She skillfully defused O'Donnell whom is an admitted socialist. His words
Wait, what? Do you even know what "socialism" is? Or are you just repeating it as an epithet and shibboleth without understanding what it is and what informed its formation and development?
But before I deal with that, I'll say that Dr. Rice (who I'd just love to fuck and show her what a talented tongue I have - I speak different languages, get your mind out of the gutter) has had plenty of time to get her story right.
It is a fact that when George Bush Sr ordered Coalition troops to stop north of Basra in 1991, within days a group of conservatives, led by Paul Wolfowitz began to challenge the wisdom of that decision. To have gone further, Colin Powell argued, would violate UN Security Council resolutions 1440 and 1441. Within days, full page adverts were published, full of names that would re-appear in February 2001 as cabinet members and senior staff in the White House and Pentagon. Few were at State. I'm talking Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, I'm talking people like Krauthammer and others who kept the fire lit for ten years in the media.
Despite a bit of wavering like Cheney appearing on C-Span in 1994 (when Clinton appeared ready to really strike at Saddam) and saying the magic words of "quagmire" and that the Baathists' would unleash terrorism, they have followed that line ever since 1991
It is clear, Saddam and the Baath Party of Iraq gave sanctuary to terrorists - just not al Qaeda terrorists. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - led by a Christian - and other PLO affiliated groups had sanctuary in Baghdad. Zarqarwi was in Iraq for about a year before the war, but it was in an area in mountains away from Saddam's control.
It is clear, that the United Nations mechanism for finding nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in any country in the world had been successful in finding Saddam's program. IAEA worked tirelessly from March 1991 until after the war. They found quite a bit and destroyed it in the first six months after the war. Scott Ritter and Mohamed el-Baradei have testified about their work. It's on the record: IAEA believed they had found EVERYTHING, but wanted to continue searching for evidence of a restarted program.
We know that the Baath party is a secular party and is the sworn enemy of Salfist groups, the main one being al Qaida as started by Abdullah Azzam. Any alliance between the Baathists and al Qaida is tenuous - only until
after the US invaded in March of 2003.
Dr. Rice is wrong and has had a lot of time to practice defending a policy that has seen nearly 5,000 US troops die in Iraq. I hope she sleeps in peace.
Now to "socialism" - are you saying that socialism is a bad thing? If it wasn't for socialism, Africans would still be enslaved in the western hemisphere, there would still be colonies around the world, women would have no rights, most black men would not have voting rights, most white men - for that matter- would not be able to vote in most countries. If it wasn't for socialism, education would still be limited to only rich people, there wouldn't be free education up to the late teens and children would be exempt from most forms of work until after age 16 or more. If it wasn't for socialism, the death rate would be astronomical - no vaccinations for newborns, no prenatal care, no health care, no social assistance for people who are down on their luck. No assistance for the elderly, none for their medical care, none for their food and nothing for when they become feeble.
Socialists were the leaders of the movement for all of these things which have come down to us over the past 200 years. It was the conservatives who were against each and every one of those things, and the Tea Party is only the most recent expression of conservative hostility toward the majority of the people. When they threw "socialist" at Barack Hussein Obama, they knew exactly what they were doing.
So when you throw that back at Lawrence O'Donnell, understand what you're doing: You're saying it's a good thing for six year olds to be sent to work...
In otherwords: We're all socialists!
It's no wonder Sandy Berger told Rice during the transition that "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/24/timep.saddam.tm
