Doubleplusgood Condi Rice: We all agree that there was no groupthink taking place in the White House
By Nicole Belle Sunday Dec 07, 2008 6:00pm
Blogging about the Bush administration sometimes feels like a graduate course in Orwellian concepts. Ministry of Truth member...er, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continues the "We make our own reality" legacy overhaul of the Bush administration by insisting that their hands were tied over the "faulty intelligence" of Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities.
Perhaps unintentionally hilarious (or ironic, depending on your sense of humor), Rice assures host George Stephanopoulos that everyone agrees that there is no groupthink at the White House:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it fair -- is that a fair criticism of the Bush White House, particularly in the run-up to the war on Iraq? And could you have done a better job in airing dissenting views on the WMD?
RICE: Oh, we talked a lot about dissenting views. The idea that, somehow, within the Bush White House, there weren't dissenting views during this period of time is simply not true. But the intelligence didn't permit, frankly, much in the way of alternatives for the weapons of mass destruction.
Is that right? You'd think that a Stanford scholar would know the definition of groupthink:
A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.
Didn't she just deny the presence of groupthink with an example of it? (h/t Mugsy in the comments)
Transcripts below the fold
STEPHANOPOULOS: President-elect Obama appointed his national security team this week. And he seemed to hint at one of the failings of the Bush White House when he -- during that press conference. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in groupthink, and everybody agrees with everything. And there's no discussion, and there are no dissenting views.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it fair -- is that a fair criticism of the Bush White House, particularly in the run-up to the war on Iraq? And could you have done a better job in airing dissenting views on the WMD?
RICE: Oh, we talked a lot about dissenting views. The idea that, somehow, within the Bush White House, there weren't dissenting views during this period of time is simply not true. But the intelligence didn't permit, frankly, much in the way of alternatives for the weapons of mass destruction. Now, the...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Although the dissent inside the National Intelligence Report from the State Department and others did point out...
RICE: But, you know, if you read...
STEPHANOPOULOS: ... that there were real questions about the intelligence.
RICE: George, if you read those -- go back sometimes and read that it was not a dissent on whether or not he had chemical weapons. It was not a dissent on whether or not he had reconstituted his biological weapons capabilities.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Certain dissents on nuclear program.
RICE: On the nuclear side, one had to look to the intelligence community to resolve and present to the president a unified view that was their best estimate of what was there. But we have -- what the president has done as a result of that intelligence failure, as well as the intelligence problems of September 11th -- is to restructure dramatically the intelligence agencies with the director of national intelligence now, that really does bring those views. I've read these reports now. They very much more clearly put forward alternative views. They very much more clearly take the information and say, what else could this say?
The fact is that, before 2003 and the decision to take Saddam Hussein down, there had been a worldwide assessment and assumption that he had these weapons of mass destruction.
STEPHANOPOULOS: At least biological and chemical.
RICE: Well, and actually -- you know, this is somebody who had used them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Karl Rove said this week that had the intelligence been accurate, the United States would not have invaded Iraq. Do you agree with that?
RICE: Well, I think that there were a lot of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Yes, weapons of mass destruction in the hands of this man was a real danger. But he had also invaded his neighbors twice, had tried to destroy Kuwait. He'd drawn us into war three times. He was a murderous tyrant to his own people. And, he sat in the center of the Middle East, this troubled
region.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But given all that, Karl said, absent the weapons of mass destruction, it would have been much more likely that he would have pursued creative ways to contain it.
RICE: Well, we did pursue creative ways to contain it. One has to remember that we tried everything from enhanced sanctions, an effort that Colin Powell led when he first became secretary of state. We tried to get him out by other means on the eve of the war. But in fact, this seemed the course for somebody who combined weapons of mass destruction, which we believed he had, and his murderous tendencies...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you think we would have gone anyway.
RICE: George, one, you don't have that luxury. You don't.
You know, it's fine to sit and try and play mind games, and to try to recreate -- and what might we have done here or there. But that's not the world that we were living in, in 2003. We were living in a post-9/11 environment, in which it was very clear that you shouldn't let threats multiply and collect without acting against them. We were living in an environment in which Saddam Hussein had been required time and time and time again to come clean about what he was doing. I remember Hans Blix saying, you know, this is -- mustard gas is not marmalade. You ought to be able to say what you did with it.
