Senate Coverage -- (January '05)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Oklahoma. I, too, want to speak on the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice to serve as Secretary of State. We are all aware, because it has been the subject of quite a bit of discussion and we have seen her in action for the last 4 years at the White House and even before that, of Dr. Rice's accomplishments. She is a woman of fantastic achievement, a profoundly talented individual who has excelled at virtually everything to which she has set her mind. I dare say there are few people in this Nation's history who would make both an excellent Secretary of State and an excellent commissioner of the National Football League. I am sure Dr. Rice, in keeping with her stated aspirations, will fill both roles with dedication, intellect, and passion in due time.

Yet the reaction to this nomination, which you would think would be a cause for great celebration, given the historic nature of this particular appointment, is also sadly predictable. For example, it is a shame to think that with the overwhelming voice of the people so recently expressed in the recent national elections and with the 109th Congress just having begun, with the President having been sworn in last week, with early pledges of bipartisanship and working together in the best interest of the American people, we are yet again already seeing the specter of partisan politics being brought to bear on this nomination.

Of course, the Senate does have a very important role in the confirmation process known as advice and consent. No one is questioning the right of any Senator, indeed the duty of every Senator, to ask hard questions and to determine to the best of their ability the qualifications of a nominee to serve in the office to which the President has chosen to appoint them. But there is a difference between exercising the role of advice and consent and the line that seems to have been crossed with impunity when it comes to the attacks we have seen on some of the President's nominees. Condoleezza Rice just happens to be the one we are focusing on today. We have seen much of the same vitriol and poison used to assassinate the character of people like Alberto Gonzales, another American success story, a personification of the American dream.

I would hope that no one in this body would feel it necessary to bring all the left-over angst of the campaign season to bear against a bright and honorable nominee such as the one who is presently before us. You may disagree with Dr. Rice's view of the world. You may take issue with some of her policy preferences.

But to impugn her motives or the integrity of a woman held in such high esteem is a tactic that I believe is simply unacceptable and beneath the dignity of this body. Yet we see this tactic clearly, again, in the attempt to--first in the committee hearings, the Foreign Relations Committee, and even on the floor of the Senate--try to tie her actions to the tragic events at Abu Ghraib prison, the crimes that occurred by a handful of individuals that simply crossed the line between human decency and criminality. They were acts that violated U.S. policy and basic human rights. They were disgusting actions undertaken by sick individuals who are being investigated and being brought to justice--the most recent of which, of course, was the conviction and sentencing of Mr. Graner to 10 years in prison.

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Now, my colleagues know well that at no point has Dr. Rice ever supported, condoned, or advocated such acts of torture or humiliation. I believe to try to link her, through some vague references, to these crimes is nothing more than a blatant attempt to score political points, to somehow demean her in her service, and to taint her nomination. It should not be necessary to raise these points, but I realize that in politics, particularly in Washington, a charge unanswered is too often a charge believed.

Let me just refer to a brief reference in the Schlesinger report--of course, referring to the former Secretary of Defense, who served on an independent commission with former Defense Secretary Harold Brown, who served in the Carter administration, as well as a former distinguished Member of the House of Representatives. They concluded after their investigation--and this was just one of, I believe, eight investigations. There are three more that are not yet completed. But this was the conclusion of the independent Schlesinger commission:

No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.

So to suggest, to hint, to imply that this nominee, or any senior officials in the Bush administration has condoned or adopted a policy that resulted in the criminal abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib is simply without foundation and any fact. Indeed, it is a scurrilous allegation, and the American people need to understand that. They also need to understand the motives why such allegations are made.

In addition to these inappropriate partisan attacks against a nominee who deserves our respect, there are a handful of my colleagues who have used this opportunity to roll out the same tired, old arguments concerning the war on terror, and particularly Operation Iraqi Freedom. We know that we are in the midst of a global war on terrorism. This is not just about Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not just about isolated incidents of terrorism. This is about a conflict that has been building for more than a decade and, indeed, will likely last a generation.

Since America suffered an attack on our own soil in New York in 1993, we have been hit at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; we have been hit at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; our Navy was hit at the USS Cole in Yemen; of course, we had the attacks of 9/11; and Bali, Madrid, and in Beslan. The list goes on and on.

In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, President Bush decided, with the authorization of Congress at every turn, that if diplomacy would not yield a pacified Saddam, that if the U.N. declined to enforce its own resolutions requiring inspections and disarmament, we would, when necessary, use preemptive action against those who seek to harm America and those who threaten world peace and supply sanctuary to terrorists.

