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Condi Channels Nixon: If the President Says So, It's Not Illegal
Thanks to Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, for passing along this video footage which was posted on YouTube by Renya Garcia621 at: http://www.youtube.com/user/reynagarcia621
On April 27, Condoleezza Rice had a brief Q &
A with some Stanford students
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Condi was extremely uncomfortable, defensive and nervous. She was rude
to the first student, interrupted him and yelled at him.
When asked by
another student about a recent report that she authorized waterboarding, Condi
said, “I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the
administration to the agency [CIA] that they had policy authorization subject to
the Justice Department’s clearance.”
The kicker was when she was asked
whether waterboarding is torture. She replied, "By definition, if it was
authorized by the President, it didn't violate our obligations under the
Convention against Torture."
Richard Nixon: “If the president does it,
it's not illegal.”
John Yoo, in a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor
Doug Cassel: There is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that
a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's
testicles.
35 Comments so far
Show AllThe GOP's "small government" mantra applies to everyone else but them. By small government, they must mean small democracy. I find it amazing that people like my grandfather think Repugs are pro-small government when they claim their executive powers are above the law.
small government-The most amount of power you can cram into as few hands as possible.
When Ronny Raygun introduced the small government concept during the 1980 presidential campaign, President Carter had already been reducing the number of government employees per/capita and other government expenditures for 4 years. Carter's cuts were across the board.
As President from 1981 to 1989 Raygun proceeded with wholesale dismantling of non-military government programs and regulatory agencies. These cuts were more than offset by increases in military, prisons and other pet programs to that extent that when Raygun left office there were more federal government employees per capita than at any time in US history (yes, even WWII didn't outdo Raygun on this one).
Raygun also greatly expanded the use of expensive government contractors and other wasteful spending that drove the US deficit to record levels.
Unfortunately most of us have at least one brother-in-law who has adopted the neocon big government myth, showing just how well the neocons have sold this myth to the masses, most of whom are being negatively impacted by neocon policies.
Keep talking, former Bush officials. Keep talking. You are making it easier for to treat you like the criminals you are.
http://www.IndictBushNow.org
To think that at one point in time, there was loose talk of her running for president. Thankfully, it appears currently that almost anyone associated with the Bush error will have trouble being elected dog catcher.
So . . . is President above all laws or just the laws Condi says that the President is above?
If the President says it's legal to kill Condi, is it legal to kill Condi?
Only Condi knows the answer to that, but it would take waterboarding to get it.
Nixon was also impeached, and resigned from office, and avoided criminal prosecution by "preaganged" Presidential pardon. And, it seems that Ms. Rice has added one more to the growing line of witnesses that point the finger at Bush/Cheney as the "administration" authorizing the waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques. If any state or municipal prosecutor had this many witnesses to a crime, there would have already been charges filed. The question is: Was there a crime committed? Let's see; if I thought my neighbor broke into my house and I asked him if he did, that would be legal. If I took him to my basement and tortured him until I got a confession, that would probably land ME in jail, regardless of his guilt or innocence. Why is that so hard to connect?
Condi sold out her people for greed and is what Malcom X called a house Negro. She is hoping that when the President does it it is not against the law, because she knows she is culpable too and could be the sacrificial lamb for Bush and Cheney.
We here in the Bay Area have the distinct honor and privilege of being the home of both Phuck Yoo (UC Berkeley) and Consolidated Rice-A-Roni (Stanford).
Could you find a more appropriate venue for Condi than the campus that was founded by a robber baron and houses the Hoover Institute ?
She pulled a common righwing rhetorical trick on that student. Asking him if he knew about some obscure report which backed up her position which, of course, he never heard of. And not having heard of it it momentarily knocked his argument out from under him.
Reminds me of once watching a Senate debate on CSPAN over oil drilling in ANWR. The Republican Senator in favor of it asked the Democrat who wanted to protect ANWR if he had ever even visited? He hadn't. The Democrat became so tied up in that logical loop the loop that he couldn't continue.
