Confirmation Vote for Dr. Condoleezza Rice

Confirmation Vote for Dr. Condoleezza Rice

BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to support Dr. Condoleezza Rice's nomination as Secretary of State.

I believe that a President is entitled to his cabinet, unless the person he selects is far out of the mainstream, or incompetent, or of clearly questionable character, or dedicated to dismantle the agency to which he was nominated.

Dr. Rice is none of the above. I've known and worked with her these past four years. She is knowledgeable, smart, and honorable. She has the President's trust. As Ranking Member on the Foreign Relations Committee, I have a special responsibility to work with the Secretary of State and her team.

So I will vote for Dr. Rice. But I will do so with some frustration and reservations. Let me explain why.

Last week, we gave Dr. Rice an opportunity to acknowledge the mistakes and misjudgments of the past four years. The point is not to play "gotcha." It's not about embarrassing the President. It's about learning from our mistakes so we don't repeat them. A second term is also a second chance.

Instead of seizing that opportunity, Dr. Rice stuck to this administration's party line. Always right. Never wrong. It's as if acknowledging mistakes or misjudgments is a sign of weakness. It's not. It's powerful evidence of strength and maturity.

During the hearing, Dr. Rice claimed that my colleague, Barbara Boxer, was impugning her integrity when she asked her about the changing rationale for the war in Iraq.

I wish instead that Dr. Rice had acknowledged the facts. This administration secured the support of the American people - and of Congress - for going to war based on what it insisted was an imminent threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Now, when it turns out there were no such weapons, Dr. Rice and the President claim the war was about removing a dictator.

I'm glad Saddam is gone. He deserves his own special place in hell. But removing him from power was not the justification this administration gave at the time to go to war. Why Dr. Rice refused to acknowledge that is beyond me.

Read the resolution that Congress passed giving the President the authority to use force if necessary. It was about "disarming" Saddam. And re-read the words of the President and the other senior officials. In speech after speech, television appearance after television appearance, they left the American people with the impression that Iraq was on the verge of reconstituting nuclear weapons - in fact, the Vice President said Saddam already had them. And the administration left the American people with the impression - even today - that Saddam had other weapons of mass destruction… and that he was complicit in the events of 9/11 and collaborating with Al Qaeda.

Back then, the Administration liked to claim that President Bush never said Iraq posed "an imminent threat."

Here's what he and other senior officials did say: "immediate threat." "mortal threat." "urgent threat." "grave threat." "serious and mounting threat." "unique threat."

It would be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious.

Here's my point: especially in matters of war and peace, we've got to level with the American people if we want not only to secure their support, but to sustain it. As my colleagues have heard me say too many times, no foreign policy, no matter how well conceived, can be sustained without the informed consent of the American people.

And we've got to be honest with the world, otherwise, we will do terrible damage to America's most invaluable asset: our credibility.

After Iraq, it is going to be much harder to rally the world to our side if we have to face a truly imminent threat to our security from say Iran or North Korea.

The issue here is not whether the President, Dr. Rice or other senior officials lied about Iraq. I do not believe that they did. On many of the critical issues concerning Iraq's WMD program, the intelligence community was split. But here's what the administration did do: it cherry picked the facts that fit with their objective of building support for war, without acknowledging the dissent and differences within the intelligence community. They didn't lie. They did mislead.

The same goes for the way Dr. Rice answered my question about the training of Iraq's security forces. Time and again, this administration has tried to leave the American people with the impression that Iraq has well over a hundred thousand fully trained, fully competent police and military.

That simply is not true. We are months and probably years from reaching that target. Putting a uniform on a cop or a soldier doesn't mean they can shoot straight or stand their ground. Dr. Rice could and should have acknowledged that, while at the same time pointing to the real progress in training that is now being made under the leadership of General Petraeus. She didn't.

The bottom line is this: we should focus on real standards, not raw numbers. To my mind, the real standard is simple. An Iraqi soldier or policeman should be considered fully trained when he or she is capable of doing the job we're now asking America's young men and women to do - provide law and order, protect the government and infrastructure, guard the borders and, above all, defend against and defeat the insurgents. How many meet that standard today? Nowhere near 120,000. In my judgment, it is somewhere between 4,000 and 18,000. I will submit for the record what I believe are the facts regarding the readiness of Iraq's security forces.

So last week's hearing was a chance for Dr. Rice to wipe the slate clean with the American people and with our allies. I wish that she had seized it.

This isn't about revisiting the past. It's about how Dr. Rice and the administration will meet the challenges of the future.

As to the future, I didn't hear much at last week's confirmation hearing.

In my judgment, America faces two overriding national security challenges in this new century. We must win the struggle between freedom and radical Islamic fundamentalism. And we must keep the world's most dangerous weapons away from its most dangerous people.

To prevail, we must be strong. But we also must be smart… wielding the force of our ideas and ideals together with the force of our arms.

