In case you missed it, Sen. Barbara Boxer had some sharp words for Dr. Condoleeza Rice, whom President Bush has appointed to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State.

And I personally believe -- this is my personal view -- that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth. And I don't say it lightly, and I'm going to go into the documents that show your statements and the facts at the time.

Now, I don't want the families of those 1,366 troops that were killed or the 10,372 that were wounded to believe for a minute that their lives and their bodies were given in vain, because when your commander-in-chief asks you to sacrifice yourself for your country, it is the most noble thing you can do to answer that call.

I am giving their families, as we all are here, all the support they want and need. But I also will not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth.

Now, perhaps the most well-known statement you've made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America with the image of, quote, quoting you, "a mushroom cloud." That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped. And I will be placing into the record a number of such statements you made which have not been consistent with the facts.

As the nominee for secretary of State, you must answer to the American people, and you are doing that now through this confirmation process. And I continue to stand in awe of our founders, who understood that ultimately those of us in the highest positions of our government must be held accountable to the people we serve.

So I want to show you some statements that you made regarding the nuclear threat and the ability of Saddam to attack us. Now, September 5th -- let me get to the right package here. On July 30th, 2003, you were asked by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill if you continued to stand by the claims you made about Saddam's nuclear program in the days and months leading up to the war.

In what appears to be an effort to downplay the nuclear-weapons scare tactics you used before the war, your answer was, and I quote, "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." So that's what you said to the American people on television -- "Nobody ever said it was going to be the next year."

Well, that wasn't true, because nine months before you said this to the American people, what had George Bush said, President Bush, at his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center? "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."

So the president tells the people there could be a weapon. Nine months later you said no one ever said he could have a weapon in a year, when in fact the president said it.

And here's the real kicker. On October 10th, '04, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, three months ago, you were asked about CIA Director Tenet's remark that prior to the war he had, quote, "made it clear to the White House that he thought the nuclear-weapons program was much weaker than the program to develop other WMDs. Your response was this: "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."

So here you are, first contradicting the president and then contradicting yourself. So it's hard to even ask you a question about this, because you are on the record basically taking two sides of an issue. And this does not serve the American people.

If it served your purpose to downplay the threat of nuclear weapons, you said, "No one said he's going to have it in a year." But then later, when you thought that perhaps you were on more solid ground with the American people because at the time the war was probably popular, or more popular, you'd say, "We thought he was going to have a weapon within a year."

And this is -- the question is, this is a pattern here of what I see from you on this issue, on the issue of the aluminum tubes, on the issue of whether al Qaeda was actually involved in Iraq, which you've said many times. And in my rounds -- I don't have any questions on

this round, because I'm just laying this out; I do have questions on further rounds about similar contradictions. It's very troubling.

You know, if you were rolling out a new product like a can opener, who would care about what we said? But this product is a war, and people are dead and dying, and people are now saying they're not going to go back because of what they experienced there. And it's very serious.

And as much as I want to look ahead -- and we will work together on a myriad of issues -- it's hard for me to let go of this war, because people are still dying. And you have not laid out an exit strategy. You've not set up a timetable.

And 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. As a matter of fact, you've said more misstatements; that the territory of the terrorists has been shrinking when your own administration says it's now expanded to 60 countries. So I am deeply troubled.

Who is Armstrong Williams?

Until today, I had never heard of him either, but now that I have, I wish I hadn't. Williams represents a new sect of rightwing pundits who have found that there is profit in propaganda. But who knew that we were all footing the bill? Frank Rich writes in today's New York Times:

Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, Williams had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child.

But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.
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Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.

US Misses Historic Investment Opportunity;
Pro-Geneva Generals Oppose Gonzalez

The AP headline reads:

Australia pledges $764 million to help
Indonesia recover from tsunami; Germany
earlier increased its package to $674 million

Does this mean that the US is now the fourth leading donor, behind Australia, Germany and Japan? Does this mean that these countries care more about Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia (Muslim by the way) than we do? Or are they simply more invested in the successful (profitable for sure) reconstruction of the nations hit by the Christmas Tsunami?

If it were my money, I'd get in on the ground floor in a heartbeat. It would sure beat going broke in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaking of going broke in the Middle East, some notable generals don't want Alberto "The Geneva Conventions Are Quaint And Obsolete" Gonzalez replacing John "Political Dissent Aids Terrorists" Ashcroft as Attorney General.

"The kinds of things that Mr. Gonzales espouses are the very sort of things that are the first step on a slippery slope that compromises the rule of law in this country," retired Marine General Joseph P. Hoar, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, said in an interview.

Gonzales's attempt to place detention policies outside the Geneva Conventions to avoid subjecting military personnel to prosecution under the War Crimes Act is "unbecoming of the United States'' and anyone who would be attorney general, said retired Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, former judge advocate general of the Navy.