Well, the problem with the report that student had never heard of is that it flies in the face of other testimony and reports, and is actually somewhat irrelevant. But it worked nicely to knock the legs out from under the student and to make him feel foolish. “Yes or no,” Condi insisted. “Yes or no.” And the student had to honestly answer “no.” An old trick.... Later examination usually reveals the half truths, lack of all truth, or irrelevancy such arguments often have.
Al Qaeda is more of a threat than Nazi Germany was? A former Secretary of State actually alleged that? Perhaps she has to boost (playing amateur psychologist here) al Qaeda’s menace in order to justify her actions to herself.
Let's hope this film will be brought into evidence at her trial.
And another thing....
The right is always projecting. They do it so often it could almost be called a "pandemic."
Remember when Palin was asked if she knew what the Bush Doctrine is? A simple enough question, especially of a potential and possible future president of the United States. Because she didn't know what it was the right called it a "gotcha" question.
It wasn't, of course. But the right often enough uses "gotcha" questions in debate which, later on, don't bear up to scrutiny. But they don't care. They slip and slide and out navigate merely to walk away "the winner." Look, if they believe, as some of them do, that the Garden of Eden was located in Missouri many of them are capable of believing anything. Especially their own BS.
that's an excellent observation. One can also tell so much simply from her body language, the way she is either squirming or defensive (arms crossed) through the interactions.
Then, at the end, Condi says to the first student, "do your homework" in a contemptuous way.
What a shrill b*tch.
Ha! Listen to the end where she advises not to look "out there" to the future (or the big picture) but just worry about what is "right there" in front of your face.
What a perfect epitaph for a bureaucrat who claims she transmitted the orders but did not give them!
She's a real fascist bureaucrat .... evil at its most banal.
Above all don't think about the big picture... if the President authorizes it... if the lawyers OK it.... she's cool with it.
Truly a contempt worthy clerk for the imperial killing machine.
This is why the small issue is torture the big issue is dictatorship.
"No, I didn't authorize waterboarding, I just passed along the authorization for waterboarding from the President. No, it wasn't torture, and even if it was torture, I didn't authorize it. And it wasn't torture, because if the president says it isn't torture, it isn't."
Boy does she sound scared. She gets angry at the kid to keep from crying. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
Pathetic.
Perhaps Condi senses that she will be the Bush regime's eventual scapegoat.
So, when Hilter, as Chancellor of Nazi Germany, said it was OK to kill 6 million Jews..that made it legal and ok?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
If the President authorized the re-introduction of slavery, would that make it legal?
If the President authorized rape, whould that make it legal?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Stanford U hould ask Condi for their money back....
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
The Bush crowd put us in Iraq for the oil..Condi was on the board of directors
of Chevron, one of the companies that stand to gain. The man was right, Condi
was the house Negro.
Sounded more like this witch was mollifying herself for reasons for breaking, verifiable breaking, of international law which our constitution upholds as the supreme law of the land. And who was this 'accretidation' group she said graded gitmo as a medium security prison?
All in all I thought those asking the questions did good, she was forced to show her weaseling ways which is how these criminals are trained(and they are good at doing so)to take on any question, spin it around into something that has for some a reasonable answer. I just wish there was someone who would ask the questions that would get in her face like she was doing to those asking her questions. She needs to back to crawford and play with her boyfriend.
ADDENDUM:
And she 'thoughtfully repeated the lie' about our being in Iraq, which was from a pack of lies, while putting almost in the same sentence with the '3000' americans killed on 9/11. Which is another thing, 9/11 desparately needs to be investigated to find the whole lot of them that really were in on the attack or at the least let it happen. The attack of 9/11 was part and parcel of the shock doctrine. This is why people from w & dicks year as misleaders of our country should not be allowed to throw that information into their blitterings of covering up for themselves and their fellow conspirators.
