Dr. Rice also minimized the enormous challenge we face in training a competent Iraqi security force. She insisted 120,000 Iraqis now have been trained, when the quality of training for the vast majority of them is obviously very much in doubt. There was no reason to go to war in Iraq when we did, the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given. As a principal architect of our failed policy, Dr. Rice is the wrong choice for Secretary of State. We need, instead, a Secretary who is open to a clearer vision and a better strategy to stabilize Iraq, to work with the international community, to bring our troops home with dignity and honor, and to restore our lost respect in the world. The stakes are very high and the challenge is vast. Dr. Rice's failed record on Iraq makes her unqualified for promotion to Secretary of State and I urge the Senate to oppose her nomination. I yield the floor.

She refused to disavow the shameful acts of torture that have undermined America's credibility in Iraq and the world. When Senator Dodd asked her whether in her personal view, as a matter of basic humanity, the interrogation techniques amounted to torture, she said: "I'm not going to speak to any specific interrogation techniques . . . The determination of whether interrogation techniques are consistent with our international obligations and American law are made by the Justice Department. I don't want to comment on any specific interrogation techniques." This is after Senator Dodd asked about water-boarding and other interrogation techniques. She continued: "I don't think that would be appropriate, and I think it would not be very good for American security." Yet, as Secretary of State, Dr. Rice will be the chief human rights official for our Government. She will be responsible for monitoring human rights globally, and defending America's human rights record. She cannot abdicate that responsibility or hide behind the Justice Department if Secretary of State.

In a March 6, 2000, letter to Senator Levin, Dr. Rice assured the Congress that the United Nations inspectors had been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction missile and UAV-related site the U.S. intelligence community has identified. In fact, we had not done so. Dr. Rice was plain wrong. The Intelligence Committee report on the prewar intelligence at page 418 stated: "Public pronouncements by Administration officials that the Central Intelligence Agency had shared information on all high and moderate priority suspect sites with United Nations inspectors were factually incorrect." Had Dr. Rice and others in the administration shared all of the information, it might have changed the course of history. We might have discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction. The rush to war might have been stopped. We would have stayed focused on the real threat, kept faith with our allies, and would be safer today. America is in deep trouble in Iraq today because of our misguided policy, and the quagmire is very real. Nearly 1,400 of our finest men and women in uniform have been killed and more than 10,000 have been wounded. We now know that Saddam had no nuclear weapons, had no weapons of mass destruction of any kind, and that the war has not made America safer from the threat of al-Qaida. Instead, as the National Intelligence Council recently stated, the war has made Iraq a breeding ground for terrorism that previously did not exist. As a result, the war has made us less secure, not more secure. It has increased support for al-Qaida, made America more hated in the world, and made it much harder to win the real war against terrorism, the war against al-Qaida. Before we can repair our broken policy, the administration needs to admit it is broken. Yet in 2 days of confirmation hearings, Dr. Rice categorically defended the President's decision to invade Iraq, saying the strategic decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was the right one. She defended the President's decision to ignore the advice of GEN Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, who thought that a large number of troops would be necessary if we went to war. She said: "I do believe that the plan and forces that we went in with were appropriate to the task."

Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I, of course, thank my friend, the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. It has always been a pleasure to work with him. He and I have managed a number of bills in the years that we have been here. He has been here longer than I have, and he has managed more bills. But I have to say, Mr. President, that none of the pieces of legislation with which I have dealt in my 21 years in the Senate have met with the cooperation and the effective working together by all Senators and all staff members to produce this bill that we call the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 1994 and 1995. The short form on that is, of course, the State Department authorization bill. I say to my friend from Rhode Island, it is a pleasure to work with him always. Mr. President, every committee has to make some tough choices in an effort to save the taxpayers money at a time when this Congress has run up a total of nearly $4.5 trillion in debt. I am pleased that the Foreign Relations Committee did an adequate job in connection with this bill in that respect.

I really believe that there are going to be a lot of arguments to make against him that we can look forward to, I’m not going to spill the beans right now. But, suffice it to say that there are many arguments that we can use against him. But, one argument that I am uniquely qualified to bring, because of my service as Secretary of State is what his presidency would mean to our country and our standing in the world. I am already receiving messages from leaders — I’m having foreign leaders ask if they can endorse me to stop Donald Trump.

When President Bush came in, there as an immediate difference in style. President Bush would show up to meetings early. It was obvious that he liked the meetings to be well organized, crisp, and then get out of there. It was very organized, with little time for chitchat. Unlike President Clinton, President Bush attended almost all the NSC meetings, chairing them from the head of the table. Condoleezza Rice, his National Security Adviser, was very quiet in those meetings- seldom speaking at all, let alone chairing them. It wasn't for any lack of intellect, because she was extremely smart- and personable, too. I didn't think she really stepped into her own and flourished until she became Secretary of State; before that, she really took a backseat. Early on you saw in President Bush a man who was going to be very loyal to those who worked for him- perhaps even too loyal at times. If you were on his team he would battle to the death for you. While this seems like a commendable attribute, when you're in a position of leadership, I don't believe one should allow loyalty to trump the necessity of satisfactory job performance. I'm not sure ex-President Bush would agree with that.

It wasn’t just that Biden voted for the Iraq war on the Senate floor five months before it began. During the lead-up to that vote, in August 2002, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he presided over sham hearings—refusing to allow experts who opposed an invasion to get any words in edgewise—while a cavalcade of war hawks testified in the national spotlight...

