Bill Clinton: “the vote on whether to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State is a difficult decision. The administration and…”

“the vote on whether to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State is a difficult decision. The administration and Defense Department's Iraq policy has been, by any reasonable measure, riddled with errors, misstatements, and misjudgments. From the beginning of the Iraqi war, we were inadequately prepared for the aftermath of the invasion with too few troops and an inadequate plan to stabilize Iraq. Today, we are reaping the consequences of those decisions with continuing tragic losses of American and Iraqi lives, a full-fledged insurgency in Iraq and a lack of security and stability in many areas. In fact, the National Intelligence Council, the CIA's own think tank, recently stated that Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as the prime international terrorist haven--a deeply disturbing result of our problematic policies. In her role as National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice was a member of the team responsible for our flawed Iraq policy. She made several misleading statements about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the lead up to the war. And in the almost 2 years since the Iraq invasion, the flawed policies on Iraq have not been corrected. Indeed, Dr. Rice has tremendous difficulty in even admitting error though obvious errors abound. In addition, $18 billion has been appropriated for the reconstruction of Iraq, but only a tiny percentage of that money has actually been spent because of the violence in Iraq.”