behind concrete walls while visiting Iraq this weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose to channel her boss (circa 2003) by responding to Muqtada al-Sadr's latest threat with an official "taunt" from the U.S. government:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers. ...(read on)

VetVoice's' Brandon Friedman goes on to explain that this "actually provides a huge piece of propaganda for Sadr, who can now use it as a rallying point for his followers who will view this as a challenge to their honor," and just when the surge was beginning to work so well.

Spencer Ackerman has more.

Jon Stewart takes the administration to task for, well, there's no delicate way to put this, deciding the intimate details of how we would torture people. It pains me to type those words.

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Digg It!

You gotta wonder, how could these administration officials be so confident that we don’t torture? Well, there’s only two options, really. One, the administration reminded all military and intelligence agencies of the moral commitment that civilized nations have to remain humane, even in times of peril. Or…. They sat in a room and meticulously crafted an interrogation regimen in the lawyer-created space between cruelty and torture. Hmmm….I wonder which way they went.

UPDATE: John Amato: It's good to see TDS pick up on our push with the ACLU to get this information out there. C&L will not let up on this issue and the blogoshere has responded in kind. Thanks. And Condi Rice should be forced to resign over this issue.