Transcript: Day Two of Rice Testimony

Following a second round of questioning Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 14-2 to send Secretary of State designee Condoleezza Rice's nomination to the full Senate. During testimony before the vote, Sens. Joeseph Biden (D-Del.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) offered pointed criticism of Rice's candor and the administration's policy in Iraq. Here is a transcript of the session.

LUGAR: This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is called to order.

We appreciate the attendance of senators. We appreciate especially the attendance of our witness, the nominee for secretary of state, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

And I want to thank Dr. Rice and her staff and all members for their diligence throughout yesterday. As has been mentioned, we had over nine hours of testimony. I think very good questions and very good answers. And as I was just visiting with my colleague Senator Boxer, almost every point of view of the American public was heard, asked and part of that dialogue.

We want to continue that this morning with another round of questioning from committee members who have remaining questions to ask. Some do have questions, some do not. And therefore, a number of members will pass.

But we will have a five-minute round and then this will conclude at 10 o'clock. We've announced to members they should anticipate a business meeting and a roll call vote on the nomination, with that activity commencing at 10 o'clock.

But prior to that time, we look forward to questioning.

Let me say from the beginning, at least on my part, I will pass on this round and I will now call on Senator Dodd for the remaining questions he might have.

DODD: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

And let me join you in commending our colleagues on the committee yesterday and our nominee as well. It was a long day.

If nothing else, I was very impressed with your tenaciousness to sit at that table and have 18 of us up here raising questions that cover the entire globe in matters of deep concern to all of us. And we appreciate your willingness to go through that.

It was a long day, but I think a worthwhile one, Mr. Chairman, as you point out. And I'm sure our colleague Senator Biden -- I don't know if he's going to be along or not this morning.

But I just have a couple of matters I'd like to raise if I may with you as this time moves on.

A little more than 10 days ago, Dr. Rice, a disturbing report surfaced that the United States, specifically the CIA, was making a practice of handing over detainees from U.S. control to third countries for the purposes of interrogation. This process is referred to as rendition I think is what it's called. And the intelligence agency admits to practicing it since the early 1990s.

In this report, there are several accounts of prisoners being transferred by the U.S. to certain countries and then allegedly being tortured during those interrogations.

Last year, I introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill, part of which would have prevented the Department of Defense from transferring persons to third countries without keeping a record of the transfer and the reasons for it.

I wonder if you might comment on this, if you're familiar enough with the practice, and whether or not we might be willing at least to -- one, at least either preventing these renditions from occurring, or if not, at least keeping some record so we have some way of determining how these people are being treated.

Are you familiar with the subject matter?

RICE: Thank you, Senator.

May I just take one moment before I answer any question just to also thank the members of the committee for yesterday? I think it was an extensive, some would say even exhaustive, look at the questions that we face in American foreign policy. But I think it was an important day.

I appreciate very much the spirit in which the questions were asked. And I look forward -- and I really meant what I said and want to underscore -- I look forward to working with each and every member of the committee in a bipartisan fashion so that we can fashion an American foreign policy for the 21st century that takes advantage of the substantial opportunities before us, recognizing that these are also difficult times for the country.

RICE: And I want to thank you, especially, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership of yesterday and to tell you that I look forward to many other sessions of that kind.

LUGAR: Great.

RICE: Now let me turn to Senator Dodd's question.

The United States is not permitted to transfer anyone if we think that they are going to be tortured. And, in fact, we make efforts to ascertain from any party that this will not happen. And you can be certain that we will continue to do so.

I want to be careful on commenting on intelligence matters, particularly in open session. But to say that we do -- anything that is done is done within the limits of the law. It is done with a recognition that the United States is special and has special responsibilities, and that we will continue to do that.

As to keeping a record, I would have to demure for now. I don't have enough information...

DODD: If you'd look at that for me and get back.

RICE: I will. And I'd be happy to talk with you about it at some point when we're not in open session.

DODD: And this may be the last, Mr. Chairman, (inaudible) make sure we have enough time for others, as well.

Mentioned earlier Senator Nelson, Senator Chafee and I made this trip into South America. And one of the issues (inaudible) is the contraband issues and the narcotrafficking issues. It's very, very common. The economic issue is important, as well.

I don't know if you had a comment on this. I'd ask you to pay particular attention to that tri-border area that Senator Chafee, Senator Nelson and I spent some time in that Brazilian-Argentinian- Paraguayan corner where it is termed the Wild West, in terms of contraband issues and money flowing back and forth and some very, very important questions. And there needs to be some specific attention, I think, paid there -- more attention than we are now.

The narcotrafficking issue -- there's a great concern about the ballooning affect we've seen over the years. And that is, we've put a lot of attention as we have over $3 billion in Colombia over the last few years. And there's concerns now of this problem reemerging again in Peru and Bolivia where it was in the past, even parts of Brazil.

DODD: The issues of Venezuela obviously get affected by these decisions as well. And there really is a need, I think, for a more comprehensive approach to this.

When we had the certification process here, which the chairman and those who remember, it was a rather difficult process we went through year in and year out declaring which countries were complying or not complying with our anti-narcotics efforts. It caused a lot of acrimony between countries that would be labeled not being supportive.

And so we changed that. We dropped that. But we promised when we did it that we were going to replace it with something. Just doing nothing about it was not the answer.

And part of what we talked about was developing a more comprehensive approach, where, as a consuming country, we'd work more closely with the producing, transferring, money-laundering nations as well.

I would urge you to see if we can't revitalize that. There is a growing concern with the great disparity of resources we're applying to these countries as they battle with these issues. And it's something that really deserves more attention. And we're going to find this problem just moving from nation to nation in these countries without really addressing it more thoroughly.

And if you want to comment on that at all or not, but I'd ask you to really pay attention to that if you could.

RICE: Thank you, Senator. I will take a hard look at it.

We had in concept, when we had the Andean initiative, exactly this in mind, of course which was that if you stop the spread of narco-trafficking in one place, it would find a home in another. And it was intended to be comprehensive in terms of alternative livelihoods and in terms of economic development to forestall that.

But it's a very good point, and I'll take a hard look at it.

DODD: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

LUGAR: Well, thank you very much, Senator Dodd.

Many senators have come in since the beginning of the hearing. Let me mention we're going to have five-minute round. Senators are not obligated to use their five minutes, some will want to pass.

But in any event, at 10 o'clock, Senators, then we'll gather for a business meeting on the nomination.

Senator Chafee?

CHAFEE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And good morning, Dr. Rice.

I see you're fourth in line for succession to the presidency, and so this is an important hearing we're having, and also in that line of succession the only one that hasn't appeared before the public in any kind of capacity in the electoral process.

CHAFEE: This is an important process.

Going back to my questions from yesterday of finding common ground. And as I look back in history -- and you're an historian -- and the success we had with the thaw with the People's Republic of China had a lot to do with the exchange of ping-pong teams, of all things.

And I always admired the architects of that doctrine in that we knew that the Chinese ping-pong players were probably beat us it 21 to 2 or something, but that wasn't what was important. It was the start of finding common ground.

And I was wondering -- in some of my questions, you seemed to reject that doctrine of finding common ground.

RICE: Thank you, Senator, for giving me an opportunity to answer that, because obviously with need to look for common ground.

There is no reason that the United States has to have permanent enemies. We have had circumstances in which there have been major changes in the world.

And, you know, the Libyan experience shows that if there are countries that are prepared to forswear behavior that is dangerous to the international system, that we can start down a different path.

And I'm glad that you mentioned the ping-pong diplomacy because obviously in almost every circumstance, the exchange of people of civil society, of nongovernmental actors, is often an important tool in thawing difficult relations. And so I don't want to leave the impression that I would be by any means opposed to looking for those opportunities. And I will look for them.

CHAFEE: Can we specifically go back to Venezuela again? Where can we find common ground?

RICE: Well, we have -- obviously, we talked about the economic relationship yesterday. And there's common ground there. We sit together in the OAS. We sit together in the Summit of the Americas.

The point is that we don't have a problem with finding common ground. We have, right now, a government in Venezuela that has been unconstructive in important ways.

RICE: And I would just urge that the entire neighborhood, as well as the Venezuelan government, look at what's happening in terms of democracy in Venezuela, in terms of Venezuela's relations with its neighbors.

But this is a matter of sadness, not of anger.

CHAFEE: And with Iran, is there any potential for finding common ground with Iran?

RICE: Well, I think the problems with Iran are well known. And we've tried to make them known to the Iranian government, often through third parties, sometimes when we've been in -- or together.

This is just a regime that has a really very different view of the Middle East and where the world is going than we do. It's really hard to find common ground with a government that thinks Israel should be extinguished. It's difficult to find common ground with a government that is supporting Hezbollah and terrorist organizations that are determined to undermine the Middle East peace that we seek.

So I would hope that the nuclear issues will be resolved. It's extremely important to the world that Iran not acquire a nuclear weapon. And we are working closely with the European Union on that.

I would hope that the Iranian government does something to make clear to the world that they're not going to support terrorists who are determined to undermine the two-state solution in the Palestinian -- in the Holy Land.

And those are barriers to relations.

RICE: And we just have to be honest about it.

It's a very different view. Not to mention, by the way, that a theocratic government that has a view that the mullahs ought to rule, that has no rights -- or has a human rights record that is really appalling and that treats its citizens, its women in that way, is not a regime with which I think we have very much common ground, particularly given the way that we would like to see the Middle East develop.

CHAFEE: It seems to me, going back into history, the same occurrences were with the People's Republic of China at the time. They were arming the -- in the middle of the Vietnam war, arming our opponents in that war.

I mean, there was every opportunity to accentuate our differences and everything wrong with them. But nonetheless, through this thawing, this process of exchange and ping-pong diplomacy, now the two countries are not killing each other.

And interestingly, on Iran, I went to a conference in Bahrain earlier in December, and the Iranians were there. I looked up out of curiosity, who are these delegates from Iran. And each of the three delegates from Iran had been educated at the United States, one at the University of Houston, one at the University of Cincinnati and one at Michigan State.

And I wasn't surprised. There is common ground.

But given every opportunity to express even the slightest finding of that common ground, I find that you've instead fallen to accentuating and magnifying our differences.

RICE: Well, Senator, let me make just make the following point.

You know, when the Forum for the Future was held, the very important meeting that was held to talk about reform in the Middle East, the Iranians were invited. The Moroccans wanted to invite them. We said we had no objection. And they didn't come.

And I think there's a reason they didn't come, which was that that was a gathering of civil society and business leaders and people in the country who wanted to talk about reform.

RICE: That's an opportunity for Iran to interact with the world.

We showed, I think, our respect for and our humanitarian impulse to the Iranian people with our response to the Bam earthquake. And it was a very great moment in the history of American compassion and generosity. And I hope we'll have other opportunities that are not linked to disaster to let the Iranian people know that we have no desire to isolate them from the international system or from others.

And so, I understand your question. It's a complex problem when you're dealing with a regime that really has views that we consider illegitimate. But from the point of view of the Iranian people, this is a people who should be in contact with the rest of the world.

CHAFEE: Well, thank you very much.

I know my time is up. I'll just say, I thank you for your time.

And yesterday, we talked about Martin Luther King Day and I recommended you read his great treatise, "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community."

RICE: Thank you.

LUGAR: Thank you, Senator Chafee.

Senator Biden?

BIDEN: Madam Secretary, you had a long day yesterday but you've got many long days ahead of you as secretary of state. But I'd like to cut right to it.

Yesterday as -- and I'm going to make it clear, I intend to vote for you because I believe strongly, the president is entitled to his Cabinet unless the person he taps is so far out of the mainstream -- and you are clearly not -- or is not intellectually capable to handle the job -- you're clearly capable. And he obviously values you very, very much as his counsel.

BIDEN: So I'm going to vote for you. But I must tell you it's with a little bit of frustration and some reservation.

The questions we asked you in writing, and then yesterday at the hearing, I thought gave you an opportunity to acknowledge some of the mistakes and misjudgments of the past four years.

And I want to make it clear, and I made it clear time and again, no matter who is president -- no matter who is president -- could have been the Lord Almighty, it could have been Al Gore, it could have been John Kerry, could have been anyone, it could have been John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan -- after 9/11, they would have made mistakes. There's no way in which we could have undertaken this effort without some mistakes being made.

So the point we're -- at least I, and I don't think anyone else here is different -- was trying to get to you with you yesterday is not to play, "I got you" or embarrass the president, but about what we've learned, what we'd do different, how we'd proceed differently given the opportunity again or given a similar circumstance, which we may face.

We may face a God-awful choice in Korea. We may face a God-awful choice in Iran. And we may face an awful choice with regard to Syria.

