Unrepetant: Condoleezza Rice at Drew University

Pam and I had the privilege of seeing former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice speak at Drew University's Forum last night. She was engaging, raised some probing questions and at times shared some humor and warmth with the audience. I was surprised at enjoying parts of her talk.

What I did not enjoy was her continued projection of certainty -- moral assuredness -- that she and her colleagues in the Bush administration did no wrong in prosecuting neither their "war on terror" nor their wrong-headed and deadly war in Iraq.

She, like most of her cohorts, continues to be utterly unrepentant in public.

For example, she compared the Bush administration's "vetting" of the decisions the permitted so-called "enhanced interrogations" to go forward by say that the Obama administration has done the same vetting in prosecuting the "drone war." She failed to note that many people raise serious questions about the legality of BOTH efforts.

Noting that the Obama team did the same that the Bush team did makes it seem as if both acts are correct when, in fact, possibly neither set of actions is correct. The Obama administration has used the Bush process as precedent to okay something that is as bad in its own way as the enhanced interrogations were. This is not say that we should never use a drone anywhere. But, it is to raise the issue that we need a clear and well-understood rule of law to guide their use.

Another topic on which the former National Security Adviser was slippery and unwilling to admit error was on the question of the casus bellum of the Iraq War -- the non-existent WMDs. She, we'll all remember, was the one who posited the "mushroom cloud" that she purported Saddam Hussein was holding over our heads. Last night, she continued to repeat the claim that "we, like the rest of the world" were the victims of bad intelligence.

Pardon me for asking, but wasn't Dr. Rice, as National Security Adviser, one of the people who was supposed to be evaluating with a highly critical eye that intelligence? And, wasn't she one of the people who should have read memos beginning in the earliest days of the Bush administration warning of the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda? (see: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/ and http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=0)?

Perhaps, someday, the Secretary will admit to doubts and regrets. But she's not there yet. I hope that someone from the Bush regime other than the admirable Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's Chief of staff during Mr. Powell's tenure as Secretary of State, will actually tell us the truth. I doubt it will happen.