Watch our always classy, former SOS take on Stanford University progressive liberal know-it-all students, and put their sound byte educated selves in their place during an impromptu “interrogation” about torture, Gitmo, etal. This woman doesn’t parse words, straddle fences, and she sure doesn’t back down…. and still remains the lady thru and thru.
My personal favorite? The part about why the Club Gitmo tribunals were delayed….
BTW… picked this up off James Delingpole’s London Telegraph blog. What he said?
If ever you needed further proof of the “person of color” America really needs in charge right now, I urge you to watch this fabulous YouTube footage of the magnificent Condoleezza Rice being ambushed by left-liberal students at Stanford University with a series of “difficult” questions about torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and US foreign policy under George W Bush. (Hat tip: Andrew Hamilton.)
~~~Condi, you are a star and if America won’t have you as our next president, please will you come over and be our next Queen instead?
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.
She was great…notice how there was a lot of chatter in the background but, when she got going, everyone stopped to listen? Now we have an idiot for a Sec State.
The student didn’t want to debate. He came with a “mantra agenda” of yadda-yadda-yadda talking points, and when challenged, stuck to the script.
Condi is awesome. I wouldn’t be surprised if she runs for governor of California.
@Jarhead68: i noticed that almost right off the bat. the woman has brain and class and should really run for office, she is strong and sticks to her points and isn’t dismissive when trying to educate. i would have had the lib boy smacked down by the third minute. loved how she told him to do his homework, and i loved how she demanded him to answer her question of the medium security prisin thing, i didn’t know that either. i respect bush for the man he is, and condi, but sometimes i wish they would have come out swingin hard at their detracters, had they done that they would have been viewed as angry though. they stayed mum and classy. i do miss condi, she is great. much better than hillary.
I have to disagree. I think she sucked as a SoS. Not as bad as the current or the previous, but sucked none the less.
Great video Mata! It was spellbinding. I would have just ripped the kids face off for being an idiot kool aid drinker. She accomplished pretty much the same thing but in a nice way.
I wish she would run for office. I’d like to see her in the Senate. Don’t you think she would be better than Barbara Boxer?
@thebronze: As always, consider the alternative. She was a better SecState than her predecessor in that office and her successor. Sorry you weren’t available when the position was open so that we could have experienced perfection 🙂
P.S. Mata, you reminded me of the Condi Rice pictorial that was part of the Bush Thankathon:
http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2009/01/thank-you-condi-rice.html
I’ve always thought Condoleezza Rice was the most intelligent and articulate woman in public office during her time as SOS, hands down. She knew her topic inside and out, whatever it was, and didn’t need a teleprompter!! I used to muse over the fact that this would be someone Oprah would have had on her show in a heartbeat because of her being a black, accomplished woman, who could knock the socks off anyone in the room intellectually, but wouldn’t just because she’s Republican. Oprah’s loss, really.
SoCal Chris I agree, but would go even further. I would wager Condi Rice is one of the most intelligent (and accomplished) women in America, surely in the top 100, maybe even the top 10.
If anyone ever needs proof that Oprah’s agenda isn’t about promoting accomplished women, even single black accomplished women, Condi is proof. In a way, Condi is the “single” version of Sarah Palin; all the ‘wrong kind’ for a Hollywood role mode. It’s far more than Oprah’s loss, it’s America’s loss, and especially a loss to the American Negro.
Meantime, our Princess Michelle, well educated but morally bankrupt, will continue to get the Oprah Red Carpet, while black genocide continues in America with only a few lone voices crying out against it.
Janeane Gorofolo, I dare you to take on Condi!
Great post Mata; that video is great.
Can someone get my post #8 out of spam? Thanks.
She appears trapped. She obviously knew about the torture all along and now tries to justify it. Please don’t give me the ticking bomb excuse. These torture measures were carefully thought out. Legal justification was secured (Bybee, etc).
Why did we torture? Because we could. This can NEVER be thought of as a Conservative position; Republican, yes; true Conservative NO.
I love this woman. She spoke at my son’s graduation from BC three years ago. many of the faculty embarassed themselves during her speech, which was altogether non-political. She is simply magnificent.
It is most entertaining to see her school these twits and expose their deadly ignorance.
@harrycat: Go talk to the people working in the Library Tower in Los Angeles or those who daily cross the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and ask them if they think waterboarding is torture.
Then go read the DOJ/CIA memos where the subject is discussed.
As Condi reminded that young idiot: go do your homework.
And don’t give me that “true conservative” crap. I’ll stack my conservative bona fides up against yours any day.
