Ms. Rice's explanation may not have been in good faith but, assuming it was,

[Hosnon]

I greatly sympathize with her. Speaking with nuance (especially with regard to principles of logic) is helpful if your audience is expecting said nuance, but can be a headache if not.

It was not the fact that Bush was President that made her believe his actions were legal; it was the fact that he told Ms. Rice that any actions of his would be legal.

[saltpoint]

1. Call me incredulous, but I really feel that every syllable that

comes out of Condoleezza Rice's mouth is a lie.

I have no sympathy for her at all.

[Hosnon]

2. I think she was a victim of the trust she placed in President Bush's good faith. nt.

[saltpoint]

3. I think that scenario does take place in the world but I don't think

someone as perceptive as Dr. Rice falls victim to it.

I don't think she is that stupid to align herself against all her academic brio and career potential with a pack of people who endorsed torture.

I'm just not seeing her buy into that unless she endorsed it herself, and at that point, I don't see her as victim.

[Hosnon]

4. I don't think she is free of blame by any means. But I can understand if she

was persuaded to put her "benefit of the doubt" on the side of President Bush (as probably the vast majority of the staff of any administration is).

She's an academic, and academics are extremely useful to Machiavellians.

[saltpoint]

6. Perhaps I'm just too Blue for this one.

I think she's a liar. I think she's been one a long time.

And I think she's up to her neck in misdeeds related to her lust for power in the dark house of the Bush administration.

[Hosnon]

7. Too Blue?

Nice try.

[saltpoint]

8. It wasn't a try. I asserted that I was a deep blue Democrat and quite

partisan on the subject of torture-endorsing Bush administration officials.

[EFerrari]

11. What are you talking about? Academics are trained in critical thinking.

[Jawja]

19. Actually, in a twisted way, she is

publicly laying the blame at George W. Bush's feet.

[malaise]

20. Are you serious?

You mean she does not know what is and is not illegal.

[spanone]

22. she's far to educated to be 'duped' by that fool..complicity is the word that comes to mind

[Occam Bandage]

5. I have a hard time accepting that her explanation was in good faith.

She has demonstrated a willingness to lie before, especially as regards matters of national security policy, such as 9/11 or the Iraq war.

[JDPriestly]

9. Hosnon, Ms. Rice is an expert on Soviet affairs.

When the Soviets tortured, we called it tortured. Ms. Rice knows that we called it torture. She knows what the Soviets did, and she knows that it is torture. She knew it was torture when she and her co-conspirators in the Bush administration ordered it to be done. She is a liar.

Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, prolonged standing, sensory deprivation, knocking people against a rubber wall, those things were torture when the USSR did them. They were torture when East Germany did them. They were torture when Condoleeza Rice ordered them done. She knew they were torture. She was angry. She wanted revenge. She is no different from Stalin or the STASI in that respect. They too were angry and wanted revenge so they tortured.

Condoleeza Rice knew her acts were not legal. She knew they weren't legal because Stalin ordered them. She knew they wouldn't be legal because Bush ordered them.

You are a softy. Condoleeza Rice does not deserve your sympathy. Of all the people in the government, as a student of Soviet affairs, as one who had to know the ugly history of the gulags, she knew better. She just didn't want to lose her job. I have neither sympathy nor respect for her. She is a pitiful social climber.

[EFerrari]

10. People can tell me anything they like but I still have the responsibility to use my brain. n/t

[democrank]

12. It`s not about nuance, it`s about a war crime.

I hope Rice gets prosecuted along with the rest of them.

[Solly Mack]

13. Amazing

[saltpoint]

14. The problem with Dr. Rice is that she is a creature of her own notions of

self-importance.

She fell in with the Bushes and their extended political family, a pack of high-voltage power-mongers, and suddenly it didn't matter anymore who thought what or who said what about her.

She must have felt that this affiliation bought her cosmic immunity from criticism. Certainly it appeared to free her from the burden of self-examination.

She had a Cold War academic pedigree as a "Russia expert" eventually leading to her appointment as security director in a world where "Russia" was nowhere near the player it had been during the 50s and 60s, for example. She was strategically obsolete before she ever got off the damn tarmac in Washington. Richard Clarke might have been of genuine and significant assistance. She dumped him.