And so we're trying to get some insight into how a second term, a second chance, a second round might be different, not even because anybody else would have done it better, not because -- that Al Gore, had he been president, would have done it better.

But instead of seizing the opportunity, it seems to me, Dr. Rice, you have danced around it and, sort of, stuck to the party line, which seems pretty consistent: You're always right, you never made any mistakes, you're never wrong.

And it's almost like, "If I acknowledge any misjudgments on the part of me or the president or anybody in the team, it's a sign of weakness."

But I personally don't think it is. I think it's a sign of some degree of maturation, strength.

Yesterday, you claimed my colleague Barbara Boxer was impugning your integrity when she asked you about the changing rationale for the war in Iraq.

I wish, instead, you had acknowledged the facts: The administration secured the support of the American people and of the Congress for going to war based overwhelmingly on the notion that they believed and it was portrayed, in my view, by the administration -- understandably from your perspective -- that Iraq was an imminent threat because it possessed or was about to possess weapons of mass destruction.

BIDEN: Now, when it turns out there are no such weapons, you claim the war was based on removing a dictator.

Now, my recollection -- I've asked my staff to go back and check this, and before the hearing is over this morning they'll have statements -- my recollection it was explicitly stated it was not about regime change, that's not why we were going to war; that would be the effect, but that wasn't the rationale for going to war when we went to war.

Now, I'm glad Saddam's gone. He deserves a special place in Hell -- a special place in Hell.

I, like others -- Chuck Hagel and I, we went up into Irbil. We got smuggled in before the war into northern Iraq. We rode on a seven-hour ride through the mountains -- I understand why the Kurds now say "the mountains are our only friends." And three or four hours before that in Turkey. And we met with the widows of those people who were gassed. We saw the pictures of little kids' eyes bulging out. And, you know, we saw what "Chemical Ali" actually did to those people. So he deserves a special place in Hell.

But if you read the resolution Congress passed giving the president authority to use force if necessary, it was about disarming Saddam. It was about disarming.

And reread the words of the president and other senior officials in speech after speech, TV appearance after TV appearance, you left the American people the impression that Iraq was on the verge of reconstituting nuclear weapons.

I don't doubt you believed that. But to pretend we didn't leave them that impression and leave the Congress the impression -- in fact, I'm not positive of this, but I think I was on "Face the Nation" the day that the vice president was on "Meet the Press." And he got asked about nuclear weapons -- the vice president said, "They have reconstituted their nuclear weapons."

And I got on -- asked on either "Late Edition" or one of the -- the same day, on Sunday I said -- they said, "Is that true?" And I looked at the camera and said, "Absolutely not."

One of two things, either the vice president is deliberately misleading the American people and the Congress, or you all are not telling the Congress the truth -- and at that time, I was the ranking member and just prior to that, the chairman -- telling us the truth about what we had in terms of intelligence. Because as I said, I have seen nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing up to that date to indicate they had reconstituted their nuclear capability.

And so, the -- back then, as I said, we were all left with the impression, as Senator Boxer suggested, that this was about weapons of mass destruction and an imminent threat.

BIDEN: Now, when I said about -- I don't know, six, eight months, maybe longer -- I said the administration claimed that there was an imminent threat, it was pointed out to me that the phrase "imminent threat" was not used by the president.

But here's what other senior officials said, "immediate threat," quote. "Moral threat," quote. "Urgent threat," quote. "Grave threat," quote. "Serious and mounting threat," quote. "Unique threat."

Now, it would almost be funny if it wasn't so, so serious that we are, sort of, dancing on the head of a pin here whether "imminent" was stated.

Now, you say that. I was corrected by other administration officials for saying that the president said "imminent."

But here's my point: Especially on matters of war and peace, we've got to level with the American people if we want, not only their support -- if we want to sustain that support.

My greatest worry -- and it genuinely is a worry -- if that if we're going to get the job done in Iraq, you're going to have to come back here for another at least $100 billion before it's over, probably close to $200 billion before it's all over.

And I'm worried your friends on that side of the aisle are going to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, Jack, y'all didn't tell me that."

Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they'll all today pledge publicly that if you asked for $200 billion, they'll belly up to the bar and do it. I can tell you, I will. I can tell you, I will.

But you're going to have a little problem here -- you, the administration -- with this outfit, Democrats and Republicans, because I don't think they know what's in store here.

We've all got to be honest, also, with the world, otherwise, we'll do terrible damage beyond what we've already done to our credibility which is, in my travels around the world, at least in question, in many places.

You've heard a thousand times the analogy that was given about, you know, when Acheson went to de Galle and said, "You know, Mr. President, here I want to show you the pictures of the Cubans -- that the fact that the Cubans have put in Russian missile sites, et cetera, et cetera. And de Galle raised his hand and said, "No, no. I don't need to see that" -- I'm paraphrasing. He said, "I know President Kennedy would never mislead me in a matter of war and peace."

Well, we both know, because the world has changed, that even if Kerry had been elected, nobody out there is likely to believe the president of the United States on matters of intelligence just saying, "I know he'd never mislead me. You don't have to show me anything." Those days are gone, unfortunately, for awhile.

After Iraq, it's much harder for the world to rally to our side if we have to face a truly imminent threat in Korea or Iran.

BIDEN: The same goes for the way you answered my questions, in my view, about training Iraqi security forces. It is true: There's probably 120,000 people in uniform. But the question really is -- and I'll end, Mr. Chairman, I know my -- I'm going over my time.

The question really is, how many of those forces could supplant American forces? How many of them we could trade off for an American soldier? Because that's ultimately, again, the exit strategy: Get enough Iraqis there so we don't need American troops there.

Time and again, this administration has tried to leave the American people with the impression that Iraq has well over 100,000 fully trained, fully competent military police and personnel, and that is simply not true. You and I know that. We're months, probably years, away from reaching our target goal.

When the chairman and I were in Iraq with Senator Hagel, right after Saddam's statue went down, we asked the military as well as the police trainers, "How long would it take you to train a military force that's necessary?" They talked about 40,000. And they said, at least two, maybe three years.

"How long would it take you to train a police force capable of policing the country to replace the 79,000 thugs that were called police before?" They said, three to five years.

That was our people. Our people told us that.

And all of a sudden, Rumsfeld announces, "Hey, we've got this done. Don't worry, be happy." That calypso song should be the theme song of the Defense Department, the military of the Defense Department -- I mean, the civilians.

So, yesterday, I think you had a chance to help wipe the slate clean for the American people and our allies, tell them flat-out how hard it was going to be, how much more time it was going to take and why we needed to do it. It's not about revisiting the past, Dr. Rice, it's about how you're going to meet the challenges of the future.

BIDEN: And I must tell you, for the first time in the last four years, I have doubts about it either because you're not telling us, the president doesn't know, or you all don't have a plan. Because that's -- and I'm telling you honestly, that's what I walk away from this hearing worried about.

I'm going to vote for you. But I'm telling you, because of the standard I have about the president having intelligent, bright people, honorable -- and you're all of those things. He gets to choose who he wants.

But I just -- I left the hearing yesterday and got on the train somewhat perplexed.

And I'll end with this -- it's like the issue I asked you about Iran. If in fact, the Lord Almighty came down and said, "Look, we guarantee we can monitor, whether they're keeping the commitment, no nukes, no missiles, would we make a deal with them?" Doesn't mean we don't still fight about their support of Hezbollah, terror, human rights.

And my impression from you -- and maybe you can clarify it now -- is you said, no, we wouldn't make a deal if it were just those two things -- no nukes, no missiles, period, would we make a deal with them?

That's my question. Would we? Or do we have to have it all settled all at once with them?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

RICE: Senator, I'll be brief.

The question about Iran, I think, is a question of looking at the totality of the relationship.

Obviously, the pressing issue right now is to deal with Iran's nuclear program. And I think that we will see what becomes of the E.U.-3 efforts.

RICE: We'll work with them. We will see what we can do in the IAEA.

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: If we got that deal, would we sign it?

RICE: If the Iranians are prepared to verifiably and irreversibly get rid of their nuclear program, then that will be a very good day, and I think it would certainly change the circumstances that we are looking at.

BIDEN: I wish we had a court reporter who could play back what you just said.

What's the answer? Would you make the deal or not?

RICE: The answer is, Senator, is I'm not going to get into hypotheticals until I know what I'm looking at. That's the answer.

BIDEN: Well, you're in a hypothetical with China. You make a lot of deals with China. Their human rights program is horrible.

RICE: I understand those...

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: Their support is horrible. Their problems with us are serious.

I mean, I don't get it. Why can't you just say, if that worked -- wouldn't that be a nice message to send to the Iranians: "Hey, guarantee us no missiles, guarantee us no nukes, we can make a deal."

Is that a good idea?

RICE: Senator, what we have said to the Iranians is, look at the Libyan example. The United States doesn't have permanent enemies.

BIDEN: And look at the Libyan example and look at Gadhafi's role in human rights now in his country.

RICE: But what we've done with the Libyan example is that the Libyans made an irreversible -- we believe -- decision about their weapons of mass destruction. They made it, by the way, without a promise of specific deals.

We told them that there could be a path to better relations, and they're now on a path to better relations.

BIDEN: That's not what Gadhafi told me. I asked him why he made the deal -- straight up. The State Department was in there.

He said, "It was simple." He said, "I knew if I had used nuclear," -- well, first of all, he said, "Nuclear weapons didn't help you much," -- through a translator -- "nuclear weapons didn't help you much in Vietnam and in Iraq."

BIDEN: That was his comment.

Secondly, he said, "You know, if I used them," I forget exactly the phrase, "you'd blow me away."

And thirdly, he said, "They weren't much value to me." And guess -- and then he went on to say, "And now I can have American oil companies in here pumping the oil out of the ground."

I asked why (inaudible) why he wanted American oil companies. And he made an analogy to the French, he said, "You make a deal with the French, they say 90-10 and they take 95." He said, "The Americans, you say 50-50, they only take 50." Most candid guy I ever spoke with.

RICE: Well, the Libyan example is a good example.

Let me turn very briefly to the question of lessons learned.

I said yesterday, Senator, we've made a lot of decisions in this period of time, some of them have been good, some of them have not been good. Some of them have been bad decisions, I'm sure.

I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment, but in how it all adds up. And I -- that's just strongly the way that I feel about big historical changes.

I'm being as straightforward with you as I possibly can.

BIDEN: I appreciate that.

RICE: And that's how I see it.

BIDEN: It's a little bit like I told my daughter, I have no doubt -- when she was 18 -- I have no doubt -- 16 -- I have no doubt by the time she was 30 years old, she would be a beautiful, intelligent, well-educated, happy lady. I just wondered how much pain there was going to be between then and 30.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: I understand that.

BIDEN: I'm talking about pain here.

RICE: Well, I'm afraid in difficult historical circumstances, there's going to be a lot of it and a lot of sacrifice.

I don't have a 16-year-old daughter to refer to, but I will tell you that I think the analogy is apt because it's how Iraq turns out that really ultimately matters.

If I could just say one thing, though, about lessons learned. And that is, I spoke yesterday about the important work that we've been doing on the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization -- I think that's a lesson learned.

We didn't have the right skills, the right capacity to deal with a reconstruction effort of this kind. And we are going to face these again even if it's not after war, and I certainly hope that it will not be.

RICE: We're going to face it in places like Liberia, places like Sudan.

BIDEN: All we want to know is how are you going to face it with the $15 billion that's sitting out there now you haven't spent and, you know, you don't know what to do with it?

RICE: We do know what to do with it, Senator. And that's...

BIDEN: You want to tell us? It'd be good. Tell us.

RICE: That spending is accelerating and I'll be glad to give you a full accounting of it the next time I see you.

BIDEN: God bless you.

And by the way, my daughter's 23. She thinks I'm handsome and smart again. All is well.

RICE: All is well.

(LAUGHTER)

(UNKNOWN): And she's right.

(UNKNOWN): You better straighten her out.

BIDEN: Thanks, pal.

(UNKNOWN): Now, I've got one at 27 and I'm still going through a lot of pain.

COLEMAN: Two comments, Dr. Rice, one, with all the talk about the foreign policy goals, the things that impact my constituents most and I was surprised my first years as a senator. I probably spent more time on immigration issues and child adoption than any other issue in my state office. So I just want to raise that.

And probably, by the way, the most satisfying portion of what I do to unite families. You have a program called Adjudicate Orphan Status First. It's a pilot project.

I would just urge you to take a look at expanding it. We do wonderful things to bring families together and it's really important stuff that we don't talk about much.

And I just have to join in the conversation here. I am sympathetic to some of my colleagues' concern about finding common ground. I join with some of my colleagues believing that we need to find more common ground with Venezuela. I think we have to figure out a way to do that.

