Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer should resign her Senate seat and start working for al-Jazeera television.
Like most of the Democratic leadership, Boxer is turning purple straining to find someone to listen to her. During the confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice last week, Boxer blamed Rice for about every problem the world has seen short of sickle cell anemia. Of the 3,500 words exchanged, Boxer stumbled over 2,500 of them.
Boxer went at Rice with everything “Fahrenheit 9-11” liberals pretend to have.
“I want to read you a paragraph that best expresses my views,” Boxer said in reference to remarks made by author Peter Bergen. “We Ö have now provoked a defensive jihad that has galvanized jihad-minded Muslims around the world. It’s hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terror.”
“Your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth,” Boxer sneered.
“I will not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth.”
“You don’t seem to be willing to, A, admit a mistake, or give any indication of what you’re going to do to forcefully involve others,” she said.
“You’ve said more misstatements.”
About the only thing Boxer didn’t accuse Rice of doing is preventing all the terror attacks that could have occurred on U.S. soil following Sept. 11, 2001, but didn’t. This went strangely unmentioned.
The low of Boxer’s soap operatic performance was her mischaracterization of the intelligence information the CIA produced on the possible nuclear threat prewar Iraq posed to the U.S. homeland. Boxer quotes President George W. Bush: “If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.” Boxer cites Rice: “The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear program; that, left unchecked, he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year.”
Both quotations, indeed, are almost verbatim from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate: “If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year.” The Bush administration and the CIA, Boxer discovered, were caught in bold-faced, unequivocal unanimity. It was damning evidence.
The crux of Boxer’s feeble case was a three-sentence remark made by Rice on Public Broadcasting Service in July 2003. Says Rice: “It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He’s trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year.” It was a bloody glove. But it wouldn’t fit.
You see, because Saddam Hussein didn’t acquire uranium, he couldn’t make the nuke. Had he acquired the uranium, he could have made the nuke. That’s what the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate said. If you have a mental capacity greater than that of a lemming, you understand.
But Boxer wasn’t looking for the truth. The California senator was busy lecturing a woman who had “Ph.D.” after her last name at age 26. Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, Boxer mindlessly professed, is part of a “defensive jihad.” Rice “sold” a war “that was not built on the truth.” Rice has made “more misstatements.”
Any person with less integrity than Condi would have jumped the table and decked the old hag. But Rice politely responded as any Bush administration constituent does. “Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much.”
It’s only suiting that Boxer shuffled her two left feet from the hearing and grabbed a megaphone on CNN. “She turned and attacked me,” Boxer sniffed to CNN lackeys. “I gave Dr. Rice many opportunities to address specific issues. Instead, she said I was impugning her integrity.” I wonder how Rice got that impression.
Every day I become increasingly convinced that liberalism should be a diagnosable disease. Not since Democratic Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s botched presidential campaign has Arab propaganda relied solely on Democrat talking points. If it weren’t for more than a 100,000 troops still in harm’s way, I’d say that I’m excited to see Iranian newspaper headlines on the Gonzales hearings.
Encore, anyone?
Darren Bernard welcomes comments at [email protected].
