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Condi Rice's Tortured Macaca Moment
Political blog readers know that Condi Rice recently lost it.
Asked about her role advancing torture during the Bush administration in a meeting with college students, Rice claimed that no torture occurred in Guantanamo (false); Al Qaeda poses a greater threat than the axis in World War II (dubious); and -- this was big -- the President can make an act legal by authorizing it (official Frost/Nixon alert). Along the way, Rice also berated one college student, chiding him to "do your homework first" and read a report supporting her views -- an exchange that was unbecoming and uncomfortable to watch.
Harpers' Scott Horton already demolished Rice's arguments, so I won't repeat his points here. But this incident also shows the prospects for what we might call a substantive Macaca Moment - using YouTube and citizen media to scrutinize our leaders on the issues, not gaffes.
The riveting video of Rice was a collaborative citizen project, from start to finish. Stanford students Jeremy Cohn and Sammy Abusrur asked Rice the intelligent, pointed questions that drew such revealing responses, while their classmate Reyna Garcia shot the video and uploaded it to YouTube. Garcia is no-nonsense. She simply titled the video "Condoleeza Rice meets with some students," instructed visitors to "keep comments civil," and announced that "all rights to this video belong to me, Reyna Garcia."
The seven-minute clip quickly drew 150,000 views, shot up to the top of Rice videos on YouTube, and jumpstarted traditional media coverage. Blogs pounced. Law professor Jack Balkin, who runs an influential legal blog, banged out a quick analysis of the claim that an act isn't torture if "Bush ordered it." The Washington Post ran an item about how the "riled" former secretary of state was "caught on tape" giving a "finger-wagging" torture defense to students. Online radio host Cenk Uyger picked up the clip with a YouTube commentary, "Condi Rice Pulls a Nixon," that drew over 100,000 views. The next day, Keith Olbermann devoted a segment to broadcasting and discussing Garcia's video on MSNBC.
Watching the video, however, it is striking to contrast how this civil, mildly persistent questioning from college students generated more pressure - and answers - than many of the professional television interviews Rice has done. Scott Horton also flagged this dynamic:
For eight years, Condoleezza Rice dealt with the Beltway punditry and the access-craving White House press corps. The reception she got, with a handful of exceptions, was fawning. Which leaves her totally unprepared for a return to an academy populated with the Daily Show generation: bright young minds with a very critical attitude towards the last eight years.
It would have barely mattered, of course, if the audience were limited to the few people physically present in that classroom. But this generation knows how to ask questions and get the word out. For government officials who oversaw war crimes, that could make life outside of Washington a little more trying.
Originally posted at Personal Democracy Forum.
Ari Melber writes for The Nation and Politico. See him discuss the Bush administration's torture policies in this television debate.
Follow Ari Melber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AriMelber
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The black delegation accepts the white delegation's draft of Colin Powell, on the condition that they also take Condoleeza Rice....
Ms. Rice, in all her sophistication, is still a war criminal and should be investigated.
I have never been a Condi fan, but thought that she had more class than she has shown lately. Seems that she has thrown in with the rats on the sinking GOP ship.
"Do your homework, first," says Condi. If she had only done hers in August, 2001 with the PDR warning of Al Qa'ida activity against the U.S.
Couldn't read this article due to the use of such an offensive word M.aca.ca. while im not a Condi fan i am a person of color and i find it disturbing that no one objected to the use of this word.I guess the bloggers on here don't mind racial epit.hets if the individual is a conservative. yOU GUYS ARE hypocr.its.
When you say 'the individual,' do you mean Rice? What do you think 'macaca moment' means in this context? I apologize for using the word - I couldn't think of another way to say what I meant.
Thanks for asking BurtonOerney It doesn't matter to me what the intent was behind using the word, the point for me is that it is offensive and has been traditionally used with malicious intent. The writer of this article was and is cable of expressing his point without using such a word.