But I have to agree with you and appreciate your response in separating Venezuela from Iran, a country that's calling for the destruction of Israel, that's supporting terrorism, that no freedom of religion, abysmal human rights record, pursuit of nuclear weapons.

COLEMAN: Just in Iraq, talking to Allawi, concern about interfering with what's going on in Iraq.

And I will say, Dr. Rice, for this senator, the idea of finding common ground with Iran and the mullahs makes me sick. There is a separation there, and I believe it's important for some of us to keep our eye on that difference between Iran and Venezuela.

RICE: Thank you.

LUGAR: Thank you very much, Senator Coleman.

Senator Feingold?

FEINGOLD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Rice, thanks for this further opportunity to speak with you.

I'm struck by the conversation you just had with Senator Biden with regard to Iraq, in part because I think if people are watching this hearing they would think that we've been in great disagreement about foreign policy ever since 9/11.

That's not what really happened. We were all quite unified with regard to the fight against terrorism, trying to figure out this challenge, up until the time that serious disagreements occurred with regard to whether Iraq really was part of that effort or to what extent it was.

So I want to return, in that spirit, to the item that I started with yesterday: Secretary Rumsfeld's interesting comments in his memo that there was no consensus within the national security community of the United States about how to even measure success in the fight against terrorism.

You and I had an exchange about this yesterday, where you talked about some of the places, geographically, where it's much harder for the terrorist network to operate. I talked about my concern that I think they actually are able to operate in other places, North Africa. And we went back and forth on that.

But, fundamentally, I'd like to have you say a little bit about how do we measure success. Not a list of things we've done, but how do we measure how well the terrorists are doing? How do we know whether they're picking up steam in terms of picking up recruits and gathering more help around the world or not? How do we measure this thing?

I think that's one of the most important things that perhaps we could come together on and start discussing again once we get through this serious disagreement on Iraq.

RICE: It's a very interesting question, Senator, and it's a hard question.

As you know, when you're measuring any social phenomenon, you are usually without hard tools to do it. That's one of the lessons of social science. If you're measuring scientific phenomena, you have hard tools to do it. If you're measuring human phenomena, how do you measure how well a young person is developing? These are human phenomena, they are hard to measure.

One of the hardest things about this is this is a very shadowy network whose numbers are hard to count. It's important and difficult to know what is a hardcore terrorist who is committed to the jihad and would never be reformable in any way, versus somebody who might just be attracted to the philosophy because they're jobless or hopeless or whatever and might be brought back into the fold.

RICE: That's the kind of important question for which we, frankly, don't have a measurement, and I don't think we're going to. I think we're going to see this in broader strokes.

We can measure with good intelligence issues like how well we think they're doing on funding. We can measure something like that -- imperfectly because we're dependent on what intelligence we can learn about that.

We can measure imperfectly when we take down some of their leadership, whether they seem to be able to replace that leadership.

We can measure imperfection whether we think they are able to carry through on threats that we believe they have issued. But again, imperfectly.

What we're going to be able to measure -- and I would resist trying to measure -- is how we're doing in empowering moderate Islam against radical Islam because that is an historical process that is going to have its ups and downs.

But in time, when you have a Pakistan coming back from the brink of extremism or you have an Indonesia carrying out a democratic election in which the role of terrorism and Islam was actually a fairly minor issue, you have to say we are making some progress.

How much? I can't tell you. But we're making some progress.

What I keep my eye on is how is moderate Islam doing. When I'm asked, what future am I looking for, I'm looking for a future in which the regions of the world that we're concerned about, whether it is North Africa or East Africa or the Middle East or Southeast Asia, that moderate Islam is winning. It's winning in governments. It's winning in rhetoric. It's winning in educational programs.

But the impact of that is going to be a while before we see it.

FEINGOLD: I appreciate that answer. I recognize how imperfect it is. And I do think a lot of it has to do with how moderate Islam is doing.

FEINGOLD: But let me just give you an example from Algeria, where, of course, they've gone through this horrendous period of terrorism and they're coming out of it. And we had a dinner with civil society people last week in Algeria, said, "Now, what about the young people here? Are they likely to return, to be attracted to a radical, violent Islam or not?"

And the sense was that they probably wouldn't because it was so horrible, but perhaps if economic opportunity didn't improve, that it could happen.

I'm not so sure that it can't be measured more than we're doing. I'm not so sure that we can't identify these trends in a more serious way than we are. And I think it would be very valuable information.

Let me turn to one other question. I'd like you to explain how, if you could, the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief will help build infrastructural capacity in Africa, particularly in the area of training health care practitioners, especially community health workers, and discouraging the medical brain drain?

In the course of the work I have done in this committee, you have a lot of wonderful conversations with people in countries, especially Africa, and some heartbreaking ones. And I find one of the most heartbreaking to be my conversation to Botswana, with the president of that country, President Mogae, who was acknowledging that they had a 40 percent AIDS rate and that they were trying to deal with it, but whenever they'd get some local health care workers trained, they were poached by American health care entities or European health care entities, and they couldn't keep the very people that were trying to deal with this situation.

So while implementing partners all adhere to a set of principles regarding hiring local staff to ensure that we don't siphon resources away from the domestic health care infrastructure, making our efforts, in the end, unsustainable if we don't do that.

RICE: Again, a very important point.

And the whole concept, especially of the part of the emergency plan that is for the 15 most affected, is to focus not just on the delivery of services -- which is important in itself, the cure -- the treatments, 2 million, preventing 7 million, giving access to information and care for 10 million, those are all very important goals.

But the design of the program has also been to worry about the delivery mechanism for that care, to use a tiered approach so that you have clinics in the cities that can do that, or hospitals in the cities.

RICE: But that you also build capacity in the village in some of these places even using motorcycle riders to get the care out, people who've been trained to administer or help administer the drugs so that you're improving the health care delivery system as well.

And that really was the innovation that came about through studying and working with, for instance, the Ugandans, who have a very effective system of delivery.

It is also the case, of course, that if you improve the delivery system for AIDS, you improve the health care system delivery for other things as well: malaria, tuberculosis are part of the program, but others as well. If you improve mother-to-child transmission delivery, you improve OB/GYN care. You improve neonatal care and so forth.

And so I think it's really -- probably one of the most important aspects of the emergency plan, would be not just to focus on the treatment itself, although that's extremely important, but what we're doing for the health care delivery system.

I hadn't thought much about the problem of well-trained health care workers being siphoned off but we'll go back and give that some thought.

FEINGOLD: I would appreciate that.

LUGAR: Thank you very much, Senator Feingold.

Senator Hagel?

HAGEL: No questions.

LUGAR: Senator Hagel passes.

Senator Boxer?

BOXER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for being so fair.

Thank you, Dr. Rice, for answering our questions.

Mr. Chairman, and my ranking member, I'm going to use my time this morning to lay out the rest of my concerns.

BOXER: And then, when we get a chance to vote, I'm going to put all my concerns back into context again.

Dr. Rice, clearing the air and, as Senator Biden said, starting from a fresh page here would have been wonderful. We haven't had that.

And the reason I think it is so important to place into the record some of your past statements is because your administration has named several countries in the axis of evil. We don't know what your plans are. We haven't been able to flesh them out.

I think Senator Biden has been trying to push you on the Iran situation.

We don't have an exit strategy for Iraq that we can tell because you insist there's 120,000 in the Iraqi forces. But yet, being pressed by several senators here yesterday, you still won't say how many of them really are trained.

So we've got problems here. At least, I have problems here. So forgive me if I continue along the lines of yesterday.

Now, Dr. Rice and colleagues, our country is united in waging war on those responsible for 9/11 and eliminating the Al Qaida network. That is why I find it so troubling that the Bush administration used the fear of terror to make the war against Iraq appear to be part of the response to 9/11.

And, Dr. Rice, as I said, you were involved in that effort. You were the face on television, as was pointed out yesterday.

You tell us that you were giving the president confidential advice, but you didn't shrink from talking straight to the American people.

Now, I don't know one American who wants Saddam Hussein to see the light of day. So that's not the point. I don't know of one American who wanted Slobodan Milosevic to see the light of day.

BOXER: And guess what? And you know this: 1,300-plus American soldiers didn't have to die to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic and 10,000 didn't have to get wounded. So there are issues surrounding this.

Now, on September 25th, '02, you said in an interview with Margaret Warner on PBS, "We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaida going back for actually quite a long time." And you went on to say, "And there are some Al Qaida personnel who found refuge in Baghdad."

Now, that statement and others by administration officials assert there was a long-standing operational alliance between Iraq and Al Qaida. We know the truth is otherwise. We know it. And I'll show you again the State Department document signed off by President Bush in October 2001, one month after 9/11, showing absolutely no operational cells in Saddam Hussein-controlled Iraq.

And second, most experts agree that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were far from being allies. In an interview on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo on March 24th, '03, Peter Bergen was asked if he saw any direct connection between Saddam and Osama. Mr. Bergen said, "Well, you know, I met bin Laden in '97 and I asked him at the end of the interview his opinion of Saddam, and he said, 'Well, Saddam is a bad Muslim and he took Kuwait for his own self-aggrandizement.'"

In November '01, the former head of the Saudi intelligence said, quote, "Iraq doesn't come very high in estimation of Osama bin Laden. He thinks of Hussein as an apostate, an infidel, or someone who is not worthy of being a fellow Muslim."

Third, you were contradicted by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which stated in its report last summer that there was, quote, "no collaborative relation between Iraq and Al Qaida."

In fact, the 9/11 Commission report states that you received a memo on September 18th, '01, detailing what was known about the links between Al Qaida and Iraq. Let me read the 9/11 Commission's description of the memo you received.

They write: "The memo pointed out that bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime. Finally," the memo said, "there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with bin Laden."

BOXER: So, you received a memo on September '01 clearly stating there was no link. The president himself was part of a State Department publication which said there were no Al Qaida in Iraq prior to 9/11. There's documented history of bin Laden's loathing of Saddam.

And in spite of this, you went on TV and told the American people there was a clear connection between Saddam and Al Qaida. Even the State Department was very clear that there were no such contacts.

So, it is very disturbing to think that in spite of everything, and all the information that you had, you continued to go out there and claim this contact and make the people feel that somehow going to war against Iraq was our response to 9/11.

Now, on the aluminum tubes, I'm not going to get into the back and forth with you on the aluminum tubes. But I'm going to lay this into the record because I think it's essential.

On September 8th -- first, I believe you tried to convince the American people that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes proved positively that they were going to build nuclear weapons. That's your statement about the mushroom cloud, which scared the heck out of every American.

On September 8th, '02, you were on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer" and you made this statement: "We do know there have been shipments of going into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that are really only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tubes that are only" -- I am reiterating what you said -- "really suited for a nuclear weapons program, centrifuge programs."

That unequivocal statement was wrong. You never mentioned to the American people that there was a major dispute about the tubes, even though our nation's leading nuclear experts in the Department of Energy in 2001 said the tubes were for small artillery rockets, not for nuclear weapons.

It is reported that one Energy Department analyst summed up this issue for the Senate Intelligence Committee saying, quote, "The tubes were so poorly suited for centrifuges that if Iraq truly wanted to use them this way, we should just give them the tubes," unquote.

This dispute among the CIA, the DIA, the Department of Energy, Department of State over the likely use of tubes was played out in front of this committee. And, Mr. Chairman, I remember it. I was there in that meeting. It was very contentious and we saw all sides of the issue.

This dispute was so well known that the Australian intelligence service wrote in a July 2002 assessment that the tubes evidence was, quote, "patchy and inconclusive."

Third, the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported on January 8th, '03, that the tubes were, quote, "not directly suitable for uranium enrichment and were consistent with making ordinary artillery rockets."

So, given the concerns raised by Department of Energy, Department of State, the Australians, the IAEA, you still failed to level with the American people on the subject of the aluminum tubes.

Even as recently as a few months ago, October 3rd, 2004, you had the opportunity to finally set the record straight.

BOXER: And as Senator Biden says, it's good to set the record straight. We've got to move on.

But when you we were asked by "This Week's" George Stephanopoulos about the tube controversy, you said, "There was dispute by only one agency, that's the State Department."

Now, that is not the truth. It's not the facts. And it is very, very troubling to me.

As Senator Biden said, we all make mistakes. God knows, I've made mine and I will make more. I apologize in advance to my constituents for the mistakes that I'll make.

But once all of the facts are out there, can't we just make sure that the truth is finally embedded into history without turning our backs on what the truth is?

So that's another area.

Now, I know my time is up. I can either wait till one more round or I can just finish up my last area of concern.

Can I just finish it up?

LUGAR: Proceed.

BOXER: OK.

When you were making the case for the war in Iraq, one of the things that you said that, frankly, stunned me was that a reason to go was the Iranians were gassed by the Iraqis.

