Excellent Run-Down on the Condi Rice Confirmation Hearings

by the consistently excellent Fred Kaplan.

The most substantive—perhaps the only substantive—exchange came late in the afternoon, during the second round of Q and A, when Biden asked Rice the question that he said everyone, including U.S. military officers, had asked him during his most recent trip to Iraq: Are we really staying? Or does the planned scenario go like this: The election is held Jan. 30; the new leaders tell us to get out; we declare victory (Saddam's gone, the WMD have vanished) and leave? Biden, who opposes leaving under these circumstances, asked more specifically, "Is there any reasonable possibility that the U.S. will withdraw the bulk of its forces before the end of 2005," when the second round of elections is scheduled to take place?

Rice replied, "I can't judge that, but I will say we will help the Iraqis get that done"—that is, get the second round of elections accomplished—with "whatever force levels" are required. This wasn't even a "non-denial denial." It wasn't a denial. She declined to assure the Iraqis or anyone else that the United States is firmly committed. Biden threw her a softball pitch, but she didn't swing. The question that Biden said everyone is asking in Iraq—are we staying, or are we plotting to cut and run?—remains, remarkably, unanswered.

In a similar exchange, Biden raised Seymour Hersh's claim, in the latest New Yorker, that Pentagon civilians are pushing for an airstrike against Iran, as a means of toppling its fundamentalist regime. Biden emphasized he wasn't asking Rice to confirm the report. He just wanted to know if she believes it's possible to topple the Iranian regime through military action—and whether regime change in Iran is the administration's goal.

Rice replied that the administration's goal is to have a regime in Iran that's responsive to U.S. concerns. She then noted that the current regime stands "180 degrees" in opposition to those concerns—on nuclear weapons, relations with al-Qaida, and support of Hezbollah. She added, "The Iranian people, who are among some of the most worldly that we know—in a good sense—do suffer under a regime that has been completely unwilling to deal with their aspirations."

Once again, Biden gave Rice a chance to dismiss the hottest rumor of the moment. And, again, she demurred.

It's 7 Tuesday night on the East Coast as I write this, and the hearings drone on. A few Democrats have tried to lay into the secretary-to-be. Sen. Boxer has yelled at her and called attention to various misstatements and contradictions that Rice has uttered the past two years about Iraq and other matters (leading Rice to say, with a slight quiver in her voice, "We can have this discussion in any way you want, but I hope that you would not impugn my integrity"). Paul Sarbanes has bemoaned our growing trade deficit and its impact on our diminishing power in the world (Rice suggested that she address such questions to the treasury secretary). Christopher Dodd interrogated her about the semantics of torture (she doesn't condone it but declined to define it). Russ Feingold decried the war in Iraq as a distraction from the war on terrorist networks (she disagreed).

But at no point in these hearings, which will certainly result in her confirmation, did Rice give the slightest indication of how foreign policy in Bush's second term will be any different from the first term.

Just in case you thought things might get better in the boy-king's second term.