And so, it's fine to go back and say to yourself, would we have done this differently. You don't have that luxury.
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This dumb ass bitch fits right in with the other half wits, liars and horse traders that made up this criminal administration. I want this bitch brought to justice with the rest of the deceiving scum that have single handedly dragged our nation to the depths it is in today.
What a worthless jerk off!
I think that describes her job exactly.
they all just naturally sound alike.
/snark off
But opinions WERE divided in the intelligence community. Pretty much the same sort of "divided opinion" you get in the scientific community about global warming. 49 995 experts on climatology think global warming is a fact, and 5 (all coincidentally being funded by Exxon and/or The Heritage Foundation) say it isn't. So, opinion is divided on the subject.
In the intelligence community, all the intelligence officials put together an actionable document entitled "bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States," while one dingleberry remained more concerned about the USSR, and thought it was a "historical document." So, there was plenty of dissenting opinion in the intelligence community.
if the intel was so fucking strong about hussein reconstituting his chem weapons program...then why did powell show up to the un with bogus pics and cartoons of the "mobile units"
next job for condasleeza....giving out happy endings at my local massage parlor
i want to spooge all over her disgusting face
George or was it Wolfe, oh wait a minute, Matthews, wait, wait maybe it was Wallace that asked those questions during the runup to the war. Hmmm, none of them? Golly, you would have thought someone would have.
She is without a doubt, one of the fugliest women alive. And your image of her at a massage parlor is truly a stomache hurling image. Man. Even a horny monkey in a zoo wouldn't jump that woman.
Forgot to add. Her fugliness goes beyond physical attributes. She is deep fugly. Right down to her new thigh-high boots and black whip emblazoned with Geedubya's image on the handle. Yikes.
Not to mention rotted from the inside out.
Geez, it usually falls to me to be the one pointing out that feminists are acting like a bunch of know-nothing creeps but aren't we getting a little carried away here? True, Rice is an intellectual whore par excellence. But "fugly?" And advocating coming over face as a form of punishment? (I always thought that coming over somebody's face is one of the highest compliments imaginable.) Do we really need to degrade her as a woman?
She's a catastrophically misbegotten ass-smooching sycophant. Isn't that bad enough w/o laying in with the misogyny?
I was thinking the same thing. Some of these statements are just disgusting.
"next job for condasleeza....giving out happy endings at my local massage parlor
i want to spooge all over her disgusting face"
That's pretty much what a lifetime fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute IS. The things these poor, discredited neo-cons have to do for money.
And as for the part about not engaging in group think, and having everybody (left) in the intelligence community believing exactly the same thing...she IS telling the truth about that. Everybody there was of the same opinion, because they fired, marginalized, or intimidated and took retributions against anybody who had a different view.
Of course, a FEW of the dissenting views made it into the Intelligence Estimate, but it did absolutely no good because not ONE of the asshole Senators or Congressmen bothered to even READ the fine print in it! They were all too busy worrying about looking like cowardly milk-toasts if the invasion went ahead and succeeded, and they hadn't been on board the bandwagon from the beginning. The fact that so many of these Congressmen are still in Congress makes me want to PUKE.
I've noticed her hairstyle has changed. Was this before or after "W" came out?
home makeover. Unfortunately, the hair was all they could fix without serious plastic surgery.
Loved the "Doubleplusgood" lead-in. Perfect.
Thanks for the h/t.
Yes you do. You have that "luxury" right now.
Stephanopoulos is handing you the luxury of reflection on a critical decision that you took a major role in. Are you telling me that you have never given those decisions that led us into war any sort of reflection? Really? Are you just too busy? Do you just not care?
Uh, I dare her to watch this video and THEN tell us that the urgency to "take out Saddam" was "brought about by 9/11":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se2mlKTHdUk
Blahniks. No room for much else. Nothing is as important as that -- unless it's an outstanding Choo
Those are seriously cute Choo's! :-)
Rice has got to be one of the most utterly clueless political hacks in the world. Imagine someone of her supposed intelligence blindly supporting the worst American president ever. She had the chance to step away from the fetid Neocon swamp with its slimy monsters and save her political ass but like a good little dupe never did.
In reality, I think Rice is a cyborg robot that was preprogrammed with the defective Neocon talking points by the Neoborg collective. No rational person would act the way she does.
I sure do hope this idiot is using the royal "we."
