Rice, Condoleezza
From Bwtm
Condoleezza Rice was a key architect of the War in Iraq. When named to be National Security Adviser by George Bush, former Govenor of Texas, Ms Rice ignored repeated strong warnings from the current and former administration about Terrorist threats. She dismissed a direct warning contained in a Presidential Daily Briefing memo on August 6, 2001; Bush also ignored the warning while enjoying his summer vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
News
On March 2, 2001, then-senior White House counterterrorism official Roger Cressey sent a memo to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice relaying intelligence that bin Laden had gloated about the attack on the Cole in a poem he read at his son's wedding. "BIN LADEN on the USS COLE" was the title of the urgent memo. But Rice couldn't be bothered with stuff that happened on Clinton's watch. http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=9705
Couric fails to challenge "scary smart," " 'girly' and fun" Rice on a host of issues
In a profile of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, broadcast during the September 24 edition of CBS' 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric offered Rice a platform to make a series of false and misleading statements about the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and its use of prewar intelligence, as well as the war's effect on global instability. During the interview, Rice asserted that the "world is safer because we're finally confronting these terrorists," and claimed that "the administration was using the best available intelligence [during the lead-up to the Iraq war], and so, everybody thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," despite abundant evidence contradicting those claims. During the rest of the interview, Couric repeatedly lauded "true believer" Rice, tossing her softball questions, such as, "Do you ever doubt yourself or your ideology?" "Is it hard for you to have a social life?" "[H]ow does one go about asking the secretary of state out on a date?" and "Would you like to get married one day?"
Moreover, in a September 22 post on the CBS News weblog Couric & Co., Couric previewed her profile of Rice, describing her as "scary smart" and "much warmer, more 'girly' and fun than the disciplined, controlled stateswoman you see on the world stage." Couric concluded the post by asserting that Rice "doesn't like to muck anything up."
As if validating that assertion, during her interview on 60 Minutes, Couric failed to challenge Rice's misleading answers on a variety of issues and did not press Rice on others.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200609260015
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/09/22/couricandco/entry2034491.shtml
Rice, Condoleezza
Dr. Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State on January 26, 2005. Prior to this, she was the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, since January, 2001.
In June 1999, she completed a six year tenure as Stanford University's Provost, during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As Provost she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students.
As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors -- the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions.
From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military.
She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula . In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco.
Born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, she earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the National Defense University in 2002, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004. She resides in Washington, D.C.