The one overriding obligation of a leader of this democracy is to find or to forge a united policy for peace. I mean that tonight, and I will mean it tomorrow just as I meant it in 1960. There was a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, then, and I was the Democratic leader in the Senate. On foreign policy matters I voted with that Republican President 96 percent of the time. And in this campaign now, we are against another man who was in that same Senate and who voted on those same issues against that same Republican President 76 percent of the time. So the Democrat voted with the President 96 percent of the time and the present Republican nominee voted against him 76 percent of the time. I am proud to ask my Nation's trust in the continued building of its bipartisan foreign policy. But even here there must be no blank check. So I state my understanding: It is that Americans, almost as one, agree that to keep the peace we must be so strong of arm and arms that none anywhere can doubt that strength.

When the Foreign Relations Committee heard from Secretary-designate Christopher on January 13-14 last year, 1993, the Secretary-to-be said: "We need to do more with less." I am sitting there applauding, saying, "Praise the Lord." But subsequently, his Deputy Secretary, Cliff Wharton, and his Under Secretary for Management, Brian Atwood--two nice fellows--appeared before the committee and--I am quoting them exactly--they promised to "streamline the bureaucracy, consolidate responsibilities, reduce personnel, and reinvigorate management." What happened? They were off in the stratosphere, wild blue yonder, or whatever you want to call it. Now, we heard the Secretary and Deputy Secretary announce with great fanfare a broad-based reorganization to, guess what, reduce excessive layering, that is, bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy. The State Department would, according to the Secretary a year ago, "do its fair share" to participate in, guess what, "reductions and cutbacks that President Clinton would impose on the entire Federal Government." Promises, promises.

When I became secretary of state, Iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb. They had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle under the Bush administration. They had built covert facilities. They had stocked them with centrifuges that were whirling away. And we had sanctioned them. I voted for every sanction against Iran when I was in the Senate, but it wasn't enough. So I spent a year-and-a-half putting together a coalition that included Russia and China to impose the toughest sanctions on Iran.

The biggest blunder of this century was the invasion of Iraq... It’s very unfortunate that there are still members of the Democratic Party that voted for the Iraq War that are poised to be in very important positions in government right now. We have Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, was in favor of the Iraq War... Eliot Engel, who is going to be the Foreign Affairs Committee chair, who was not only in favor of the Iraq War, but he was one of the few Democrats against the Iran nuclear deal. He’s in favor of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in Israel. You have people like Adam Smith, who is going to be the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee, took over $250,000 from the weapons industry and only shifted his position on Saudi Arabia, for example, because he was challenged from the left. So, we have Democrats in high positions who have been pro-war. Many of them vote every year for this incredibly inflated Pentagon budget. And they have to be challenged. And they are being challenged by some of the very wonderful Democrats we have, like Ro Khanna, who has been a tremendous champion to try to stop the war in Yemen. And we have the wonderful incoming members of Congress who have to have the same energy and determination that they have around a New Green Deal to say we need a new peace deal.

There is particular danger at the moment that powerful political alignments in the United States are pushing strongly to exacerbate the developing crisis with Russia. The New York Times, which broke the story that the Kremlin had been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers, has been particularly assiduous in promoting the tale of perfidious Moscow. Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by delusional nonsense from former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks “Why does Trump put Russia first?” before calling for a “swift and significant U.S. response.” Rice, who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice President, certainly knows about swift and significant as she was one of the architects of the destruction of Libya and the escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations directed against a non-threatening Syria

Ron Paul: We are escalating our sharp rhetoric toward Iran, We're deploying additonal carrier group and Patriot missiles to the region. And, although Iran has approached the United States to establish serious dialog two times since 9/11, they have been rebuffed both times...
Condelezza Rice: ...When we have a carrier strike group into the gulf, or provide PAC-3, which is a defensive system, it's simply to demonstrate that the United States remains determined to defend its interests in the gulf, and the interests of its allies. And that, congressman, is a position that has been held by American presidents going back for nearly 60 years. I would just note that these are discrete responses to Iranian activities that are really deeply concerning, not just for us, but for the rest of the world as well. Now as to Tehran, and whether we can talk to them. I offered in May to reverse 27 years of American policy, and to meet my counterpart any place, any time, to talk about any set of issues that Iran wishes to talk about, if they would just do one thing. And that is, adhere to the demand that the international community is making, that they stop enrichment and reprocessing, so that we that while we're talking, they're not improving their capability to get a nuclear weapon. So I think, congressman, the question isn't why won't we talk to Tehran, the question is why won't they talk to us.

The committee rejected my amendment, and further rejected the administration's request to repeal the six mandatory positions. But not a word of that was in the paper. Nobody on television mentioned it. The committee's majority told Secretary Christopher, "We don't trust your promise to keep our favorite Assistant Secretary positions, but we will give you two more Assistant Secretary bureaucracies to grow on." That is what the committee did with the vote that defeated my proposal. The other body, the House of Representatives, did the administration one better. The House guys provided three new bureaucracies which is totally unacceptable. And during consideration of this bill I intend to offer an amendment and have the Senate vote on it to rectify the Foreign Relations Committee's judgment on this matter, and thereby prevent the further bloating of the Federal bureaucracy. I do hope that Senators will support that.