Today, after a necessary war in Afghanistan and an optional war in Iraq, we are rightly confident in the example of our power. But we have forgotten the power of our example.

Foreign policy is not a popularity contest. We must confront hard issues. Sometimes they require us to make hard choices that other countries don't like. But above all they require American leadership - the kind that persuades others to follow. We've been having a tough time doing just that these past few years. And so despite our great military might, we are, in my view, more alone in the world than we have been at any time in recent memory. As a result, we are less secure than we could or should be.

That's because virtually all of the threats we face - from terrorism… to the spread of weapons of mass destruction… to rogue states that flout the rules - cannot be met solely by unilateral force.

So I had hoped to hear from Dr. Rice how she planned to help rebuild America's power to persuade…and to restore to our nation the respect it once enjoyed.

I also had hoped to hear her ideas for contending with a series of problems the administration put on the backburner… but whose pots are boiling over. Like the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran… the dangerous backsliding on democracy in Russia… and genocide in Sudan to name a few.

Over the past few years, North Korea has increased its nuclear weapons capacity by as much as 400 percent. It may now have as many as 8 nuclear weapons to test, hide or sell to the highest bidder. Dr. Rice told us it is "unacceptable" for North Korea to have nuclear weapons. But she didn't tell us what that means or how the administration proposes to stop this growing threat.

Over the past few years, the reform movement in Iran has been crushed and the regime has accelerated its own nuclear program. There may be nothing we can do to persuade Iran not to develop weapons. But our European allies are trying, through a combination of carrots and sticks. They believe they cannot succeed unless the United States engages directly in this effort.

I asked Dr. Rice whether we should be a party to a deal in which the Iranians agreed - in a way we could verify - that they would stop their attempts to build nuclear weapons and long range missiles. And she said, ‘well, we have a lot of other problems with Iran.' Of course we do. But our number one problem is the growing danger they will develop nuclear weapons. Our best chance at stopping that is to work with the Europeans in showing Iran what it can get if it does the right thing - and what it risks if it does not. But we're sitting on the sidelines. And nothing Dr. Rice said gave me confidence we're ready to get on the playing field. Over the past few years, President Putin has reversed the course of democratic development and the rule of law in Russia. The administration has been largely silent. How can we be so concerned about the advancement of democracy in the Middle East and so unconcerned about the regression in Russia?

The President gave a powerful, eloquent inaugural address about expanding freedom around the world. Every American shares that ideal - it goes to who we are as a people… to our experience… and to our interests. The question isn't the goal. It's how you achieve it. I wonder if the President plans on bringing a signed copy of his address to President Putin when he meets with him next month. I fear that in Russia and many other places, the gap between the administration's rhetoric and the reality of its policies is only going to get wider.

At the same time, we've gotten little in return for turning a blind eye to Russia's regression. One of the most important programs to protect America' security - the effort to help Russia account for, secure and destroy weapons of mass destruction and related materials - has become mired in red tape that the two Presidents need to cut through.

Finally, in Darfur, Sudan we have watched a terrible tragedy unfold. Militia supported by the government have killed as many as 100,000 civilians and chased as many as 2 million from their homes. Four months ago, before the Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Powell rightly called it genocide. Since then, the situation has gotten even worse. Yet we heard virtually nothing from Dr. Rice about what the administration and Congress can do, now, to stop this slaughter and to help African allies develop their own peacekeeping capacity.

Mr. President, let me end with something hopeful that Dr. Rice talked about: putting diplomacy back at the center of America's foreign policy. That effort is long overdue. Be that as it may, I strongly agree with Dr. Rice that this is the time for a new diplomatic offensive with old allies… rising powers… and even hostile regimes.

But our diplomacy has to be sustained. It has to do as much listening as it does talking. And it has to use all the tools at our disposal.

Our military might is critical. It gives credibility to our diplomacy. And it gives us the most powerful tool in the world to act, if necessary, against dictators who are systematically abusing the rights of their people… or against regimes with no democratic checks that are harboring terrorists and amassing weapons of mass destruction.

But there are many other critical tools that have atrophied under this administration. Our intelligence… our public diplomacy… our alliances… international organizations… treaties and agreements… development assistance… trade and investment. We need to wield them with the same determination with which we use force - even if it can be frustrating and even if the pay-off takes years, even a generation.

That's what we did after World War II. That's why we prevailed in the Cold War. Now, faced with a new but no less dangerous set of challenges, we must recapture the totality of America's strength.

Above all, we must understand that those who spread radical Islamic fundamentalism and weapons of mass destruction are beyond the reach of reason.

We must - and we will -- defeat them.

But hundreds of millions of hearts and minds around the world are open to American ideas and ideals.

We must reach them.

Mr. President, Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience. My experience with this administration's foreign policy these past four years has been disquieting. And my experience with Dr. Rice's confirmation hearing left me disappointed.

But at the dawn of President's Bush's second term, and on the question of Dr. Rice's confirmation, I choose hope over experience. I will vote for her. I yield the floor.

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