Now this is truly a horrific fact. That is right.

But, Dr. Rice, we all know the Iran-Iraq War took place between 1980 and 1988, and the United States knew -- they knew that Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. And it was appalling.

BOXER: Despite this fact -- despite this fact, I'm sure you're aware who traveled to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein one month after we became aware of this. It was Donald Rumsfeld. And Donald Rumsfeld tried to increase diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein.

Iraq was a charter member of the terrorism list in 1979, put on there by Jimmy Carter. Do you know, and I'm sure you knew at the time you said this, that it was the United States who removed Iraq from our list of state sponsors of terrorism? And they didn't get put back on until 1990.

So, let's review. While Saddam was gassing the Iranians, a despicable act, Donald Rumsfeld and the Reagan administration reestablished U.S. relations with Iraq and refused to put Iran back on the terrorism list.

So, in '03, when you told the American people that Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against Iran was a justification for war, one of them that you gave, why didn't you tell them the full story?

Why didn't you mention that it was Rumsfeld who favored the normalization of relations with Iraq during a time when Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iran?

So, a reason you gave the American people for the war in Iraq, and the reason you believed it was worth American lives was the heinous gassing of the Iranians by Saddam in the '80s. This gassing was known to the American government at the time. The gassing did nothing to dissuade the American government from launching full diplomatic relations with Saddam. And America gave its seal of approval to Saddam Hussein by sending Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq when we had zero relations with Iran at that time.

So, to me, it's telling a half-truth to the American people. It's gaming the American people. And as someone who believes that we, again, owe the full story, it was very upsetting to me that you didn't put it into context.

Now, had you said, "You know, we were wrong. We were fooled," maybe it would have been better.

BOXER: But there's no mention anywhere.

So, I guess what I am saying, Mr. Chairman, these are my areas of deep concern. I've gone back through the records exhaustively because I knew, Dr. Rice -- and you saw it yesterday, you know, we can get into a give and take, and she's a very good debater and I'm a pretty good debater. And that's interesting.

But I think we need to see what the facts are and why I'm disturbed about this particular nomination. It isn't based on qualifications or intelligence or all the rest, because that's obvious. Wonderful, breaking the glass ceiling and all those beautiful things, which I am proud of. It's not about that.

It's about candor. It's about telling the full story. It's about seemingly not being willing to go with us, both sides of the aisle, because it was the same answer to Senator Chafee when he pressed you.

It seems to me a rigidness here, a lack of flexibility, which is so troubling to me. And most of all, going back into recent history, an unwillingness to give the American people the full story, because the mission, the zeal of selling the war was so important to Dr. Rice. That was her job.

And yet I feel -- and again, I know not everyone agrees with me at all in the country, but many do -- that this war and all of these horrific deaths and the wounded and all of that, is a direct result of not leveling with the American people.

Thank you.

LUGAR: Thank you very much, Senator Boxer.

RICE: Thank you.

I'll just -- I'll be brief.

Senator Boxer, let me respond to a couple of specific points very briefly and then to an overall point.

RICE: But I, first, need to go back to yesterday.

Senator Boxer, you mentioned the letter that we wrote concerning -- I just want to note, and I will want to note for the record, that you put up one provision, not all of the provisions.

BOXER: Yes, that's correct.

RICE: And it was a provision, of course, with which we would have had no difficulty, which was one that is enshrined in law, which is that we should not torture and so forth and so on.

But there were other provisions that you did not put up that was not fully in context what you presented yesterday.

BOXER: Dr. Rice, I agree with you completely. But your letter didn't say...

RICE: No, I understand that.

(CROSSTALK)

BOXER: The conferees could have kept that one provision.

RICE: Yes. We decided -- you're right -- not to try and parse.

But I just want to be clear that you did not put up the entire set of provisions.

BOXER: Of course, I didn't.

RICE: Yes.

BOXER: Because the conferees could have kept that. You didn't tell them to keep it.

RICE: Yes, but the impression was left that what we objected to was that one provision when...

BOXER: Well, you did.

RICE: ... in fact, there were several.

BOXER: Well, you did yesterday object to it. You said it was duplicative.

RICE: No, I said it was in the defense authorization bill.

But I just want, for the record, it to be noted that the Bush administration was objecting not to something to do with the law of the land, but to other provisions. And I'll provide that to you.

So the context here was extremely important.

Secondly, let me just respond very briefly, Senator Boxer, to a few points.

First of all, I really just can't agree that Milosevic and Saddam Hussein were the same problem. And we do have to recognize that different tools have to be taken against different dictators.

It was a remarkable set of events with Milosevic. But he was in the center of Europe. We had all kinds of pressure on Milosevic that we had failed to be able to bring about with Saddam Hussein. And so I just reject the analogy between the two.

Secondly, as to the question of Al Qaida and its presence in Iraq, I think we did say that there was never an issue of operational control, that Al Qaida -- that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 as far as we know or could tell.

RICE: It wasn't a question of operational alliance. It was a question of an attitude about terrorism that allowed Zarqawi to be in Baghdad and to operate out of Baghdad.

There were contacts going back to the early '90s and those are, indeed, detailed in the 9/11 report.

Third, on the question of aluminum tubes. We didn't go to war because of aluminum tubes. This was a debate about whether this issue, this particular piece of evidence, was evidence of reconstitution of the nuclear program. And there was one agency that disagreed that he was reconstituting his nuclear program and that was the State Department, the INR.

BIDEN (?): Didn't the Department of Energy also?

RICE: No. The Department of Energy said that they did not believe that the tubes were evidence of reconstitution, but that he was indeed, they believed, reconstituting his program. And that's an important distinction, though.

But I said, "reconstituting his program." I was not talking about the tubes.

The Department of Energy, in fact, I learned when the process unfolded, did have reservations or did believe the tubes were not for nuclear weapons. The majority of agencies in the intelligence community did.

I was representing, Senator -- and I've made this available for the record -- the views of that majority. And the view on reconstitution was one that all but the State Department held.

Now, I just have to put this into context. When you're dealing with intelligence matters, you are not dealing with perfect information.

RICE: And you do have to put that information into a context of someone's history. This was someone who was very close to a nuclear weapon in 1991, much closer than we thought.

Of his present, the intelligence community's belief was that he was reconstituting his program, that there was evidence of this in his procurement activities and keeping the nuclear scientists together.

And that the shadow of future, according to that national intelligence estimate, was that left unchecked, he would have a nuclear device by the end of the decade.

I just don't think that the president of the United States and I were going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And as to the mushroom cloud statement, one that I've heard repeated many, many times, it was simply a statement about uncertainty; that you didn't want the first evidence that he had nuclear weapons to be the kind of evidence that we learned when we found out that the Soviet Union had a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule.

On the Iranians and Iraq, I'll say it right now: The United States government has often, as the president said, supported regimes in the hope that they would bring stability. And we've been, in the Middle East, sometimes blind to the freedom deficit. We're not going to do that anymore. And what happened with Saddam Hussein was probably evidence that that policy was not a very wise policy.

In general, Senator, let me just say again, we did go to the American people with a case for war. It was a case that, yes, said that the threat that this horrible dictator sitting in the Middle East, in the world's most dangerous region, with whom we had gone to war twice before, who had used weapons of mass destruction, who was shooting at our aircraft, that it was not acceptable to have him with weapons of mass destruction.

And we believed, like most of the intelligence agencies in the world, like the United Nations -- and much of the information was from the United Nations -- that he had weapons of mass destruction. He refused to account for them. Even with coalition forces sitting on his doorstep, he refused to account for them.

We weren't prepared to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt given his history and given the shadow of the future.

We also had a situation, now rectified, of a Middle East out of which the terror threat, the jihadist threat comes with a factor in Saddam Hussein, who was going to make it impossible to change the nature of the Middle East.

I don't think anybody can see a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein in the middle of it.

So we can disagree about the course that we took.

RICE: We can certainly have, I think, a healthy debate about the course that we should take going forward. I would be the first, again, to say we've had to make a lot of decisions, some of them good, some of them bad.

But I would hope that what we will do now is to focus on where we go from here.

I can assure you, I will be candid. My assessments may not always be ones that you want to hear. They may not always be ones with which you agree. But I will tell you what I think. And that's a promise that I make to you today.

Thank you.

LUGAR: Thank you very much.

BOXER: If I could -- and I know I'm taking a lot of time. I just don't want to have to speak again. But I would like to finish my comments here.

The fact is that the reconstituting were based on the yellow cake and aluminum tubes, both of which proved to be false. And when I asked you about...

RICE: And balancing equipment and the accounts out of which these came and his keeping nuclear scientists together. Let's have the entire picture.

BOXER: OK. Yes. Exactly my point. Let's have the entire picture.

And when I asked you about aluminum tubes, you talked about the larger picture.

The fact is when you go on television and you say the aluminum tubes can only be used for nuclear weapons -- you want to turn it to a different subject, that's OK, but that's what you said, and the facts proved otherwise.

And we knew that at the time that four or five agencies were having a giant battle over that. No one could have possibly said that they could only be used because the intelligence community was split.

My last point has to do with Milosevic.

You said you can't compare the two dictators. You know, you're right. No two tyrants are alike.

But the fact is Milosevic started wars that killed 200,000 in Bosnia, 10,000 in Kosovo and thousands in Croatia. And he was nabbed and he's out, without an American dying for it. That's the fact.

BOXER: Now, I suppose we could have gone in there and people could have killed to get him. The fact is not one person wants either of those two to see the light of day again. And in one case, we did it without Americans dying; in the other case, we did it with Americans dying.

And I think if you ask the average American, you know, "Was Saddam worth one life, one American life?" they'd say no. He's the bottom of the barrel, and the fact is we've lost so many lives over it.

So if we do get a little testy on the point -- and I admit to be so -- it's because it continues day in and day out and 25 percent of the dead are from California. We cannot forget -- we cannot forget that.

RICE: May I just close by saying, Senator Boxer, I, probably more than most, because I did have a role in the president's decision to go to war, mourn every day the people that are lost? I look at their pictures. I think about their families. I've been to Walter Reed. I see the pain and suffering. I believe that their service and their sacrifice was needed for our security.

I don't think there's anyone who believes that you could have gone into Iraq and nabbed Saddam Hussein. It wasn't that kind of regime.

LUGAR: Members of the committee, let me just say we tried in fairness to leave open the debate last evening. And Dr. Rice, Senator Kerry, Senator Voinovich and I were here for 50 minutes of questioning at that point. The table was available for any senator who wanted to stay and ask questions at that point. Now, Senator Boxer, obviously had strong points of view and, in fairness, the chair has let the hearing verge out of control.

(LAUGHTER)

But we're going to come back into control at this stage.

BOXER: I'm finished. You'll be happy.

(LAUGHTER)

LUGAR: Yes, I understand. And I appreciate that.

LUGAR: We have called for a business meeting at 10 o'clock.

Now, I don't want to be arbitrary because I appreciate there may be impelling questions for the completion of the record. Even as people thought of them, couldn't have thought of them last night. Thought of them this morning.

But we rapidly want to come to conclusion here.

And I just simply want to ask, are there senators who have impelling questions or can we proceed to have a business meeting of the committee?

BIDEN: Mr. Chairman?

LUGAR: Yes.

BIDEN: In response, I'm told -- Senator Levin importuned me in the hall on the way up here, and had said that he had sent a letter which I would ask for a copy of, that there are questions, some of which have been touched on here, that he'd like Dr. Rice to answer in writing before we vote in the Senate.

And I'll read the letter.

"Dear Dick and Joe, enclosed are some questions for the record which I request that you ask Dr. Rice on my behalf. I'd appreciate a response in writing before the time set for the Senate vote on her nomination. Thank you for your assistance."

They're pretty straightforward. I'd be guided by your judgment.

I could ask them on behalf of the senator right now or we could do them in writing.

And I think there's plenty of time. I think you could answer all of these, Dr. Rice. They relate to, for the record, uranium from Africa and the second -- and there are a total of six questions relating to that -- aluminum tubes, one question and no distinction between Iraq and Al Qaida, one question.

So just for the record...

LUGAR: Let me suggest that -- first of all, as senators know, Dr. Rice has been answering questions for a month. We've all had ample opportunity to ask every one.

Secondly, however, I'll ask Dr. Rice to respond to the questions of Senator Levin, our colleague, as a courtesy.

LUGAR: Our hearing here is with the Foreign Relations Committee. We are prepared really to help any senator find answers and I am certain Dr. Rice would be cooperative, at least I presume so. So, within the next few hours, presumably those questions will be answered.

BIDEN: They're very straightforward.

RICE: I'll get them back to you.

LUGAR: My guess is they probably have been answered in the folios of questions that are part of the record. So it will not be difficult, I suspect, to reiterate.