Talk about the “audacity of hope”…. LOL
Is there no limit to the idiocy that results from taking the prozac pill loaded with “hope and change”?
Interesting how the dopes on the journolist have all mobilized to smear condi- witness the Rice/Nixon terminology being used almost word for word all over the idiot media.
Re: Torture. I don’t care if we cut the freakin’ terrorists’ fingers off one by one and feed them to the dogs- these pr*cks were/are on borrowed time as it is. Per the geneva conventions, combatants not fighting under a flag or wearing insignia are considered spies and can be summarily shot without trial. Waterboarding? I don’t give a damn if you call it torture or not- is it worse than being shot in the head?
Further- although a lefty’s memory strectches no further back than the last soundbite issued by the MSM, I remember 9/11. Lost a friend in one of the towers. That was torture. American citizens jumping out of windows to their deaths on that day. That was torture. Going further afield- Daniel Pearl having his head sawed off while subhuman muzzy apes chant “all of you snackbars”, and having the whole thing taped. That was torture.
When one is faced with a rabid dog, one doesn’t try to pet it or give it a nice doggy treat. One shoots it where it stands. We are dealing with rabid dogs in this fight, no matter what the boo hoos on the left want to blab about “reaching out” and “we don’t do torture”.
Next?
Her comment that the Supreme Court forbade them from having trials was an absolute lie imo. No wonder that kid had no idea what she was talking about. The Supreme Court limited the right of the government to try them in “military tribunals.” I thought the Supreme Court’s decision was terrible and I am not trying to defend the politicization of justice – it really makes me sick. Their idea of limiting military tribunals set up a system where someone can be tried and convicted without ever even knowing maybe exactly what they are accused of – kind of like Kafka’s “Trial.” But the point of the Supreme Court’s decision was not that you can’t try these people in courts. It was that military tribunals have to comply with (very few) procedural safeguards, and if you are just going to use a kangaroo court then no you can’t put them in that kind of court. Geez.
You have the right to your opinion, Heather, however your demonstrate little knowledge of how our court system works with your “absolute lie” deduction. Also, you totally miscomprehend the SCOTUS decision of Boumediene. The battle was over whether they had access to the US courts. The SCOTUS doesn’t define, nor has the right to define military trial guidelines. Separate system.
When the detainees file lawsuits protesting the tribunal in lieu of a federal hearing, that tribunal cannot be held until the courts make a decision. It does not start at the SCOTUS… it goes thru the lower courts first. That they filed these suits, fighting the tribunals, left the detainees sitting there until the SCOTUS could rule. It was their own ACLU attorneys who increased the detention time… not the military JAGs or Bush admin. They could have had swift tribunals under the MCA.
Condi went straight to the highest court because that’s where the buck stops. At that time, the SCOTUS reversed a lower courts ruling that the Gitmo detainees did not have standing in the US federal court system as aliens held on foreign soil (sovereign Cuban territory as per the SOFA agreement in the early 1900s), and therefore did not have jurisdiction over these enemy combatants.
What the SCOTUS did was redefine/reinterpret the Cuban-American agreement for the base, and decided to dictate that the base was US soil, and not Cuban sovereign territory. And in that new altered reality lies their decision that these animal thugs were granted access not only to the US court system, but to our very soil where none had ever set foot.
Bad juju
So you think you’re happy with the delays caused by the ACLU… increasing the detention time… which was ultimately decided by the SCOTUS…. as Condi said, and you apparently are clueless to. Think we have the high moral ground now with Obama?
Then you might want to know Obama feels he needs Gitmo AND the military tribunals… but since he already made rash promises to close it within his first hours of taking his oath of office (while simultaneously Gitmo grads were making the news, popping up as new AQ leaders), he can’t backpeddle without looking like the arrogant and rash fool he is.
So he’s kept Bagram in Afghanistan as the new Gitmo, and declared the detainees there have no Constitutional rights…. just the same way it was done in Cuba. Same “abuse of human rights” (or as you put it, Kafka’s “Trial”) according to those with your thought, but located in a different place.
And where’s your cry of outrage on this travesty of justice and human rights? Must have missed it.
Fact is, in retrospect, and with full CIC briefings, Obama is recognizing why Bush did what he did, and how he did it…. and following suit. Just in a different country.
Welcome to reality. As Condi says… do your homework.
I can’t stand Obama. And I voted for Bush twice. I even voted for McCain after the PUMA’s talked me into it (my vote was for Palin). And I did think Rice was talking about the 2006 habeaus corpus cases. But I still don’t see how she could get “The Supreme Court told us we couldn’t try them in court” out of any of the decisions. The decision you mentioned specifically said to try them in court. So it is completely unfair of her to characterize ANY of the decisions the way she did.
