Condi Rice Gets A Big Pass From Hume
Reported by Ellen - June 27, 2004 -
Brit Hume, guest host for Fox News Sunday today, interviewed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on security in Iraq, among other topics. She stated that, "The Iraqis have also made very clear that security is going to be a very high priority, that they have measures that they believe that they can take, including bringing back some pretty sophisticated, pretty well-trained security personnel." (my emphasis)
When asked by Hume who these sophisticated and well-trained security personnel might be, Rice answered, "(Iraqi's) are as concerned as everybody that people with blood on their hands not be brought back. They recognize that the future of Iraq cannot be built on the pillars of the worst of the old Baath Party."
Notice that there's no actual assertion on Rice's part that cronies of Saddam Hussein will not come back into the current government. Is less than the worst of the Baath Party OK? Does that include just bad?
Meanwhile, nobody on Fox News Channel (or elsewhere that I have found, for that matter) seems to find any irony that this was stated in the middle of a prolonged White House drumbeat insisting that the Saddam Hussein regime harbored terrorists and was a threat to the United States. In fact, later in the same interview, Rice added,
"(Hussein's) regime had used weapons of mass destruction, continued to seek to make weapons of mass destruction, had the capability, the intent, the knowledge and the know-how to do it... We overthrew one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century who was well into those activities in the 21st century. The Middle East is safer for it. America is safer for it."
Wait a minute. On the one hand, she's saying that this was a regime so awful and dangerous, we had no choice but to overthrow it, and on the other hand she's saying it's OK for the new government to bring back "some pretty sophisticated, pretty well-trained security personnel" from that same, dangerous and evil regime? How so?
The question seems not to have occured to Brit Hume.