RICE: I'm happy to do it, Senator. We'll get them back to you shortly.

LUGAR: I appreciate that. Fine.

Now, impelling questions? I see Senator Nelson raising his hand. Are there any on this side that feel they need to ask questions?

All right, one short question by Senator Chafee and Senator Obama.

BIDEN: And there may be closing statements, not questions before the actual vote, which would be appropriate. And Senator Dodd has a closing statement and maybe someone else.

LUGAR: Well, that could be perhaps a part of our business meeting. We'll have a discussion at that point.

All right, Senator Nelson?

NELSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just picking up on a theme that was hit here that there was a discrepancy, Dr. Rice, between the intelligence in the State Department and other intelligence in this particular case, that was discussed about the aluminum tubes, so too there was a difference of opinion within the intelligence community with regard to unmanned aerial vehicles that Saddam Hussein had and, indeed, what I and other senators were told, that not only did he have those UAVs for offensive reasons, but that there was a plot that he was going to put them on ships off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and launch them over Eastern cities of the United States dropping chemical or biological weapons.

We were told that.

NELSON: But what we were not told is that there was a vigorous disagreement within the intelligence community, specifically the Air Force intelligence, which knows the most about UAVs. But we were not told that, that they had disagreed.

Now, it was written in the report. But I'm talking about those verbal briefings that we received in the secure room in the Capitol.

Tell us what you know about that kind of dispute of intelligence, because we don't want to ever get into a situation where we are operating on information that is incomplete, as we were in this particular case.

RICE: Senator, I'm sorry. I don't remember the briefing -- what was said at the briefing. I don't know if I was there at the briefing to which you're referring.

There was a dispute about the UAVs and I think it was fully outlined in the national intelligence estimate which should have been the basis for the briefings.

Let me just -- if you don't mind, I'll just take a broader point, which is, obviously, we need the very best intelligence. And, obviously, there were problems with the intelligence concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

I don't think because members of the intelligence community were trying to deceive or to do a bad job or any of those things. It's an incredibly difficult intelligence challenge when you're dealing with a closed society that is deliberately deceiving and where they're using dual-use equipment.

And the question very often is do you give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt that these are really for weather monitoring or not.

And so I think it's just a very difficult -- I'm sorry, I just don't remember the circumstances.

NELSON: Well, I guess the question would be, since we're looking forward, which has been the theme of my statements, is if your intelligence in the Department of State has a difference of opinion from the rest of the intelligence community, what is the way that you will receive and handle that intelligence?

RICE: Well, I will certainly encourage INR, which is headed by an assistant secretary who I've known for 20-plus years, somebody that I've known at Stanford -- I will certainly make certain that they are making their views known in the intelligence community. I don't think I have to do that. I think they have been making them known. And I think INR has demonstrated that it has a different take on things and that that is worth looking at.

Why have they had a different take? They have very often been right about some of the dissents that they've taken. And so I look forward to working with them to understand that somewhat better.

But as we're restructuring the intelligence community, understanding how different intelligence agencies do their work is going to be important to the national intelligence director -- the director of national intelligence in making sure that he's getting competitive views on the intelligence front.

BIDEN: Will the senator yield for 10 seconds?

NELSON: Of course.

BIDEN: Will you tell us if there's a difference if we ask you?

RICE: Well, of course. And you'll know because the intelligence community always cites any dissents.

BIDEN: No, but you, as secretary of state, will you tell us if we don't ask you, if we don't know to ask you? Will you level with us? Will you tell us, "By the way, there's a different take"?

RICE: From the INR? Of course. Yes.

NELSON: See that's the point that we felt like that if we didn't know to ask because we were told about these UAVs. Yes, it was buried in the national intelligence estimate but we were getting these verbal communications in a very secure room.

And that's the whole point, so that we can make judgments based on the full information.

Mr. Chairman, let me just wrap up with a couple of other subjects here.

It's already been discussed. We've got a problem in Latin America, in the tri-border region and that needs your attention. It is, as Senator Dodd said, the Wild West. And there's a lot of financing of some bad actors that comes out of that area.

We've got to keep our eyes on President Chavez. He told us one thing a week ago Monday and then, lo and behold, a whole different thing suddenly emerges after we left Caracas.

And thanks to the chairman, he has noted this way back in November, which I fully support, is what are the implications to the United States if Chavez cuts off the oil?

NELSON: And the chairman has called for a GAO investigation. I hope the chairman will call for hearings on this. And I fully support him.

And then, you know, there seems to be some flap over this very courageous Cuban resident named Oswaldo Paya, who went out and got 11,000 signatures on a petition and then the government of Cuba stiffed him when, in fact, that was a part of what their constitution said.

Will you support the Varela project and other grassroots movements inside Cuba?

RICE: Absolutely.

And we'll look for even better ways to support them.

NELSON: OK.

And my final statement, it's just a little thing that nobody ever recognizes, but because I had been in my former life handling issues for people that were victims of the Holocaust and their families who -- not only the survivors from the Holocaust -- there's a little office in the United States State Department that is a pittance on what its budget is.

I asked this four years ago of Secretary Powell when he was here for his confirmation. He said he would continue it.

It still is there and what it's trying to do is to see that people, and the particular life that I had lived before, was seeing how all of these people had been run over by insurance companies. They had collected the policies for years and years and then after the war they said, "We don't know you."

NELSON: And that's just one of the things that the Holocaust victims and their families now and the Holocaust survivors have suffered. And so I would ask you to maintain the Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.

RICE: Thank you, Senator. I will.

NELSON: Thank you.

LUGAR: Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.

I would call upon Senator Obama. And because Senator Chafee has had one opportunity, then I will call upon Senator Chafee.

Senator Obama?

OBAMA: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I'll try to be brief.

The first question, I guess, I have is more of a request, Dr. Rice. And that is assuming your successful confirmation here today, that we schedule some mechanism for your department to follow up on the question that had been raised yesterday, both by Senator Biden as well as myself and others, about figuring out a concrete measurement of our progress in training of Iraqi troops.

Because one of the questions that will continue to come up every time I have a town hall meeting in Illinois is, "What's the status of our troops and what's our exit strategy?"

And I recognize that you are hesitant in your current position to provide a timetable. I thought Senator Alexander said something yesterday about wanting a success strategy as opposed to merely an exit strategy. And I recognize that approach.

On the other hand, constituents and families in small towns all across Illinois need some more satisfactory answer than that.

OBAMA: And it strikes me that this whole issue of training troops, turning over security functions to the Iraqi government is critical to that.

So my first question, I guess, is are you committed to setting up some mechanism whereby we can get some specific answers on that?

RICE: I will note that the police training is actually under the Defense Department and under the military...

OBAMA: I understand. But I would just require an additional commitment from Secretary Rumsfeld, but...

RICE: I will talk to Secretary Rumsfeld about it, and I'm certain that we can be responsive to the concern.

OBAMA: OK.

The second -- I guess this is more of a point rather than a question, but I'm happy to solicit a response.

You know, all of us, I think, are rooting for your success. And I recognize not just yours personally but this administration's success.

I think the notion that we have a very real and present danger in the nihilistic ideologies of radical Islam, I think, most Americans share.

I think to the extent that we can encourage a more moderate brand of Islam -- it already exists; it has to be nurtured. Although, I have to dispute a little bit your notion that, sort of, we're always making progress.

Indonesia, for example -- I actually lived in Indonesia for five years. Perceptions of America and the West were much better then than they are currently, subsequent to 9/11.

So I'm not always certain we're going in a straight line in that route. But I recognize that it's a complicated issue and we wish you well.

OBAMA: And I don't think there's anybody on this committee who would not prefer to see this administration succeed even though there have been strong disagreements about the decisions that have been made in the past.

I guess the comment that I'd like to make is that in the activist, proactive strategies that you pursue, it seems to me that this administration often asks that we simply go along and have faith that you're making the right decisions. And that's true -- I think part of the reason that you were hesitant to talk about the torture issue yesterday had to do with the fact that you don't want to define torture too much because you want a little bit of wiggle room.

You want us to assume that you will make sound decisions based on immediate circumstances. And I think that the reason it's hard to pin you down on an exit strategy or Iran or these other circumstances is you don't want to bind this administration. "Trust us," I think is the message, "and we'll make the best decisions."

But I think that, from the perspective of my constituents in Illinois at least, a number of people did vote for George Bush and do trust him.

But my job as a senator is to make sure that we're basing these decisions on facts and that I probe and not simply take it on faith that good decisions are being made.

And so, my final comment, I guess, is simply this. Your predecessor had a reputation of being willing to maybe tell the president some things that he didn't always want to hear. I think he displayed a certain independence that was encouraging and I think that people felt that he was speaking on behalf of the American people and not simply being a mouthpiece for the administration.

If there's a criticism of this administration, I think, on foreign policy, I think the most profound one is is that maybe dissenting views have a difficult time getting a hearing.

And so, I just would urge you, in your role as secretary of state, to display some independence and make certain that, as you're making these difficult calculations, that you are not engaging in simply agreement with the conventional wisdom inside the White House, but that hard questions are being asked in all these decisions.

Because ultimately, you've got young men and women who are making sacrifices as a consequence of these decisions, and the entire country is spending huge sums of money that could be spent on other things on the basis of these decisions.

OBAMA: So, I think my comment is just I hope that you show the kind of independence that will make the country proud and not just please the administration.

RICE: Thank you.

Let me just -- perhaps Senator Chafee will have a comment, but let me just -- I have no difficulty telling the president exactly what I think. I've done that for four years.

Sometimes he agrees and sometimes he doesn't. The fact is that I felt very strongly that no one else should ever know the times when he disagreed and the times when he didn't.

OBAMA: Which I respect. I have no problem with that in your role as national security.

RICE: Well, but in my role as secretary, I want it to be clearly understood that I still believe that we are one administration with the president in the lead.

The president is the only elected official in the war council. Of course, was the only elected official in the war council other than the vice president, of course.

The president will, as we move from war to peace, still be the elected official as we decide how to try to use this time of diplomacy to build new structures and to bring old relationships to use to pursue this new agenda.

But I know what he expects from me and he expects my most candid advice. He expects me to argue vociferously for that which I believe. He expects the State Department to play a strong and active role, not just in the execution of American foreign policy, but in its generation, in its formulation.

RICE: And that he'll get.

I know the men and women of the State Department -- not every single one of them, but I've worked with them, many of them over the last four years and in years past.

And what I'll ask from them is their best in pursuing a course and in recommending a course and then moving forward on a course.

So you don't have to worry, Senator, that I will be a strong voice for what I believe and for what the State Department believes is the best course going forward.

OBAMA: I wish you the best of luck.

RICE: Thank you.

LUGAR: Thank you very much.

Senator Chafee?

CHAFEE: Thank you once again, Mr. Chairman.

I would just like to respond to some of the comments from Senator Coleman.

And I deplore any rhetoric of hate and particularly against the state of Israel.

I do believe the challenge with Iranians is to empower those many, Iranians who believe that we've got to find a way to resolve our differences without bloodshed and that's our challenge.

LUGAR: Thank you, Senator Chafee.

I've been requested by the ranking member for at least one final comment or statement that he will make. And following that, we'll proceed to the business meeting. And we'll excuse you from further activity, Dr. Rice.

Senator Biden?

BIDEN: Dr. Rice, I suspect your press office has been asked by the press as often as I have in the last 24 hours how there could be such a discrepancy in our individual assessment of the trained troops in Iraq.

And I want to just -- "set the record straight" implies that I know I'm right. I don't. So I'm not setting the record straight. I'll give you how I arrived at my numbers and why I think it's important.

BIDEN: It's not about criticizing the administration. It's about what I believe is a recognition on the part of our trainers, our folks in the field, that we made, understandably, the wrong judgment early on as to how to train; that we went for, as I will not mention the general's name but last trip, I think my friend -- I don't want to get him in trouble because maybe he didn't. He said, "We went for quantity, not quality, at the front end, and it hasn't worked," end of quote.

Now, here is what I know to be the facts, as told to me by your administration personnel in charge of training, not by anybody from the outside.

First of all, the claims there is 53,520 trained police. That's what the administration says in the last report. These consist of police who receive a three-week refresher course and new recruits who get an eight-week course.

Parenthetically I'll point out that we talked about lack of automobiles and lack of equipment for the police. At the training center, when I asked whether they received the automobiles, the person in charge of training said, "We have them, but they're not much use. I found out they don't know how to drive." Literally. My word. They don't know how to drive.

So we're teaching them how to start automobiles mainly, paraphrasing, I don't know the exact quote, to get out of the way of an explosion. So that's the quality of the stuff -- people we're sending.