We also decided that it was in America's self-interest to take the battle to the terrorists where they live, where they plot, where they plan, and where they train and build weapons--not to wait until we

are attacked again and where innocent civilians' lives are lost and innocent blood is shed. The post-Ð9/11 reality is that America must choose to fight this terrorist threat on their ground, or they will fight us on ours.

This is not some grand conspiracy of this current administration or any policy which is really strange to history or unknown to history. It was in 1941, after Pearl Harbor, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said:

If you hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes, you will never know what hit you.

That was Israel's policy in 1981 when it knocked out Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor. The fact that Israel continues to exist today was in part because its leaders had the wisdom and courage to take on a growing threat by the use of preemptive action--sometimes called preventive self-defense--whenever it was necessary.

No one wants to imagine what could have happened if Iraq's nuclear program, which was well documented after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1991, when we were surprised to learn after we repulsed that attack that Saddam's nuclear program was much further along than our intelligence authorities had previously thought. But no one wants to imagine what would have happened if Iraq had continued to develop its nuclear capability, or if they had been able to reconstitute their nuclear program after we left Iraq in 1991. It was a horrific possibility for America and the rest of the world, and indeed a responsibility of the leaders of this country and the free world to eliminate this gathering threat.

Ms. Rice has also been criticized for the belief that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But you know what? And the critics know this. The truth is, virtually every intelligence service in the world believed that Saddam had these weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, this was one of the premises for the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. It was for the authorization given to then-President Clinton to use necessary force to remove this threat. Our intelligence, though, as we all now know with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, proved to be incorrect--at least at the time that we entered Iraq--that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Of course, we have been undertaking the necessary reforms both in this body and in the intelligence community to stop that kind of intelligence failure from ever occurring again.

The critics should not be allowed to rewrite history. The fact is that no one party or person misled the rest of us--Democrat, Republican, or Independent. The truth is, we were all misled by this erroneous intelligence, and rather than point the finger of blame where no blame is due, what we ought to be about--and, indeed, what we have been doing--is correcting the reasons for that failure and making sure that it never happens again.

Yet even though we did not find stockpiles of WMD, the bottom line is this: This was not the only reason that Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Indeed, there are numerous other reasons set out in the resolution that passed this Senate by overwhelming margins. It is beyond debate that Saddam continued to have the intent to acquire WMD and there is little doubt that but for our intervention and the fact that he was pulled from a spider hole and put in prison awaiting future accountability at the hands of the Iraqi people that he would have fully reconstituted his program just as soon as he was able.

One does not have to take my word for it. Mr. Duelfer, who succeeded Mr. Kay, and was in charge of looking into the possibility that Saddam had WMD, concluded in September 2004:

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability--which was essentially destroyed in 1991--after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized. .....

Indeed, that has been the evidence we learned in the oil-for-food scandal in the United Nations, that Iraq would siphon off money to stabilize and support his failing economy, but his job, he thought, was to wait out the sanctions in such a way that once the sanctions were removed he would reconstitute Iraq's WMD capability. To somehow point the finger of blame at this distinguished nominee, where she, like all of us, was given the erroneous reports from the intelligence community, is simply unjustified and unfounded and indeed, in the end, it is revisionist history.

Lest this point be lost in the debate and the fingerpointing, we are in Iraq for our own good and for the good of the world, and I might add for the good of the Iraqi people. September 11 taught us all a very important lesson, that security in the modern world depends on taking aggressive and focused action to prevent terrorist acts before they occur, not just opening a criminal investigation after innocent blood is shed.

We have marshaled the force of freedom in this fight, one of the most powerful weapons that we have in our arsenal, and indeed on this Sunday, as has been recounted over and over again, the Iraqi people will make their first major step toward self-government as a free Iraq.

There are some who continue to argue that we did not have the right plan to deal with postwar Iraq. We have hashed that argument out a hundred times. Yes, hindsight is always 20/20, and we did not know then what we

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know now, but that is no real revelation. That really suggests, again, another failure of our intelligence-gathering capability and particularly our HUMINT, our human intelligence capability, which we are fixing.