Hutson, now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire, said Gonzales's legal analysis "was shortsighted'' because "it didn't look over the horizon'' to a time when U.S. forces will want to rely on the protections of the Geneva Conventions for its troops.

"This isn't the last war we are going to fight,'' Hutson said. "Once you say the Geneva Conventions are quaint and obsolete, you can't undo that.''

Cullen said he is also concerned that Gonzales tried "to usher through a redefinition of torture.'' An Aug. 1, 2002, Justice Department memo to Gonzales stated that some mental and physical pain during interrogation might not "rise to the level of torture'' under the U.S. military code.

"Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment or bodily function, or even death,'' said the memo, written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee.

A new Justice Department legal opinion made public last week rescinds this definition of torture. The change "doesn't protect Gonzalez. It indicts him,'' Hutson said.

I'm glad that these honorable men have decided to draw a line in the sand on this battleground.

Duplicitous DeLay

Appearances matter. Republicans know how true appearances can seem. For the better part of the last 20 years, Republicans have been schooling the Democrats on how to sound good, even while doing bad things and looking bad to those who are paying close attention.

Republicans have gotten so cocky lately that they speak and act with impunity. They have figured out that they can say one thing while doing another, knowing that the press, the public and the opposition will listen to the words coming out of their mouths, without discerning their true intentions. The latest example came today.

House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstate a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.

Republicans gave no indication before the meeting that the indictment rule would be changed. Even more surprising was DeLay's decision to make the proposal himself.

Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman, said DeLay still believed it was legitimate to allow a leader to retain his post while under indictment. But Grella said that by reinstating the rule that he step aside, DeLay was "denying the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that could undermine our agenda needs to be nipped in the bud."

Rep. Mark Kirk (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., said, "It's a mark of a leader to take a bullet for the team and not for the team to take a bullet for the leader. I'm very glad we decided to stick with the rules."

Hastert spokesman John Feehery said that a change in standards of conduct "would have been the right thing to do but it was becoming a distraction."

Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said Republicans pulled back on the discipline rule because "the issue simply became too hot for them to handle."

That truce ended last year when a freshman Democrat, Chris Bell of Texas, filed a complaint that led to a rebuke of DeLay. The House ethics committee cited the general rule several times in criticizing the majority leader.

However, the panel did not find that DeLay violated any other standard of conduct, even though it concluded that DeLay created the appearance that an energy company's political donors were given special access to him. DeLay also was admonished for his office's contact with federal aviation officials, seeking their intervention in a Texas political dispute.

Later, the ethics panel — formally the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct — also admonished Bell for filing a complaint that presented an exaggerated description of DeLay's conduct.

The outgoing chairman of the ethics committee, Republican Joel Hefley of Colorado, issued a statement before the meeting opposing any change in conduct rules that was not bipartisan.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said, "Tom DeLay is a poster boy for ethics problems in the House."

The true nature of DeLay's duplicity is evident in the words of his spokesman: "denying the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that could undermine our agenda needs to be nipped in the bud." By denying the Democrats, they can refocus on their agenda, which in this case is making sure that DeLay maintains leadership of the House.

It's hard to believe that Democrats truly think that Republicans changed their position because the issue was "too hot." If Brendan Daly really speaks for his boss, Nancy Pelosi, then the Democrats are playing checkers on a chess board.

DeLay, Hastert and the GOP leadership have once again outsmarted the Democrats by simply playing politics like poker. DeLay knows that the party will make sure that the investigations go nowhere, and he gets to appear moral and resolute by supporting the current standards.

Good work, Mr DeLay. You are a credit to your party.

Japan Says To US: I'll See Your Offer and Raise You 150
But America Still Not Giving Enough

Not to be outdone by President Bush raising the United States's aid donation offer from $35 to $350 million for areas affected by last week's Christmas tsunami, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi raised Japan's offer from $30 million to $500 million.

The US and Bush have been criticized in the press and, albeit indirectly, by UN official Jan Egeland for being 'stingy' and failing to respond immediately to the disaster.

Bush's increased pledge of $350 million may seem like a lot of money and will likely help silence critics of the Bush Administration, but it shouldn't. Per capita, Bush has pledged much less than leaders of other developed nations.

And $350 million is a pittance when compared to what Bush is costing US taxpayers to prosecute his invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The amount of $350 million is less than 1/20th the amount of federal revenue that Bush has spent each month for the past 21 months on his war.

The death toll and physical damage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and elsewhere is beyond comprehension. Bush's latest offer is better than his first, but woefully inadequate to help ward off the sickness and disease which is certainly on the horizon.