There's a 24-week field training course by U.S. trainers in the manual. It has never begun. Not a single one of these claimed 53,000 cops have gone through that.

They don't even know when they send the police back to -- you should know this, if you don't -- back to Iraq, they have no notion where they go. They have no notion who they've been assigned to. They don't have any idea where they are and no way to follow up.

BIDEN: Instead of the 5,700 international trainers recommended by your administration, your assessment team, in June of '03, it took until this fall, '04, to get 500 -- U.S.-only, nobody else, U.S.-only trainers.

You stated yesterday, Doctor, this is not an environment for, quote, "beat cops," it's an insurgency. Witness Mosul in November, where nearly the entire police force deserted after insurgent attacks.

On September 15th, 2004, the administration claimed it had 32,000 trained police. Notice that they now claiming -- you all are now claiming you've gone from 32,000 to 53,000 -- 20,000 just since September 15th.

In that hearing, the deputy assistant secretary of state, Joe Bowab, who I think will still be there when you get there, who was in charge of overseeing the training program from State's end, I asked him the following question.

Quote: "Do we have 32,000 trained Iraqi cops on the street? Trained. Not cops on the street, but trained Iraqi cops?"

Bowab: "No, sir." Quote: "No, sir."

I won't bother with you the rest of it. I went on to say, "My impression is you don't have one trained Iraqi cop, having gone through all of the training." His answer to that question was, "Yes. We don't."

National guard, 40,063 in the latest report. Training consists of three weeks by the individual and three to four weeks collective training. Training is not standardized, there have not been good results. The report of high absenteeism. Large casualties from insurgents have led to a climate of intimidation. Reports of infiltration by insurgents -- they think infiltration in the Mosul attack of the U.S. base.

Allawi himself dismissed the national guard before the interim assembly, saying it was a concept not understood by Arab societies.

So who's equipped, trained, led and experienced to fight the insurgency? As General Petraeus said -- and he's a first-rate guy, please listen to him -- we have to change, quote, "the operational concept. This is an insurgency, not regular police work." That's Petraeus.

Police commandos, led by General Adnam, I think A-D-N-A-M, a former Iraqi general, with whom I met last time around.

BIDEN: Petraeus introduced us to him in December.

He will eventually have about 1,000 -- he probably has about 600 now -- that's an educated guess -- able to operate independently and collectively on their own intelligence.

But Petraeus has figured out don't send the cops back to their home town. Send the cops you finally do train to another town. Focus on -- what we've been arguing you should do for two years -- focus on training essentially SWAT teams, people relied on, heavy training, heavily armed, send them in. So we're finally doing that. Petraeus is doing that.

But just to put it in perspective, there's about 600 of those folks now. And this General Adnam (ph) is a pretty tough guy. I'm convinced he knows what he's doing, and Petraeus does, too.

Intervention force, latest report: 9,159. All of them don't have the experience to stand up to the insurgency.

Special operation forces, latest report: 674.

Some elements of the army, the latest report pushed the number at 4,159 are trained. That's where I got the number roughly 4,000. That's what were's saying. The latest report puts the number at 4,159 though the mission is supposed to be national defense, not fighting internal battles against fellow Iraqis.

These same outfits refused to fight in Fallujah in April.

This is my staff assessments, and I agree with it.

At the high end, assuming every one of these forces is battle- ready, that would give you about 14,000 forces. But in reality, it's probably no more than a third who are actually battle-ready. Most are rookies and will not take time for them to gain the experience, the skills that are needed unless they're embedded like our reporters are in U.S. forces.

And the delays in the NATO staff colleagues helping, that hasn't helped at all, either.

Now, Peter Khalil, a former director of national security in the CPA. This is the guy who was in charge of training. In the New York Times in December 20 said, "The answer lies with specially trained Iraqi internal security forces separate from the standard military, including mobile counterterrorism, light infantry police battalions and SWAT teams. There are now only a handful of battalions with such training."

BIDEN: Continue to quote, "Unfortunately, the coalition was late off the mark in building up these units and training as long, a minimum of 16 weeks for each man, as compared to the two weeks of boot camp now given to a guardsman."

Continued quote, "Training these special units will take time. The United States should be prepared to shoulder the main burden in Iraq security for the next six to 12 months."

Now, Khalil also did a piece in the New York Times. He's now a visiting fellow of the Center for Middle East Study.

And he says, and I'll end this, "150,000 Iraqis who have so far joined the state security services can do little to stand in the way of our problem. In fact, even if their ranks increased to 500,000, through rushed training, they would be largely ineffective.

"However, a force of 25,000 or so highly trained Iraqi internal police troops operating at the point end of the spear with the remaining bulk of Iraqi forces in supportive role might be able to do the job. That's because counterinsurgency is not about numbers, it's about quality of security force, not the quality. That is the key."

Every single person I have spoken to on the ground in Iraq in my four trips, three since Saddam was found, every hard -- every tough Marine, every single military guy I've spoken to says that, been saying it for two years.

And yet you guys -- I'm not asking people to say, "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, we made a mistake." Forget that.

You all don't do anything except parrot, "We've trained 120,000 forces." So I go home and people ask me the same thing they ask the senator from Illinois: "Why are we still there? 120,000 trained Iraqis. Why are we still there?"

So do me a favor -- as my mother would say, God love you, please do me a favor. Start to tell the whole deal.

And let's agree -- not agree. Let me cite a new definition of trained: If you're able to take the place of a U.S. force. Let's call it that.

And I'd like you to think about and in private tell us later after you're secretary, which I'm going to -- about to vote for you in about five minutes.

BIDEN: Tell us, how many of those folks you think, you think -- and for God's sake, don't listen to Rumsfeld. He doesn't know what in the hell he's talking about on this.

(LAUGHTER)

Thank you very much. You want to comment? I welcome it.

RICE: I only want to say, Senator, that we talked yesterday about the fact that the 120,000 is those trained. I said there are problems with leadership. There are problems with desertion. There are problems with some absenteeism, as well.

And I also said, in response to Senator Obama, that the real test is do they fight when they're put in the field? In some places they've fought well and other places they've not fought well.

BIDEN: What's your overall assessment?

RICE: I think that we have had problems with the training. I'd be the first to say that. That's why General Petraeus says what he says.

And we're working to address those problems. And that's one reason that General Luck is out there is to get an assessment of what we need to do.

Part of it is that the circumstances do keep changing. We thought we were training beat cops. We were training cops who were going to have to face insurgents.

BIDEN: In truth they haven't changed in 19 months.

RICE: Well, that piece of it has changed because the cops were taking a real beating.

But in any case, we are absolutely clear that the key for the administration, the key for America is to get Iraqi forces trained. We understand that. We are working on it.

BIDEN: That translates then we have to keep American forces in large numbers there for at least six months to a year, right?

RICE: Well, Senator, we can -- let's have this discussion later. I will say that I don't know if the standard is...

BIDEN: What do you mean? "I'd rather have it after I'm confirmed?"

RICE: No, no. I don't know what the standard is that they have to be able to one-for-one replace American soldiers. There are some things that they will do better than American soldiers because they know the neighborhood. There are many things that they will not do as well.

And so I think I would not accept as a standard a one-for-one exchange of an Iraqi for an American soldier.

BIDEN: What is your standard? You tell me your standard.

RICE: My standard is that they are able and capable of carrying out the tasks that are required to deal with the insurgency and to begin to root out the insurgency and to work in a counterinsurgency way.

Frankly, they may not do it the way an American soldier would do it.

BIDEN: As long as they do it so we can come home.

LUGAR: Well, thank you very much, Senator Biden.

Dr. Rice, as you can tell, we are, as a committee, concerned about the training, likewise concerned about the economic issues that were raised yesterday as a part of foreign policy, about the budget, about support for your department so that you have the resources that are required to do all of the things that we are requiring as Americans along with you.

We appreciate very much the quality of your answers. We appreciate the quality of the questions that were raised.

And it has been a comprehensive view of American foreign policy at times of stress.

And we congratulate you on the hearing.

I look forward to supporting you. But for the moment, I will recess the hearing, and then in a few moments we will commence a business meeting of the committee.

BIDEN: Thank you very much, Dr. Rice.

RICE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Senator Biden.

Thank you, members of the committee.

(RECESS)

LUGAR: Members of the committee, I call the business meeting to order.

LUGAR: The question before the committee is on the nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of state of the United States of America. Is there a debate or a discussion at this point?

BOXER: Mr. Chairman?

LUGAR: Senator Boxer?

BOXER: Mr. Chairman, first let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for your fairness in these hearings. I know it's difficult and these are difficult times, difficult matters. I think you show patience and you show a spirit of bipartisanship that I think is a model for the rest of us. And I just want you to know I feel that way.

In my mind, there is no doubt that Dr. Rice has the resume and the intelligence and the experience to be secretary of state. And after nine hours of grueling questions and answers, she certainly proved she has endurance for the job.

But I'm very troubled because, although this committee on both sides gave Dr. Rice the opportunity to speak candidly and set the record straight, there were a number of areas where she just didn't do that.

She was given a chance to set the record straight on the nuclear threat which was hyped to the American people and got this country into a war. She failed to admit that she had made any mistake in overstating Saddam's nuclear capabilities, even though, as I put into the record, at least four agencies had told her otherwise.

She was given a chance to set the record straight on terrorism and the effects of the Iraqi war on terror. She actually stated that Al Qaida had lost territory, when, in fact, the record shows that Al Qaida has expanded from operating in 45 countries in 2001 to 60 countries today.

And I think Senator Feingold pressed her on that in terms of Al Qaida's presence in Africa.

BOXER: I pointed out to her a State Department document showing no Al Qaida in Iraq before 9/11. She didn't even address that. And that was a report that was signed by the president of these United States.

She was, on another subject, given a chance to set the record straight on our inconsistent policy toward Central America. Senator Chafee pressed her on that. I pressed her on that. Senator Dodd pressed her on that. And she showed a rigidity in her answer which I found troubling.

She was given the chance to set the record straight on what Iran can do -- this was in answer to Senator Biden -- to avoid a dangerous clash with the United States of America, and she demurred when given this amazing opportunity she had to speak directly to the Iranian leadership.

She was given the opportunity to set the record straight on the number of really trained Iraqi security forces and our exit strategy in Iraq.

Every American wants us, yes, Senator Alexander, to succeed and leave, and yet she would not really even say that this was a troubling issue, when pressed by Senators Biden, Kerry and Obama.

She was given the chance to address the issue of America's past relationship in supporting Saddam Hussein when he was gassing the Iranians. She didn't even pick up that challenge or discuss that in any way to set the record straight.

And I have to say, most troubling to me, she was given the opportunity to set the record straight on her feelings about torture and the United States policy on torture. And here, I have to say, I have grave concerns, because she said to us today that she never objected to the language in the intelligence bill written by Senators Lieberman and McCain, when I have right here her very words that the administration opposes that section which provides legal protection to foreign prisoners.

And I ask unanimous consent to place this into the record.

LUGAR: It will be placed in the record.

BOXER: So a lack of candor in the past is bad enough, and here we have a continuing assault on reality. This is not right.

The fact is she said, "Well, we objected to other sections." Not this section that guaranteed that no prisoner shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment that's prohibited by the Constitution. And yet that's the very section she cites in her letter, Mr. Chairman. So her lack of candor on that issue alone is very troubling to me.

Now, I know there are areas of common ground. I think that Senator Murkowski raised some of those.

I am so happy she's on this committee because we can really work together on issues affecting women and children and families. And I'm thrilled that she's here.

And Dr. Rice was very accepting of the fact that this will be important to her. I'm very glad about that.

And I'm glad she mentioned the Syria Accountability Act, which I authored along with Rick Santorum, which is now the law of the land.

But that aside, these other areas are terribly troubling.

And I'll conclude in this way. This is a terrific committee. I'm so proud to be on it. I think members on both sides are very candid and forthcoming. And I didn't see that replicated by Dr. Rice. And we gave her every opportunity on both sides to do that.

I look at her opening statement, as I said yesterday, to wait to page three -- the bottom of page three, a thousand words into it to mention the word Iraq and a passing reference to tsunami.

I think if someone would, kind of, beam down and knew about what was troubling Americans and they read that, I agree with Senator Biden, it was, sort of "Don't worry, be happy," until this committee got into the hard issues of the day.

So I continue to stand in awe of our founding fathers.

BOXER: I wish there were founding mothers at that time. Give credit where credit is due.

That anyone at a high level like this is, in fact, responsible to the American people.

And I hope, if nothing else, Dr. Rice now gets the difference between her role as the national security adviser, where she wasn't in any way responsible to come before Congress, but went to the American people and sold a war and continues to repeat things that were not so, and her role now where she is responsible to the American people, as well as to the president and to the American people through us.