Jarhead
She is still the ignorant smart mouth nothing that was protected by the neo-nazi regime that she was a part of. Tell me one constructive thing this idiod did while she was flying around on the tax payers money meeting Georgieboy in some bathroom and tapped toes? Maybe one of the guys from Iraq will find her with his smoking gun. Then she (or he) will really be nervous. Hey Condi, dont you think some of those guys know where you are? Sleep well Georgieboy girl.
Eichman claimed he was just followiing orders. According to boss Adolph killing Jews was legal under German law. Nixon claimed if the President says it is legal if he says so. Condi uses similar logic in covering up the crime of torture.
She was just the messenger passing on a treatment and that makes her part of a CONSPIRACY- as per John Dean who is a lawyer who was counsel to the White House during Nixon.
She sure looks scared and exhausted-- people think of Condi as an a--hole--- a new twist for Condi-- I bet she doesnt sleep well at night and hope people think she is a wonderful pianist instead.
She is a crappy pianist.
As a pianist, she is stiff, mannered, plays without personality, without ideas, without power, without strength, without tenderness. She plays like a mediocre student, too focused in pressing the correct keys and following the letter of all the teacher's rules.
"... murderous tyrants who went after innocent people..." while you're busy backpedaling, condi, could you please clarify who the "murderous tyrants" are? condi, could you please clarify who the "murderous tyrants" are? condi, could you please clarify who the "murderous tyrants" are? before you answer that, do your goddamn homework.
skank.
Doesn't a fine school like Stanford have a student more skilled in rhetoric to debate this bitch?
As soon a Condi went on about how "they killed 3000 people in New York!" (A minuscule number killed compared to even most minor acts of US state terror - like Pamama - but I digress). The guy could have simply said: asked how a desperate hijack-suicide action by 19 fanatics and maybe financial support from a few other nuts in a cave in Afghanistan constitutes such a serious "threat" that the US would deprave itself by committing torture and murdering hundreds of thousands in two nations. If Condi then attempts to say that she could tell him how Al Quieda is such a threat - but it is a state secret so she can't tell him - checkmate.
I am admittedly not much of an intellectual or even very politically savvy type of person, but everything about that "woman" feels terribly terribly wrong. She managed to elicit in me a feeling of dreadful contempt not often felt towards politicians in her stubborn willingness to cover the tracks of murderers and thieves in the name of 'democracy' using the sad and tired political jargon which twists all facts into a specter of confusion. So this is the response you give to the youths, asking you straight in the face why you behave the way you do?
For shame.
freedom_biscuits: "Bad Meat Always Smells. You may not know how it died. You may not know when it died. But bad meat always smells." She's been dead for a long time as were the entire cabal. That is what made them so scary - and the fact that white America bowed and scraped and debased itself before these walking corpses. We haven't seen this administration's steel teeth yet. Larry Summers has not yet begun his steel toe flamenco, but he will, soon. This is the time of the Great Shattering.
Peece.
Miss Rice was given a free pass for eight years, for a variety of reasons. It's nice to see that at least some students are willing to take her to task for her actions, even though the media always treated her with far more deference than was appropriate. In an imaginary war crimes trial, she would be a defendant along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and several more of the past administration. Sadly, her punishment will be a richly rewarded tenured post at a great university, where she will spread the same myths about her performance as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State that we've heard for 8 years.
Keep talking, Condi. Dig, dig, dig.
much as violence is not the answer...
much as i abhor all the things these people did...
much as i have utter disdain for this woman...
...boy would i like to strap her to a table --
put a towel over her head....and slowly pour a bucket of water
how long would it take for her to 'name' her bosses, tell you
where to find them, and what you can do with them?
Yeah, she might even name the head of the conspiracy. Some guy in the White House who hides as a twig.
So, let me see if I've got this right: It wasn't torture, and even if it WAS torture, you didn't authorize it, and even if you DID authorize it, the pressure of the post 9/11 environment made you do it, so we have to forgive you for it.
Wonder how she'd look in prison stripes? I hear they're very slimming.