Couldn't read this article due to the use of such an offensive word Macaca. while im not a Condi fan i am a person of color and i find it disturbing that no one objected to the use of this word.I guess the bloggers on here don't mind racial epithets if the individual is a conservative. yOU GUYS ARE hypocrits
Here's another question for anyone who knows or cares to answer:
Bush torture supporters constantly point to "stress positions" as being one of the supposedly innocuous forms enhanced interrogation. What I want to know is, how were the victims forced to stay in these positions? What happened to them when they refused to remain bent over their bunks or their arms sunk to their sides while they were supposed to be keeping them outstretched? Did their interrogators ask them to please cooperate and return to the requested position? Or did they poke them with cattle prods, beat them, etc, while they were lying on the floor in a heap, unwilling or unable to do as they were instructed?
Life outside the Bush Bubble is not going to be kind to Condi.
Condi continues to defend the Dubya administration out of fear. She's afraid, and rightly so, that they may sacrifice her to protect their own backsides. Afterall, this is the administration that sacrificed the lowest level soldiers following orders, as well as the well connected Scooter Libby.
Actually I don't think she's afraid. She is just as arrogant as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. She is still towing the party line. She lied then and she is still lying. If there is an investigation into all those illegalities her name needs right there with those other crooks.
I don't agree. Her basic instinct is the follow the established rules of men. She likes to believe, if she gets high enough in the food chain, that she can actually "change" things. Well the truth is that although she is intelligent, she doesn't have the charisma and courage to actually confront the White Male power enforcers such as Cheney and Rumsfeld!
She knew that she was the expendable one during those dark days of the administration and that she STILL is....
She is also smart enough to realize that what happened was illegal - so She is relying on her ability to appeal to the authority of her "higher powers" (Bush and Cheney) as a way to justify and validate her position.
Rice says we had to work with Saudi Arabia ... were al Quada came from. So why are we dismantling Iraq? I guess for someone who wasn't in a position of authority on 9/11, I don't fully understand the details and should do my homework. Too bad Condi hadn't done any homework prior to 9/11/01. It would have saved her the from "witnessing" the deaths of 3000 Americans (note: about 200 weren't Americans).
It's the typical nonsensical gibberish that comes out of a conservative's mouth.
http://kennethmarkhoover.com
Condi says not to focus too much on things that are far away in the future.
That's also good advice for someone undergoing torture at the hands of one of our CIA agents!
What she said the the 4th grader was just as bad. I wouldn't let her in my college or school for that matter. She and all her other republican torturer buddies should be shunned from American's. They are no different than the neo-nazi's. Barbed wire fences, kept from their families without any proof, tortured. Sound familiar. All they missed was the gas chambers, and burning them alive. Just think what they would have been able to accomplish had McCain won. Oh, they would have loved the smell of burning flesh, screams of agony while gassing a few a day. Condi could have had a front row seat, she could have twittered her exquist exhilartions hourly. Poor Condi the rest of the world hates you and your torture buddies. Maybe in the end you will end up in the same place as Hitler.
All the Concerned Pious Academics . . . . gonna Wet Their Pants, at the First Sign of Trouble
With the level of hate that has been fomented by the actions of the Bush administration, the issue of responsibility falls directly at their feet. The straw man put up by the Rethugs (Cheney) that we are less safe, so that if we're hit again it's Obama's fault, is a false conclusion.
These Islamic fundamentalists work on a totally different time table. They measure time in decades and centuries. Given our being a "free society" the possibilities of being hit will always be there, and though impossible to totally guard against, it is surely no help on our part to continually stir the pot. The Bush administration did much more to increase the risk, than they did to ameliorate it. And their efforts toward security, was paltry at best. It can be summed up by "shoes and 4oz bottles".
Only reactionaries, like yourself, would think that brute force is the answer to all problems.
[" “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? "]
Haven't our stalwart, new style, republican friends been wetting their pants for eight years now? The latest is that we have to close our border because we're afraid of Mexicans brining us swine flu. Why are you people so afraid all the time?
Puzzling? . for the fanatic MOVE ON crowd . Progressives? seem obsessed with the Rear View Mirror
"Puzzling? . for the fanatic MOVE ON crowd . Progressives? seem obsessed with the Rear View Mirror"
It's called wanting to punish wrongdoers. What a concept.
I know you're scared. It's ok. The bad guys can't get you anymore.
And the So Called Party of Responsibility and Accountability seems obsessed with resorting to the ridiculous in their attempts to escape blame by denying the obvious..
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