Because there were plenty of "us" who couldn't agree less...
I hope how these idiots can make up their own reality, and then use it as a basis/axiom to justify their bullshit. Just like they feed false stories to the press, and then use the reporting by the press on those stories (which were false to begin with) to justify their actions.
No wonder these assholes see the scientific method as the second coming of the devil. It basically disables their whole MO.
Mustard gas is not marmalade. Mustard gas, along ALL other chemical weapons are highly corrosive. They will turn stainless steal to dust in a metter of hours. Glass takes a few years to eat through; but none-the-less, will in time, be consumed by EVERY chemical weapon known to man. Given a only a few years time, ALL chemical weapons will begin to carode and eat their shell casings. The propellents and explosives used in artillery rounds and made with nitrates. After a period of a few years, the nitrates crystalize and become HIGHLY unstable. A little jolt of static eletricity or a sudden movement and KABOOM!!!!. It is real tricky and dangerous to dispose of this stuff. This is why the EOD is the most dangerous job in the Army. This is also why the United States still has huge stock piles of chemical weapons sitting in ammo storage bunkers. NOBODY knows how to dispose of this stuff safely and economically without getting people killed or spending hundreds of millions of dollars, so they let it rot and decompose.
Bush claimed from day one that Iraq had huge stockpiles of chemical weapons that were produced and unaccounted for from the 1980s. Five years after this stuff is produced, it is unusable. Ten years after this stuff is produced, it is highly dangerous to even be near.
This stuff has a very short shelf life. The stuff produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s would of been beyond its shelf life prior to the 1st Persian Gulf War. It would of been completely unuable and dangerous to handle. I say this stuff was unaccounted for; becuase, it was so unstable and dangerous that the Iraqis had on their own, disposed of it before the 1st Persian Gulf War. I will also say that what ever documentation was involved in this; was probably blown to shit during the 1st Persian Gulf War.
The weapons inspectors in Iraq always said that the weapons were all disposed of; the only thing that remain was some paperwork descrepancies. History has proven them to be correct.
Now think back on Mr. Powell going before the United Nations. He told a fairy tale to every Nation on Earthy; and, they all knew he was full of shit as the words were dripping from his mouth. None of what I said is classified information. This is all common knowledge that any first year chemistry student and any university in the World should be able to tell you.
Now think about all those college educated people at the Pentagon and CIA. You would think that any of a hundreds of them ought to be able to point out these really minor facts out to the White House. Yet, for what ever reason, such information was NOT allowed to be deciminated to the White House or the general public. Now think about all those college educated people in the media. One would think that ONE of them would have taken even an entry level chemistry class in college. Why the silence on their part?
A bit too much too drink tonight. LOL!
One word: Groupthink.
"One would think that ONE of them would have taken even an entry level chemistry class in college. Why the silence on their part?"
You know why. There were people who questioned the official story. They were marginalised and discredited. The outing of Valerie Plame showed that the Administration was willing to commit treason to keep dissent quiet.
They wanted a war. They didn't have to convince the public or the media. They just needed a plausible sounding narrative, because behind the scenes the word had gone out, and no one was going to look too closely at that narrative.
"Didn't she just deny the presence of groupthink with an example of it?"
I think this notion is stretching it just a wee bit. To her, the intelligence didn't support any dissent there may have been concerning Hussein and WMDs. That's not to say there wasn't group think, just that she didn't use an example here .
First, consider that Rice, et al were working from a conclusion backwards to the evidence that would support it. This is made clear in Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies.
Second, Rice is known for excusing Bush Administration fuckups with, "I don't think anyone knew ..." - but inevitably, when the data is examined, it turns out that there were significant indicators to the contrary. That's true of 9/11, it was true of Hamas winning the election, it's true of Hurricane Katrina.
They're constantly saying they don't know, but even after a chain of fuckups, nobody's saying, "Whoa, hey, wait, we were wrong about x, maybe we ought to rethink y ..."?
Groupthink.
Stupid question. They were told to fabricate a rationale for invasion. They did. To call it groupthink is to excuse their crimes.
There was plenty of dissenting intelligence--they chose not to listen/read/acknowledge the alternative viewpoint then as they continue to do now. They are outrageous liars. And if you believed their lies then you will probably believe their lies now. Their lies cost thousands of innocent lives both American and Iraqi. Bush, Cheney and all their toadies should be held to account for all the crimes against humanity. Another Nuremburg would stop future Bush's from such ventures-hopefully. Now do the dems have the guts to take them to court? The past 2 years of dem control of congress have not impressed me with their pursuit of justice.