But I agree with you on the other things – lawyers for detainees in Bagram have told me things are worse under Obama then they were under Bush.
BTW, how will you feel when Obama copies Rice’s “If the President authorizes it then it is always legal” argument?
What she said, Heather, was that the ICRC’s problem was not with the detainee’s treatment, but with indefinite detention. And then she said those trials (the military trials, as were planned) “were stayed by whom”. So they were delayed first by the lawsuits lobbying for access to the US courts, which was granted by Boumediene in 2008… aka the habeus corpus issue.
The Boumediene decision did not say to “try them in court”. What it said is that they were allowed access to petition to be tried in a federal court instead of a military tribunal…. which they did not enjoy as aliens held on foreign soil. They prefer to be tried in the US federal system because they will not allow evidence that is necessary for conviction. Might as well just give ’em a toothbrush, and send them on their merry way.
The 2006 SCOTUS decision was Hamdan v Rumsfeld where the high court said the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) didn’t apply to those who were already in the appeal process.
INRE: your comment:
Obama will get his WH legal counsel on what he can and can’t do, just as any POTUS does. When their attorneys give them the go ahead, it is just like anything else in the US system…. acceptable unless challenged successfully in a court of law. And of course I accept that, for not to is to reject the way our system was constructed by the Framers.
If an attorney gives you advice… bad or otherwise… you operate on the notion that it’s okay to do. That only changes if someone challenges that, and you stand before a judge who interprets the action as legal or illegal. Attorneys are there to help give an interpretation, but the final word on interpretation is always the presiding judge.
Herein lies the idiocy of Obama and Holder thinking they want to go after the attorneys who advised Bush as legal counsel. When it comes to an absolute lawsuit for supposed “torture”, Holder knows they don’t have a legal leg to stand on going against the administration… otherwise they’d be doing it. They also don’t have a chance with holding legal advisors responsible for their interpretations in a court of law.
However Holder and Obama aren’t playing to a court of law. They are playing to the court of public opinion… their typical Alinsky tactic to rile up the citizens into a frenzy of discontent with misinformation or lack of clarifying information (i.e. the memos that denote the results of EITs).
@PDill:
Thank you for going further, PDill. I COMPLETELY agree with that statement. I just referenced during the time that she was in public office, but she is no doubt one intelligent lady, period.
Again, I completely agree. When I say Oprah’s loss, I mean to the millions of women as well who watch her show. And, I’m sure it would have benefited Oprah’s ratings tremendously by having Condi on, thus Oprah’s loss. But, what a role model Condi is to every woman, black and white, and therefore I’m sad that she wasn’t given the acknowledgement she was due. But, as dr.john mentioned about her speaking at his son’s graduation, perhaps she will continue to speak in venues like this. And, she has mentioned writing a book, which you know will be a best seller. So, I think we will continue to be blessed by more of Condoleezza Rice in years to come.
I wish she would run for President. I would vote for her and send her $$ to support her.
jensad
Herein lies the idiocy of Obama and Holder thinking they want to go after the attorneys who advised Bush as legal counsel.
ITA, that is scary.
When it comes to an absolute lawsuit for supposed “torture”, Holder knows they don’t have a legal leg to stand on going against the administration… otherwise they’d be doing it.
I disagree, we have a duty to investigate fully and prosecute any violations of the Geneva Convention, including any by Obama’s administration. We signed a paper that said we “shall” do that, not we may or we could.
They also don’t have a chance with holding legal advisors responsible for their interpretations in a court of law.
It certainly is a chilling thought.
However Holder and Obama aren’t playing to a court of law. They are playing to the court of public opinion… their typical Alinsky tactic to rile up the citizens into a frenzy of discontent with misinformation or lack of clarifying information (i.e. the memos that denote the results of EITs).
I agree, except I don’t know what an EIT is.
EIT=Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, Heather.
I don’t understand James Delingpole’s use of personal pronouns:
Is he an American ex-pat living in London? Why wouldn’t he write either “their president…our queen” or, conversely, “our president…their queen”, or am I being overly pedantic?
@adagioforstrings:
Thank you, adagio, I learned a new word! “pedantic”. Probably something I’m guilty of.
@adagioforstrings: We’re going to start lecturing the British on proper English?
In this case you are right, but I wouldn’t push it.
If I’m willing to vote for Condi Rice for President, does that mean I’m NOT a racist?
Pity. Rice would have made a great conservative.