I point out that it serves no one's interests, and certainly not the national interest of this country or the interests of the Iraqi people, to continue to try to point the finger of blame at past errors, particularly in connection with our intelligence-gathering capability. Indeed, even those who did not support the resolution authorizing the use of force must now concede that it is in our best interest not to have Iraq fail and become perhaps a sanctuary for terrorists. Even those who oppose this war should acknowledge at this point that it is in our best interest for Iraq to become a working democracy and to avoid strife and become a free and peaceful nation.

It is counterproductive, unless of course one's purpose is merely partisan politics, to dwell on the past at the expense of our present duty and our plans for the future. It is time to focus on what is our duty in Iraq, along with other nations, the coalition and the Iraqi people, and that is to secure Iraq, to help this new democracy take root, and to further the cause of freedom around the globe.

There is no question that Iraq continues to be a very fragile place, but in truth, Iraq is making solid progress on a difficult road when one takes into

consideration the fact that Saddam had an iron grip on power in this nation a mere 2 years ago. Consider what has been accomplished. A valid voter registration list of 14.3 million names has been completed. More than 500 voter registration centers have been established to help Iraqis verify their registration status. Iraqis will vote on election day in the thousands of voting centers across that country and in 14 other countries, including the United States of America. Candidate lists for 111 political entities have been submitted for the national elections and, in total, 256 political entities, composed of 18,900 candidates, have registered to compete in 20 different elections: The national election, 18 provincial elections, and the Kurdistan regional government election.

These 254 entities include 27 individuals, 33 coalitions, and 196 parties, all demonstrating widespread enthusiasm for this opportunity they have for free and fair elections.

I believe we will see the true ramifications of freedom in Iraq over the next generation, and I believe this first election is a watershed at the beginning of this new generation of a free Iraq.

As responsible leaders rise to the forefront and the vestiges of tyranny are replaced by a fledgling republic, we will see that the victories won, the hardship that has been endured, and the lives risked and indeed tragically lost have not been in vain.

Before this election season that just concluded, or I thought concluded on November 2 but which seems to have continued now with attacks against the President's nominees--those who were unsuccessful in persuading the American public of the correctness of their opinions on November 2--I never thought I would hear anyone utter what I think is one of the most foolish notions yet. And yet I have heard the suggestion made again and again in the context of Dr. Rice's hearing. And it is the suggestion that Iraq today and the world as a whole is worse off than it was with Saddam Hussein in power.

Have these people somehow missed the fact that we found unspeakable horrors in Saddam's Iraq, torture cells, rape rooms, execution chambers, children's prisons. We found a legacy of terror and fear and vestiges of unimaginable cruelty. We have found that more than 1 million people are simply missing; 300,000 are dead, lying in mass graves throughout Iraq in nearly 100 reported sites, including one that I personally viewed a year ago last August. These mass graves are silent monuments to Saddam's ruthlessness left behind for all to see.

With due respect for my colleagues who advanced the idea that Iraq or America was better off with Saddam Hussein in power, to suggest that the world is safer when despots rule in palaces instead of serving time, being held accountable in jails, is to ignore the bulk, if not the entirety, of human history.

It was Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who enjoined against similar foreign policy foolishness in an earlier era when he said:

Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies [you adopt] our enemies' view of the world.

I think we must also be sobered and cautioned by that injunction, and we should all be responsible enough to not let our desire to score partisan political points lapse into adopting our enemy's view of the world.

As President Bush urged just last week, America has the moral responsibility to take a stand for liberty as the guiding force in the world and the defining principle of this age. We have the strength and the will to see this purpose through.

I urge my colleagues to support a Secretary of State who understands the stakes, who sees the right course, and has the will to follow it.

In conclusion, I have talked about the attacks that have been directed on this honorable nominee and why I believe that they are unfounded and how I believe those who are disappointed, perhaps, in the way the election turned out on November 2 have continued their sort of political insurgency directed at the President but through his nominees for his Cabinet, and particularly Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales. I have said that while it is our responsibility as Senators to exercise with diligence our advice and consent function and to ask hard questions in good faith, there is a line that should not be crossed, which I believe has been crossed in the attacks made against these nominees, including Condoleezza Rice.

One reason I believe that is true is because of the evidence that I have in my hand. This is a solicitation, a fundraising solicitation sent out by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

I ask unanimous consent this be printed in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mr. CORNYN. This is over the signature of Senator Barbara Boxer, who has been one of the most acerbic critics of this nominee. But at the same time she argues why this nominee should not be confirmed, she ties this to fundraising efforts by the Democratic Senatorial Committee.