And so I just hope we have better times ahead.

And I will not be able to support this nomination, even though I know that I'm in quite a minority.

Thank you.

ALLEN: Mr. Chairman?

LUGAR: Senator Allen?

ALLEN: If I may, Mr. Chairman, thank you and Senator Biden for your outstanding leadership of this committee.

I've listened to the senator from California's comments and questions here. And, in fact, when talking about Dr. Rice's opening statement, I thought it was a very powerful opening statement.

And while quibbling as to which page and when into the speech one gets into talking about Iraq, I think this is how we need to look at Dr. Rice in the totality of her character, her experience, her knowledge and capabilities to be our next secretary of state.

One, in reading her statement and listening to it, she first talked about her own background.

All of us are a composition of our life's experiences.

The fact that she grew up in the segregated South, persevered, is part of what I think will help her be an effective secretary of state as we're trying to advance freedom around the world.

She then got into the details.

But the key point in her testimony and all the questions is we want to advance freedom. And I think that should be at a bipartisan goal and aspiration.

And throughout it all, Dr. Rice showed a basic fundamental belief in trusting free people, trying to advance it, put in the institutions of freedom so that there is not corruption in government, how there's religious freedom, how there's freedom of expression, many times talking about the rule of law.

ALLEN: And she faced some tough questions on some tough challenges facing our country presently and in the future.

And there was some bump-and-run defenses and tactics used against her, but she never really got off stride, she kept her poise through these many, many hours of questioning.

And I think when you look at the totality of her record, her experience, her principles, I respectfully ask my colleagues to confirm President Bush's choice to be his secretary of state. I think she will do our country proud. She has shown a great deal of poise, a great deal of intellect.

And I believe that this committee has acted, and every senator has had more than an adequate chance to ask questions, and there are multitudes of questions that one could ask. But through it all, Dr. Rice has never gone off stride. She's the embodiment of the modern- day American dream for all people who have an equal opportunity to compete and succeed regardless of their gender, their race or their religion. That is the meritocracy we have in this country.

And she understands, as does this president, that as other countries, the people in other countries of the world have such opportunities, not only will they have greater opportunity and hope, we also will be more secure.

And I think Dr. Rice will be an outstanding secretary of state for advancing those principles.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

LUGAR: Thank you, Senator Allen.

KERRY: Mr. Chairman?

LUGAR: Yes, Senator Kerry?

KERRY: Mr. Chairman, first of all, thank you very much for your stewardship of these hearings. They have been what my colleagues have called them. I think you've been fair and patient and generous, and I appreciate it, and I think everybody on the committee appreciates it.

And I want to thank you for staying extra time last night.

And I thank Dr. Rice for hanging in there.

The senator from Virginia talks about, sort of, the standard here by which we should make this judgment.

There isn't anybody in the United States of America who doesn't admire Dr. Rice for the journey she's made, for what she represents. And is she qualified for the job? Absolutely. Of course she is absolutely qualified. And the president has a right to make a choice.

But our votes also have to count for something. And it seems to me that if you think about this hearing and what we've heard over the course of the last hours, a majority of this committee bipartisanly has expressed unbelievably serious reservations about policies in one part of the world or another: serious reservations about North Korea, about Iraq, about Iran, about proliferation, about Haiti, about Latin America, and particularly the absence even of policy in some of those places.

So, in my judgment, this is not a question of ratifying a life story as much as it is a judgment that we make about the direction of our nation, the security of our country, and the choices that have been made, the judgments that have been made over the last years.

KERRY: I choose to vote my concerns, not to overlook them. I choose to vote my gut, not custom.

I know what custom says. But the fact is that Dr. Rice is one of the principal architects, implementers and defenders of a series of administration policies and choices that, in my judgment, have not made our country as secure as we ought to be in the aftermath of 9/11 and that have alienated much of the world and certainly much-needed allies in our effort to reduce the cost in lives and dollars to the American people.

I also believe there's been a collateral cost of other initiatives that we might have been able to undertake that would also have advanced the cause of freedom, as well as the security of our nation.

I came to this hearing genuinely open-minded, to see what I would hear, and I regret to say that while we heard words offering, sort of, the convention of this city and of current politics, I didn't see in the testimony an acknowledgement of the need for a fundamental, bipartisan change, for a policy that shows a direction that can build the kind of consensus that our nation needs and that the world needs, nor even a new vision for America's foreign policy that can make us stronger and help us win the war on terror.

On Iraq, on North Korea and on Iran, to name just a few, what I heard was really a policy that predicts more of the same.

Senator Biden is right about those numbers, and the refusal to even acknowledge that to the American people is quite stunning at this point in time. If you can't deal with that kind of reality, you can't really tell the American people what the choices and options really are.

I hope I'm proven wrong, and I hope the course will change, and I hope the administration will recognize the strength of a foreign policy that has bipartisan support.

I'm prepared, as I said last night, to work with Dr. Rice and all the colleagues on this committee to find the kind of bipartisanship that has always made America stronger. Historically, politics stopped at the water's edge. It ought to. But we haven't seen that kind of strength in these last years.

So I will work, I'll work with the administration, I'll reach out, and I'm confident that colleagues on both sides of the aisle will do the same.

But while I recognized at the beginning of this hearing that Condoleezza Rice will be confirmed overwhelmingly by the United States Senate, it will have to be without my vote, for the reasons that I've stated.

KERRY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

LUGAR: Thank you, Senator Kerry.

Let me just make a personal comment.

Part of Dr. Rice's responsibilities, which we all recognized, are to be a strong administrator of the Department of State. She has spent quality time to try to make certain that confidence could be built in the department. Secretary Powell certainly was remarkable in the leadership he gave in that respect.

And so I mention that part of the issue because it's one that we all have to be cognizant on this committee. We've talked about the support that she will need, the budgetary support, things that need to happen in our embassies abroad and our consulates, the security of our people. We touched upon these issues, which are not really a difference of the policy but really ones of emphasis.

And this committee should be an advocate for a strong budget. We've talked about the need for a strong authorization bill, the refashioning of various institutions sometimes that don't get looked at.

I see in Dr. Rice someone who is fully capable of making changes as required, of working and listening carefully to those who are a part of that department and in our embassies. And I admire that.

I appreciate the points made by members on both sides of the aisle with regard to the debate we've had for many years on American foreign policy. Certainly that has been found in this committee in abundance. And we have the responsibility to try to bring forward bipartisan support so there is one face for America.

And I think the committee has discharged that very well under the chairmanship of my friend, Joe Biden, and hopefully during the past two years.

I think this hearing was designed, really, for not only a ventilation of all of our views but a public opportunity for Dr. Rice and for the American people to understand the gravity of our concerns.

And as many of us have done throughout the hearing, we've underlined the concerns of each other so that there were, in fact, I think, times of recognition on the part of Dr. Rice that we have work to do, that there will be more conversations, more hearings, and there will need to be.

At the end of the day, she does have very strong confidence of the president of the United States. And it's a unique relationship.

I'm not certain that I saw the very beginning of it, but I think I saw a part of that in visits to Stanford University to see my friend, and our former secretary of state, George Shultz at a time that Dr. Rice was serving as chancellor of the university.

For a variety of reasons, George Shultz came to the conclusion that, at least on the Republican Party side, that George Bush was the best bet.

LUGAR: And so, as a result, he gave very strong support to the candidacy of the governor of Texas. And, perhaps through his intercession, involved Dr. Rice in having a role at least as an adviser, sometimes suggested as a tutor, mentor, but someone who proceeded really through the primary campaigns and the election of that time. And that trust has been built over many years.

She does have the ear of the president.

Now, each one of you have raised questions as to what she will tell the president. She affirmed today that she tells the president what's on her mind, and sometimes he agrees and sometimes he disagrees. Each one of us less frequently has had that opportunity, and most of us have availed ourselves in very candid ways, advising to the best of our ability our president what we believe is the thing to do.

But I see at least in Dr. Rice and the conversations that I've enjoyed with her, sometimes with Senator Biden, sometimes with other members of the committee, a degree of openness to listen, a loyalty to the president so there is not immediate acquiescence or commitment, but at least an opportunity to, sort of, move the policy along.

And I saw in her discussion today of the nation-building issue, now called reconstruction or whatever, a very large change.

President Bush, in his first few speeches on foreign policy, indicated we were not involved in nation building and that was the generally held view of many people, some on both sides of the aisle, simply because that degree of commitment was not involved.

And when Chairman Biden held hearings before the war on Iraq, we heard from many witnesses. When we asked how long will we be there, the witnesses said, some in the administration, some previous administration, "Not very long, because we'll be embraced by the Iraqi people; they'll proceed on to democracy and we'll be out of there. Our role is not one of building and hand-holding and so forth."

We've had a 180 change in this world, and we all understand, having seen Afghanistan and elsewhere, how profound that change has been.

LUGAR: And Dr. Rice did acknowledge that, enthusiastically trying to build something that we're going to have to help with to make sure it has the right personnel cadre that are there for whatever the contingencies may be.

So I look forward to supporting her nomination today, and when we have vote of the full Senate. And even more importantly to working with her, to expressing to her as candidly as we did today things that we think are important and trying to make available for members of the committee those opportunities so that we have a sharing as constantly and as consistently as possible.

And so let me just conclude by saying that I'm hopeful that members will give her strong support with their votes today. But even if not then, with their support and their good advice in months to come.

Senator Dodd?

DODD: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And let me -- because I presume others may want to, not make public statements here today, want to have some remarks included in the record. So I'd ask unanimous consent that any and all members be allowed to express their views here. And I'd ask unanimous consent that comments I have be included in the record. I'll leave it there.

First of all, let me begin by saying if I had my druthers this morning, the chair to my right would be vacant and I would have listened to someone else before this committee at some date seeking the job of secretary of state.

And possibly even the chair to my left might have been vacant as well in some circumstance.

I began my membership on this committee 24 years ago. I'm watching this new freshman from Illinois -- and by the way, you handled yourself brilliantly, I thought, during the last day and a half. Very proud to have you as a member of the committee, along with Senator Martinez and Senator Murkowski.

But I sat in that chair, Al Haig was the nominee under the Reagan administration.

DODD: Senator Sarbanes, Senator Biden, Senator -- the chairman of the committee were present at that time. And so I've been through a number of these hearings over the last 24 years. I think I've counted, I think seven secretaries of state in that period of 24 years, that have been before this committee.

I always begin with the presumption that elected presidents ought to have their official families, their Cabinets. It should begin with that presumption. I don't do the same in judicial nominations, but I certainly do when it comes to having the people around you who are going to express and carry out the policies as you described, as they've articulated them.

And I do that here in this case as well. And I intend, on that basis, to vote for this nominee.

Having said that, I want to thank Senator Boxer and Senator Kerry.

Others may take the same view they have of this nomination, but I think the chairman has said it well and the ranking member has said it well. This is a very important service we provide to the American public through a confirmation hearing.

However the votes are cast, those who've watched the hearings and as they've been reported, it's one of the unique opportunities we get to really examine as thoroughly as we would like a broad array of issues that affect the interest of this nation.

And whatever you may feel about the votes we cast here, I think the senators who have raised the criticisms and the expressions made by my colleagues from California and Massachusetts have provided invaluable service. Because they've raised serious questions about past policies of this administration and where they will take this nation over the next four years.

I was deeply troubled by the unwillingness of Dr. Rice just very candidly and simply to answer the question about torture. It's troubling to me. Because as others said, it's not just the president of the United States that's the face of American foreign policy, but the secretary of state, as well. And simple statements that they make can say so much about who we are as a people, what direction we want to go in as a nation as we begin this 21st century.

Troubled, as well, about a lack of interest that I suspect did exist when it comes to Latin America. And again, I thank my colleague from Florida, my colleague from Rhode Island for spending the last week -- more than a week -- traveling in the region to try and understand better the needs of this part of the world and how we can, in a cooperative and constructive way, make a difference, begin to turn a new page, look for new ways to establish new relationships that'll advance the interests of our own nation.

So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your patience. As Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer have pointed out, you've conducted a wonderful hearing. It's been a pleasure to serve with you over these last 24 years in this committee.

And I hope that Dr. Rice -- that she listened carefully to what Senator Boxer was saying and Senator Kerry and Senator Biden and Senator Obama, members on this side. We need to get back to building this bipartisanship in foreign policy. It is critical.

The problems we face are international in scope. They require cooperation. We've done it in the 20th century. We need to do it in the 21st century.

And so I'm going to take the side of supporting this nominee with all the reservations that have expressed, because I want to begin with a sense of optimism, that maybe we can go in a bit of a different direction on these pressing issues before us.

DODD: And I look forward to working with her. I hope she does reach out to the minority, work with the majority and this committee to try and help forge a more constructive and thoughtful foreign policy for the 21st century.