She was intelligent but not apparently possessed of much integrity to go with the smarts. I suppose it is possible to be very intelligent and still want power and clout so badly you can taste it, even to the point where you'd kowtow to a brainless ninny like George W. Bush and his extended gang of thieves, charlatans, con men, liars, and jerks.

This is a high-functioning academic woman who at one time aspired to the classical concert stage in piano and in the most recent chapter of her career was signing off on the pointless and brutal torture of innocent human beings. Major career shift, that.

What we have with Dr. Rice, IMO, is a character pathology in red large throbbing red, red, red letters.

[BlueMTexpat]

15. I concur absolutely ... and especially with your points

about her strategically "obsolete" background, her "insanity" in failing even to listen to Clarke and her feeling of "cosmic immunity" from criticism.

Torture is simply wrong under any circumstances. That she would use HER own abysmal failure as NSC Director to recognize the real dangers presented pre-9-11 when they were literally spelled out for her by the intelligence services and earlier events (the earlier WTC bombings, the US Embassy bombings in Africa, the Cole incident in Dec 2000, for God's sake!) to justify her participation in the Bush Administration war crimes ... and the war crimes themselves ... brands her a Criminal in my book.

[saltpoint]

16. Hi, BlueMTexpat. Yes. Ol' Condi got nailed this week first by a college

student and then later by a 4th grader! LOL!

Also a group of Stanford alumni are pressuring the college to deny her any role there whatsoever. Stanford alumni have a buck or two saved up and donations to the university are well, an issue. This could get really interesting in a big hurry.

My gut instinct on this woman is that she is mentally ill. I am sorry that she is mentally ill, if the instinct is accurate, because I certainly wish that people not have to struggle against sharp odds with the world they live in. At the same time, this is a woman who appears complicit in the torture of innocent others. Whether that is a manifest mental disorder or just a raw lust for power and control, I am definitely not qualified to say. But I do know that I don't like it.

She's dodged justice for 8 years. This week, two school students put the fire to her toes. I'm all ears to see how the whole thing plays out from now on.

[KharmaTrain]

17. Plausible Deniability - The Lessons Of Nixon

As other, I have ZERO sympathies for Ms. Rice. She wasn't the victim of Stockholm Syndrome but an active participant in a blatant attempt to push Executive power beyond all limits. It was a deliberate plan drawn up from the "mistakes" of Watergate by those who saw Nixon as "weak" in this area and had he "stood firm" he would have never had all those things happen to him. It was the mindset of cheeeney & rumsfeld that molded the job that Rice would fill. And they made no pretenses about it.

I wasn't surprised to hear the Nixonian defense come from here since surely that was not just Nixon's view but that of his accolytes...the oens who stole the 2000 election with a firm agenda to use the Executive to its max...maximum power, maximum profit, maximum control.

As others have stated above, Rice, being a "Russian scholar" surely should have noticed the draconian and authoritarian bend, but went right along with it as she was a believer in the Unitary Executive. Thus, first as NSA and then at State, she knew her job was to enable...to facilitate...to further the power of the Executive as it meant more power for those who she directly benefitted from.

If she hadn't known that this regime was breaking international laws and the Constitution prior to her becoming SOS, she sure as hell did afterwards. That was when the first reports of torture and wiretapping were coming out. It wouldn't have been that hard for her to get the real truth. Either she avoided that truth or knew it and covered up. Either way, she is as complicit as all the other war criminals and must be held accountable.

[Supersedeas]

21. the coordinated diversion of pointing fingers at the same time: no one is really responsible

Accountability is not a Repubbie value

[RomanHoliday]

18. I think she's bullshitting.

She's not some naive puppy dog who was fooled by the Bush crew. She was an active participant.

[tekisui]

23. She wasn't some ignorant little girl. She's a doctor

and has been around the big leagues long enough to know what she did was a crime.

Let her mull it over in jail.

[lunatica]

24. First of all, if I'm not that stupid and get it then she does too

I knew far less than she did about what went on in Bush's Administration. I'm really just your typical liberal and no more or less savvy than anyone else with my IQ, but I didn't have the inside knowledge that she did. I got it because it was so obvious but you're trying to argue that she was naive? I don't think so.

[saltpoint]

25. Can't say for certain but it might not be a bad idea for Dr. Rice to hire an

attorney.

Sometimes the first meeting is free.

Not uninterestingly, the people detained and tortured by the administration for which Dr. Rice worked did NOT have the legal option of consulting an attorney.