Through the years these creeps have consistently said that they wouldn't have done anything differently even if they had known there were no wmd. So what is the point of this garbage at this time.
Bush, Condi and the rest are still hiding behind the "world is better off" mantra.
In Bush's pitiful interview with Gibson, when asked if he would have done the same thing if he had known there were no WMD gave a no reply reply. If he or the rest of them had been on the level, they would have answered "hell, no!!
And no one is holding them to account for this unending nightmare.
The democrats have shown no interest in pursuing justice.
So it will happen again.
Count on it.
They wouldn't have done anything differently even if they had known there were no WMD. But the congress wouldn't have allow them to act upon a war otherwise unless the lies were fed to them of the mushroom cloud.
There wasn't any kind of think taking place in the White House.
All the story telling fabrication were not present at Disney, as all of the best mind for that were the Bush group think.
They are all trying to plead ignorance and point fingers elsewhere. Of course there's Bush, Rice and Rove (who looks so much like "Chucky" the homicidal doll that it is scary). Even the Generals are rejecting responsibility and crying "who could have known?"
Listen to this interview by Owen Bennett-Jones of the BBC with Generals Myers, Keane and Wallace. They sit there and deny responsibility and when asked about differing opinions between Joint Chiefs, Rumsfeld and Bush, proclaim absolute unity. When Shinseki is mentioned they quickly throw him under the bus. Of course Powell's "you break it, you own it" didn't fit the groupthink so they throw him under the bus too. Jones cannot believe the rubbish he is hearing and lets them know. After all the whining and wailing, "we couldn't know, nobody could have known" he says "but it is your job to know, you were the experts, you were the generals."
I'd love to see him interview Bush instead of Charlie Gibson. America needs to re-educate its journalists in the European school and grow some cojones.
BTW Reread what Shinseki actually said, the focus is always on the troop numbers but the important thing is the reason. He never said more troops were needed for the invasion, he said more troops for "posthostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant" and "kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."
They all knew but they didn't want to know. It is like the German civilians who said "we didn't know" who were then marched through Bergen-Belsen. There has to be trials or commissions so that these people who are so morally bankrupt are made to look at the horror they have wrought.
BBC Program-The Generals Debate Iraq
You blindly trusted the intelligence community when it came to non-existent WMD’s and yet you completely ignored the intelligence community when they warned that terrorists were ready to strike inside the US prior to 9/11. Let me guess; you didn’t start blindingly trusting the intelligence community until AFTER 9/11. Have I got that right stupid?
You can tell when Condosleeza Puppet is lying. Her lips move. I hope the next time I have to view her mug after 01/20/09 is to see footage of her serving in the same chain gang with Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rumsfield and Rove.
Is that Condileeza "Nobody Wants War" Rice?
Condi is partially correct in saying there was no group think. it is all too obvious that no one was thinking at all, period.
You must google Robert Dreyfuss' "The Lie Factory" and Seymour Hersh's "The Stovepipe."
You can read both articles in twenty minutes. After reading the two articles, both of which contain vital information about how the Bush administration "Fixed" the intelligence (as first reported by the British that the intelligence was being fixed around going to war.) you will have a better understanding as to how this war was planned long before 9-11.
When Rice, Bush and all of the other neocons say..."Well the intelligence showed he had WMD's"...that's is because a radical necon, Doug Feith, was heading up Cheney's "Special Ops" office desgined to cherrypick outdated intelligence and pass it off as the truth (i.e. aluminum tubes and yellow cake), all with the full knowledge of Bush/Cheney that it was bogus intelligence.
Even today, their fabrication of these lies still allow Rice and others the talking point of ..."The intelligence pointed to Saddam having WMD's."
Yeah, because they invented the intelligence out of thin air!
There are two particularly subjects the right wingers are flogging these days that I find particularly nauseating. 1. The 'flawed intelligence' made them invade Iraq, and 2. FDR's New Deal was a failure and Obama better not try to bring it back. Saw some winger on TV claim it was the New Deal and FDR who caused the Depression. Amazing.
their partially right it was'nt group think
It was group treason
1st, Paul Oneil, bush's first treasury secretary before 911 said at the very first national security council meeting ended with bush saying find me some way to get into Iraq!
