Bad Barbara Boxer Blisters Contradictory Condi

Though the brand new Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was especially impressive at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the nomination of Condi Rice for Secretary of State, it was Senator Barbara Boxer who was the most aggressive in questioning Rice's actions, statements and credibility.

Boxer went after Rice principally on Iraq and torture. She blistered Rice on her contradictory statements on weapons of mass destruction, such as saying that no one had suggested that Saddam could use a nuclear weapon in a year's time, just nine months after President Bush had said exactly that.

Particularly effective was the way Boxer zeroed in on the Bushie pre-war hype as a product roll-out, using chief of staff Andy Card's words that you don't roll out a new product in summer, as a rationale for how they were scheduling Iraq. This is an image that people immediately understand, and it explains in a single image why the Bushies offered all those rationales that weren't true. Everybody understands a sales job.

Boxer was passionate on the effects of the war, pointing out that a quarter of the American casualties in Iraq were soldiers from California. She caught Rice in an obvious contradiction over her action in getting removed from a bill on intelligence agencies a statement forbidding such agencies from using torture that contravened the Constitution and international laws to which the U.S. is a party. Rice said the statement was unnecessary because intelligence agencies were covered by a similar statement in the Defense authorization bill, yet she also claimed that the statement would allow terrorists protections they weren't entitled to.

Though media coverage of Boxer's questioning and anti-war stance was to treat it as an embarrassment (just as anti-war talk was treated in the Vietnam era, although with more disdain then and in a more dismissively patronizing tone today) it was a much better image for the cameras to catch this face-off between two women rather than old white men browbeating the small woman of color.

But Rice of course knew that all she had to do was survive the day without saying something soundbiteable and embarrassing, while providing a couple of positive sound bites for the news. Still, the minority is there to make noise and trouble, while defining themselves and their issues, letting the American people see what they believe in. If Democrats show up for only fights they can win in this Congress, they'll be spending a lot of time at home.

All those emails and calls generated by the Internet that Senator Boxer received on the vote fraud issue are still having an effect. She solicited and got thousands of signatures on a petition in support of her questioning today, and granted interviews to a couple of prominent bloggers for their report on dkos.

Senator Obama engaged in questioning with a calm demeanor---Condi even looked a little smitten at times---and with his easy grasp of foreign policy issues, he seemed to have been on the Foreign Relations committee for years. Everyone knows he gives a great speech, but his questioning showed the same precision of language and attention to the essentials. He honed in immediately on two words in Rice's opening statement (terrorism and tyranny) and used them to frame his probing inquiries on a coherent policy for deciding when the U.S. will use its military---why in Irag and not the Sudan?

John Kerry returned to the cameras for his questioning as a committee member. We missed his first round, but his afternoon round was relatively detailed on nuclear proliferation issues. However, Kerry also issued a call to supporters via email to sign his petition in favor of demanding the resignation or firing of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.