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January 19, 2005

No Class

From the AP:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted Wednesday to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state after two days of hearings in which she faced strenuous Democratic assaults on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq.

Pending approval by the full Senate, Rice would be the first black woman to hold the job. She was confirmed by a 16-2 vote with Democrats John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California voting no.

Nice to see Kerry showed up, anyway.

Posted by Mitch at January 19, 2005 05:18 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Seriously, two Democrats on the panel vote not to confirm Condi (who was incompetent as NSA--just purely incompetent. Her job was to get State, CIA, and the Pentagon on the same page. Did that happen by any objective measure?) and you're griping?

Rice will be confirmed, as she should be, because the President should generally get the cabinet he wants. But that doesn't magically make Condi a good choice. She isn't.

Posted by: Jeff Fecke at January 19, 2005 01:56 PM

Jeff,

First: Not whining, merely pointing out the bitter, lunatic idiocy of John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.

Second: Given that State and CIA are institutionally stacked against Republican presidents, Rice did as well as could be expected.

Is Rice the perfect SecState? No, the perfect SecState would be able to perform that Jedi mind-meld trick that Obiwan Kenobe did on the Stormtroopers, solving all manner of problems. Is she better than the two SoS's that preceded Powell?

With one arm tied behind her back.

Posted by: mitch at January 19, 2005 02:12 PM

So, the only way one can have class is to always, always vote the GOP way.

Is that an accurate reading of your post?

Posted by: Al Dole at January 19, 2005 05:29 PM

No.

Posted by: mitch at January 19, 2005 08:38 PM

In reading your posts you have always struck me as someone who strongly resented being sold a bill of goods. Dr. Rice stated that there were currently 120,000 fully trained Iraqi troops and security personnel on hand. Would you consider that an outright lie, or simply a delusional episode brought on by the klieg lights shining in her myopic eyes?

Posted by: Phil Gorden at January 19, 2005 11:51 PM

So would a better choice be someone like Madeleine Albright, who advocated for the international proliferation of nuclear weapons in the interest of "fairness," or Warren Christopher, who blythely sat on his hands in Hafez Assad's anteroom for hours before being sent out for more cakes and coffee, repeatedly?

Here is the url for Condi Rice's bio: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ricebio.html

Please explain why she is not qualified to be Secretary of State for the United States of America. Obviously Mr. Fecke, Mr. Dole, and Mr. Gorden are expert in their assessments of her abilities and have the credentials to back up their discontent with her nomination. Please enlighten the rest of us as to why Ms. Rice should not represent the United States abroad and who should be recommended as an alternative.

And, do tell, just how many fully-trained Iraqi troops and security personnel are on hand in Iraq? Is there now more or less than, by most accounts, the regular Army estimated to be somewhere between 280,000 to 350,000 troops serving in 17 divisions (in addition to the Republican Guard, which was variously estimated to number between 50,000 to 80,000 men in seven divisions). Did we kill them all or are they all now "insurgents?"

Or is it rather, in the alternative, just possible that roughly a third of Iraq's armed forces and security personnel remain dedicated to their profession and the democratic future of Iraq?

Sources, please.

Posted by: Eracus at January 20, 2005 07:35 AM

Eracus:

That is so dumb I almost don't think I should respond, but I will anyhow.

1. Condi is qualified on paper. I believe her to be incompetent based on her objective performance as NSA. You can choose to draw other conclusions, but she's been a bad NSA, and has lied repeatedly to the American public. Hmm...maybe she is the perfect choice after all!

2. Your citing of pre-war troop strength of Iraq conveniently omits the fact that we disarmed the Iraqi army after the war and barred its soldiers from serving in the future Iraqi army. That was one of the three biggest mistakes we've committed over there. To argue that men who are unable to serve in the army constitute part of the army is either disingenuous or severly misinformed. Which is it?

Posted by: Jeff Fecke at January 20, 2005 12:33 PM

Cite your sources, please.

Posted by: Eracus at January 20, 2005 12:50 PM

Sources, schmources; that stuff is straight out of Atrios.

"1. Condi is qualified on paper. I believe her to be incompetent based on her objective performance as NSA."

OK, Jeff - how does one "objectively" measure that performance? You have metrics?

" You can choose to draw other conclusions, but she's been a bad NSA, and has lied repeatedly to the American public."

No, actually I conclude that she's been an excellent NSA *by any rational standard*.

Lies? Please elaborate.

"2. Your citing of pre-war troop strength of Iraq conveniently omits the fact that we disarmed the Iraqi army after the war..."

Right. And after WWII we disarmed the Wehrmacht and the SS, too. Some agents of order are worse than disorder.

"... and barred its soldiers from serving in the future Iraqi army."

That, as I understand it, is untrue. We barred *Ba'athists* from serving. There is a difference.

" That was one of the three biggest mistakes we've committed over there. To argue that men who are unable to serve in the army constitute part of the army is either disingenuous or severly misinformed. Which is it?"

I choose C, "Irrelevant". Boxer and Kerry were wrong about current Iraqi troop strengh (or, to judge them by the standard by which leftybloggers judge Condi, they LIED LIED LIED!!!!!!!).

By the end of Bush's term, Iraq will be well on the road to recovery. Mark my words. I realize that requires an attention span; buck up.

Posted by: mitch at January 20, 2005 01:31 PM

It is a matter of public record, not to mention common sense, that the defeated Iraqi Army was demobilized. Subsequently, a new Army was formed, with those eligible to join required to be between the age of 18 and 40, not holding the rank of colonel or above in Saddam's military, and having no connections to the Baath Party. Recruiting offices were opened throughout the country, and ex-soldiers, farmers, cigarette vendors, construction workers and others signed up in the deluge, according to The Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times and just about every other mainstream media source. They just buried this part of the story in the back pages, as the idea of literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis volunteering to join the new Army was just so ... so... so... uh, politically incorrect and did nothing to help John Kerry.

Mr. Fecke's assertion, "To argue that men who are unable to serve in the army constitute part of the army is either disingenuous or severly misinformed," is itself disingenous and misinformed, not to mention just plain asinine. There were some 400,000 troops in the Iraqi Army when it was demobilized. Not every Iraqi soldier was a Baathist or loyal to Saddam. To the contrary, the sole purpose of the Iraqi Republican Guard was to protect Saddam from his own military, which sought to depose him, and it is upon that element of the Iraqi military today that the Iraqis themselves seek to re-build their Armed Forces.

Mr. Gorden's assertion that Dr. Rice "lied" when she stated there were currently 120,000 fully trained Iraqi troops and security personnel on hand, however, is correct. She low-balled the estimate. There are 3 times that many, as she well knows, depending on one's definition of "fully trained" and just exactly what constitutes "security personnel." She's a smart girl; she offered her interlocutors the opportunity to correct her, which of course they declined, knowing the true estimate themselves and the success it represents.

Posted by: Eracus at January 20, 2005 04:54 PM
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