2nd the british said that the bush whitehouse was fixing the information around the policy.
If you don't understand what that means it means that the bush administration was making up the intelligence in order to take us into an unneccessary war.
You see the bush administration is and has proven themselves to be bold face liars! Criminals of the ninth degree!
They should be tried for war crimes and crimes against America and the world!!!!
... who should not be allowed to rejoin the faculty at Stanford University after her tenure as SecState.
And, frankly, Condi, as then-National Security Advisor, your responsibility is to see that the President is provided with accurate and timely information. You must constantly question sources and conventional wisdom, because you are one of the backstops, one of the vital links before the President makes his decision.
For you to sit there and play the 'I don't think anyone knew ...' (and, Jesus on a jetpack, girl, is there ever something during your tenure that you DID know?) game is totally disingenuous. To not even be able to accept that You Fucked Up is pathological.
Take responsibility for what you did.
It's kind of sad how far she has sunk...
Once a darling example of what has gone right about America, now an example of what can go horribly wrong.
She has not an ounce of credibility left, methinks.
Having an oil tanker named after you isn't what I call 'an example of what has gone right about America'.
Any credibility ended on 9/11. She was out of sight for three days, and then trotted out the 'I don't think anyone knew ...' line.
When Dubya pissed on the Constitution, he was also pissing on you Condi. Having said that, I don't get the many nasty comments on the woman's looks...to be in her 50's, she's quite a specimen.
I think it is the ugliness that is within her that people are seeing and not her physical appearance that they are responding to.
The evil on the inside is reflected by the ugliness on the outside.
It's the sneer. Karen Hughes had it, too.
...but if I had a choice between Karen "big foot" Hughes and Condi "Aunt Jemima" Rice....
Heidi Klum.
That there was no groupthink when all the Busholinis are now saying the same thing. Ah, remember the days of "Stay the course", "Mushroom cloud" and the "Blame game" statements just to name a few. If it is not groupthink, it certainly is group talking points.
She lies.
Stanford University, aka the "Corporate-Political Criminal Breeding & American Job Off-Shoring Institute" will welcome her back with open arms.
that the mastery of Orwellian Doublespeak would come from the Administration of the WORST SPEAKER in all of history
The eternal curse of Cuntaleezza Rice and her rhetoric babble!
Curtsie!
All of the sudden, their best estimate was that Saddam was a clear and present nuclear danger. This while Hans Blix was publicly debunking every single piece of crappy US "intelligence". Great unified view, great war, you guys.
What bullshit! The real intellegence showed that there was little chance that Sadaan had WMDs. It was only the OVP "stove-pipe" manipulated 'intellegence' that ever showed any likelihood of WMDs or an "immediate threat".
Weeks before Bush invaded Iraq the international inspectors were reporting to the world that Iraq was co-operating with the inspections and they were not finding WMD, methods of manufacturing them or that Iraq posed a threat to our national security or that of its neighbors in the region.
This was the stated purpose of the Congressional authorization to use force against Iraq that Joe Biden (along with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel) wrote in order to avoid an unnecessary war; Bush was authorized to use military force if Iraq failed the inspection process by the criteria stated above.
It was so obvious in the weeks before Bush invaded anyway that Iraq was not failing the test of that Congressional authorization that even the Dixie Chicks recognized it. Foreign ministers from nations around the world were imploring Bush to reconsider his apparent intention to invade despite what that updated and accurate intel was telling us.
I still haven't heard, NOR has mainstream media demanded an answer to the question: What older and muddier intel did the Bush administration have in the weeks before the invasion that TRUMPED the updated and accurate intel those international inspectors, including our own State Department's David Kay, were telling the world?
Instead, mainstream media protects Bushies like Condi Rice by pretending along with her that the only intel we had to work with before the invasion was the muddy junk everyone had been force-fed by the Bushies prior to the Congressional authorization.
Amazing.
Condumliza has no credibility. The administration cherry picked their unintelligent intelligence. Wilson and Plame blew the whistle on their tactics and were outed. They, at best, mismanaged 9/11 and lied their way into Iraq to take out our (former) guy Saddam. The people understand what Obama means when he talks about group think. Condi is another thing we won't miss about these Crooks and Liars.
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