LUGAR: Thank you, Senator.

Senator Biden?

BIDEN: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Thank you, and I thank, Dr. Rice, in absentia for being willing to be here as long as it would take.

I don't second-guess the motives of any senator and how they vote. I respect the senator from California and Massachusetts, and I could easily see how I could go that way.

But I want to make one clerical point. We did have extensive hearings prior to the war in the brief period when I was chairman. Then you followed through with even better hearings on whether or not to go to war. And it is true that former administration witnesses came forward from Weinberger on saying this would be a slam dunk -- didn't use the word "slam dunk," but we'd be greeted with open arms, this would be fairly quick, we didn't have to worry about nation building.

And you raised extensively questions about duration. But the vast majority of the witnesses we had said, "This is going to take years upon years." That's why the title of the report -- I believe it's the title of the report that was issued after our series of hearings when I was chairman, was not the day after, but the decade after -- the decade after.

You and I and Senator Hagel and others on this side talked about this was going to be a gigantic commitment and we should get ready for it.

Which leads me to this point: I think we're going to rue the day when we -- the administration acknowledges that they failed to level with the American people about what was required of the American people in order to make this policy work.

BIDEN: I know I've said it a thousand times, and I'm going to say it a thousand more times: No foreign policy can be sustained without the informed consent of the American people. And that means the whole deal.

I thought Senator Boxer was really articulate in making the point about half-truths.

I'm a practicing Catholic, which I guess, as a Democrat, is getting harder to be, but I'm a practicing Catholic. I went through Catholic grade school. And I remember when we were learning to receive the sacrament of penance, where we go -- that's when Catholics go in confessionals, as some of my Catholic friends know, and confess our sins, which I still do because I still have many to confess.

(LAUGHTER)

And I'll never forget the pastor in St. Helena's (ph) School, where I was a student, taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph, trying to explain when you go to confession, to explain this to a grade school kid, you got to tell the whole truth. And he gave the following example.

He said, "Johnny went to confession and said, 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession, and I want to tell you the sins I've committed.'" And he said, "Then Johnny proceeded to say, 'I did something very bad. I stole something.'"

And Father said, "What did you steal, Johnny?"

He said, "I stole a gold chain."

He said, "Well, Johnny, are you sorry for that?"

And he said, "I am heartily sorry, Father, I'm heartily sorry for it, but I lost the chain, and I can't give it back."

So the priest admonished him, and then said, "Say three 'Our Fathers' and three 'Hail Marys' and be a good boy." And Johnny left.

And then Father learned that there was a gold watch attached to that chain. Johnny told the truth -- he stole a chain -- but there was a gold watch on the end of the chain.

BIDEN: Johnny didn't tell Father that part; and he still had the watch.

So Father went on to say, "When you go to confession, tell the whole deal. 'I not only stole the chain, there was a gold watch hooked to the chain.'"

And this administration, first of all, it doesn't go to confession, nor should it have to, but it hasn't told the whole story about what we face.

And I hope I'm wrong -- I've been here -- I hate to admit it, I've been here 32 years. I go back a long way in secretaries of state. Kissinger was national security adviser when I got here; wasn't even secretary of state yet.

And I am very concerned that the American people, when the going gets even rougher, which it will, may say, "Hey, guys, you don't know what you're talking about. We want to get out of there. Get out."

And I'll make you all a bet -- I doubt whether anybody would disagree with me -- we leave before the job is done, we will have a generational problem -- a generational problem in the Middle East. It will be chaos. The likelihood of the Saudi kingdom remaining I think is problematic. The Jordanians will be under incredible stress. The Turks and the Kurds may very well go to war over time. It will be a disaster.

Hope I'm wrong. Hope everybody gets to say, "Biden, you said if we lose this before the American people leave prematurely that all these things are going to happen and they didn't happen." Hope I'm wrong.

You're all politicians. You all know what your folks are saying at home. How many folks are saying at home what you know is the truth, "We've got to send more forces?"

BIDEN: How many folks are home saying, "Let's really stay the course here?" Some are. But the ones who are doing it, I think, because they believe the president's told them the whole deal.

"We got 120,000 trained troops. We don't really need to have any more significant expenditure there. We, in fact, don't even have to include Iraq in the budget; it's going to take care of itself. And by the way, things are getting better all through from June through December. Everything's fine in Iraq. It's getting better."

(inaudible) American people because they like him, as I like him.

"I guess the president's leveled with us, man. What's the matter with you, Joe? You go over there to Iraq and you come back and say, 'Geez, it's not that good.' The president says it's fine."

And with regard to advancing freedom, if I can -- forgive me, my colleagues, although the future secretary of state likes football, so she wouldn't mind the analogy. Senator Allen, whose father is one of the greatest pro coaches in my lifetime, so I suspect he knows a lot more about it than I do, Senator Allen -- this George Allen.

If I can continue the football analogy, he said, "We want to advance freedom." If I can make a football analogy, we want to score when we're on the team. But if the offense you're running isn't working, you've only gained a total of 74 yards in the first three quarters and there's been four interceptions and the defense is riddled with holes because you're running a nickel defense that's not working against this quarterback, what you want to ask, at least at half time is, "Hey, it ain't working. We're losing. What's the plan, Stan? What's the game plan? Are you going out with that nickel defense? Are you going to stop trying to run the ball up the middle? Are you going to move in the outside and run counter plays? What's the deal? What are you going to do? How are you going to score?"

So everybody here wants freedom. We want to advance freedom. But a lot of us think advancing freedom by wishing that if we just make it available to you and you see it you will rise up and embrace it.

BIDEN: I don't think it works that way.

So what we need is a Coach George Allen. We need a game plan.

And all we're looking for here, to continue this silly analogy, is for a game plan on training. What's the game plan? Just tell me the plan. What is the game plan? What you have now, everybody acknowledges, is not working. What's the game plan?

What's the game plan on Iran? What's the game plan on Iraq? You want us to support you, Mr. President, and I want to support you. We want to have a bipartisan foreign policy. As my friends can tell you, I often get beat up in our caucus because I'm not more critical of the president in the caucus. I want to help. But we need a game plan. Iran. Russia.

And how are we going to do what everyone, including Dr. Rice, says need to be done. What's Dr. Rice saying by implication or directly? We have to repair our relations around the world.

Diplomacy will be the watchword. Did any of you hear any plan on diplomacy?

I've submitted to the president, and others have, I think it's about a 15-, 16-page game plan on public diplomacy he seemed to like a lot. Other people submitted other plans. The president has his own. What's the plan? What are we going to do? I didn't hear a thing, other than the hortatory assertions that, "We want to do this."

But I don't want to dwell on my disappointments as a result of Dr. Rice's testimony.

I must tell you, the thing that stunned me most is either her lack of willingness to talk about it or her lack of understanding of the impact of the economy on foreign policy. I was literally stunned when asked the question, "Do you want the dollar to be a currency reserve for the rest of the world or the euro?" and she said she didn't have an opinion on that.

BIDEN: I'm paraphrasing. Whoa! That's the secretary of Treasury's job.

Well, but, I'll conclude, Mr. Chairman, by saying optimism is an occupational requirement in this business. And my job is the same as every other senator here, no more, but it's slightly different. My job is, as the Democratic rep on this committee, is to hopefully to continue to have a relationship with whoever the secretary of state is. I think it's harder when you vote no.

I like her. I've been disappointed, but I think the obligation that I have -- every other senator can judge it for themselves. For me, in my particular role, is to be able to work with her where we can because I do think she has the president's ear.

And I hope she gains some of -- I hope she's willing to take on some of the neoconservative notions in this administration. And maybe this is -- you know, the wish is the father of the thought.

Maybe she is a neoconservative; I don't know. But if she's not, I hope she confronts some of the premises upon which this is based.

And that's the reason I asked her yesterday, Mr. Chairman, about the stories in The New Yorker by Hersh, who's a pretty solid guy, saying that we already have teams in there trying to figure out how to take down the nuclear reactors.

I, coincidentally, had George Tenet in Delaware last night for four hours, rode up on the train with him. He made the obvious point, without him declaring anything that I didn't already know or you don't already know. They've gotten smart. It's diverse. It's all over the country. There ain't no one rocket shot we can take out like the Israelis did before. That does not exist as a possibility.

The reason I asked her the question was not about her confirming whether they're in there or not. I wanted to ask her the underlying point. The premise that neocons have, if this is being done -- some of our neoconservative friends -- is not that you'll destroy all the nuclear capacity, but that that will cause the freedom-loving people of Iran to rise up and throw out the clerical oppression. That's the basic fundamental premise.

I hope to God she doesn't believe that and I hope to God if she doesn't believe it, she'll be -- if anyone presents such a plan to the president, she says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Let's get real here. Let's get real here."

That's the reason I asked the question.

And you know, Mr. President, we who do foreign policy every day, we sometimes -- especially the people we deal with, we sometimes think that -- we have a whole different vocabulary, you know?

We talk in terms and phrases that makes what we do sound really important. We talked about the first tranche of the agreement and the second tranche and we talk about have a bilat with so and so.

BIDEN: We ought to start to speak simple English.

All foreign policy is a logical extension of human relationships with a whole hell of a less information to go on. So let's start talking to the American people that way.

And the president is extremely good at that if he chooses to do it.

Now, I'll end, Mr. President, with this point: I thought that Senator Kerry was eloquent when he said how he chooses to view this question. And it reminded me, and I hope I'm quoting it correctly, because I try to quote everybody -- that is that he said, "I choose to believe."

Well, I remember a quote from Samuel Johnson, who was talking about second marriages. And Samuel Johnson said, "Anyone who marries a second time is choosing the triumph of hope over experience." That was Samuel Johnson's comment.

Well, this is a second administration. And I acknowledge I am choosing the triumph of hope over experience.

My experience that the first four years of this administration has not been real good in terms of what I think their policies are. And my experience with Dr. Rice in this hearing has been a disappointment.

But I choose hope over experience. Because at the end of the day, the Constitution says, as my friend from Connecticut says, the president gets to propose and we dispose. And we all are required, as responsible senators from both sides of the aisle, to choose the standard by which we'll make that judgment.

And my standard has always been, with regard to a Cabinet, the president's entitled to his family, even if they're substantively wrong. The only time we vote against Cabinet appointees is when they're appointed to dismantle that Cabinet they're being appointed to.

That's why I voted against Reagan nominees for Department of Education because Reagan said, as the former secretary would say, he choose to eliminate the Department of Education. So I wasn't going to be complicitious in voting for someone whose job was to dismantle the Department of Education.

And I also voted against people who I thought were incompetent in their mastery of the subject that they had to deal with, or people whose reputation and character was not worthy of a vote.

BIDEN: On all that score, in no sense does Dr. Rice rise to any of those prohibitions, in my view, how I'd do it. So I'm going to vote for Dr. Rice.

But I pray to the Lord that she's at least telling the president, "Hey, Boss, it's not going that well. Hey, Boss, we don't have that many people trained. Hey, Boss, the Iranians aren't going to rise up if some of our special forces guys take out a nuclear facility. Hey, Boss, you ought to read a little bit of history."

It's really that basic. I'm not trying to be a wise guy. It's that basic.

And so, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your patience. But as you would acknowledge, this is -- other than voting for the Supreme Court, or a -- the third branch of the government, I think this and the secretary of defense jobs are the two most important jobs we vote on.

And I thank you and I look forward to working with you and Dr. Rice.

She's always been available when I have asked her for her view. But I was disappointed in this hearing.

LUGAR: Well, thank you, Senator Biden.

This is an important vote, and I hope we're prepared for the vote. And if so, I'll ask the clerk to call the roll.

CLERK: Mr. Hagel?

HAGEL: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Chafee?

CHAFEE: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Allen?

ALLEN: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Coleman?

COLEMAN: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Voinovich?

LUGAR: Votes aye by proxy.

CLERK: Mr. Alexander?

ALEXANDER: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Sununu?

SUNUNU: Aye.

CLERK: Ms. Murkowski?

MURKOWSKI: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Martinez?

MARTINEZ: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Biden?

BIDEN: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Sarbanes?

BIDEN: Aye by proxy.

CLERK: Mr. Dodd?

DODD: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Kerry?

KERRY: No.

CLERK: Mr. Feingold?

FEINGOLD: Aye.

CLERK: Ms. Boxer?

BOXER: No.

CLERK: Mr. Nelson?

NELSON: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Obama?

OBAMA: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Chairman?

LUGAR: Aye.

Will the clerk please tally the count?

CLERK: Sixteen yeas, two nays.

LUGAR: Sixteen yeas, two nays. The committee votes to report the nomination to the Senate floor.

I thank all senators.

END