She said in part:

The Republicans were expecting the Senate to confirm Dr. Rice with little debate and questioning from the Foreign Relations Committee.

I think we found that already not to be true. The distinguished chairman, who is in the Chamber now, held lengthy hearings and allowed all Senators a chance to ask numerous questions of this nominee, and we know now, from the 9 hours that have been agreed to as part of this debate, that, indeed, there is substantial debate about this nominee. But she goes on, from Senator Boxer's pen:

They didn't count on me to ask the tough questions. What the Republicans don't realize is, no matter who is in charge in the White House, the role of Congress will always be to act as a check on the Executive branch of government. And when it comes to the President's nominees, the Senate must take its ``advise and consent'' role during the confirmation process seriously.

I agree with that. I have said as much in my comments today. But what I do not agree with, and I think where this fundraising solicitation crosses the line and where it finds itself in company with some of the partisan attacks that have been made without substance against this nominee, is when it goes on to say to contribute to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, making this part of not only a political attack but a fundraising effort by the Democrats in the Senate. That, I believe, crosses a line that should not have been crossed, and one for which I believe Dr. Rice is entitled to an apology. To tie the confirmation of the Secretary of State to a fundraising campaign and to propagate misinformation or disinformation about this distinguished nominee, who is an American success story, in an effort to raise money for the Democratic Senatorial Committee is inappropriate and I think would offend and does offend the American people.

I believe this offense deserves a quick repudiation by our colleagues on the

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other side of the aisle who maybe were not involved in this and, indeed, an apology to Dr. Rice for the way she has been treated.

In conclusion, let me say that I have seen, in my relatively short time in the Senate, some pretty rough treatment of the President's nominees. We have seen filibusters of judicial nominees when there is a bipartisan majority of the Senate to confirm those nominees. Indeed, this has been a part of an unconstitutional burden that neither this President nor those nominees should have to bear.

But we have also seen sort of a character attack on nominees that I think is not only unfair to those nominees but completely unbecoming to the dignity of the Senate and the kind of respect with which they should be treated. It is one thing to disagree about policy; it is one thing to ask hard questions. No one is asking anyone to vote against their conscience on a nominee. But to abuse these nominees in a way that is unfair, not only to them and their family but one that mischaracterizes the facts and is part of a disinformation campaign which is clearly tied to politics, is something we ought to call an end to.

I had held out some hope, and increasingly it appears to be a vain hope, that somehow with the reconvening of this 109th Congress we would see a change in attitude, we would see a willingness to work together.

We have seen some comments, some speeches, some promises to that end. But when it comes to this sort of inappropriate political activity and politicizing the confirmation process for America's diplomat in chief and the President's other judicial nominees, all I can say is it is a crying shame.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

DEAR DSCC FRIEND, The Republicans were expecting the Senate to confirm Dr. Rice with little debate and questioning from the Foreign Relations Committee.

They didn't count on me to ask the tough questions. What the Republicans don't realize is, no matter who is in charge in the White House, the role of Congress will always be to act as a check on the Executive branch of government. And when it comes to presidential nominees, the Senate must take its ``advise and consent'' role during the confirmation process seriously.

That's why I took a stand last week and voiced my concerns about Dr. Rice's misleading statements leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond. I will continue to make my voice heard on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, but in order to put the brakes on four more years of misdirection in Iraq and reckless policies at home, we need to elect more Democrats to the Senate during the 2006 midterm elections.

Because after Dr. Rice is confirmed, the Senate will face many more crucial decisions in the coming months: confirmation of President Bush's choice for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, social security, Iraq and possibly a Supreme Court nomination. My Democratic colleagues and I will hold the Bush Administration accountable for its decisions. But we will need your help to hold them accountable in the ultimate public hearing: the next midterm elections in 2006.

The Republicans want us Democrats to step back and pave the way not only for this one nominee, but for their entire social, economic and international agenda. We have a chance during the midterm elections to make sure the Republicans don't have four years to do so. The DSCC is working every day to recruit the strongest candidates in every Senate race across the country. They are fighting early and fighting hard, but they need your ongoing support today.

So while I raise my voice on the Senate floor, I hope you will join us on the campaign trail and send the loudest message of all--one that the Republicans will not be able to ignore--unseating them in the midterm elections and sending more Democrats to the Senate.

Yours sincerely,
Senator BARBARA BOXER.

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