BOXER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Rice, for agreeing to stay as long as it takes, because some of us do have a lot of questions. And, Senator Lugar, you are a very fair chairman. And I wanted to say to the new members, also, welcome. And you'll enjoy this committee, because we have such a great chairman and such terrific ranking member. And we really do a lot of things in a bipartisan way, unlike other committees. And I think you're going to enjoy your time here. Dr. Rice, before I get to my formal remarks, you no doubt will be confirmed. That's at least what we think.

BOXER: And if you're going to become the voice of diplomacy, this is just a helpful point. When Senator Voinovich mentioned the issue of tsunami relief, you said -- your first words were The tsunami was a wonderful opportunity for us. Now, the tsunami was one of the worst tragedies of our lifetime, one of the worst, and it's going to have a 10-year impact on rebuilding that area. I was very disappointed in your statement. I think you blew the opportunity. You mentioned it as part of one sentence. And I would hope to work with you on this, because children are suffering; we're worried they're going to get in the sex trade. This thing is a disaster -- a true natural disaster and a human disaster of great proportions. And I hope that the State Department will take a huge lead under your leadership in helping those folks in the long range. Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you. Dr. Rice, I was glad you mentioned Martin Luther King -- was very appropriate, given everything. And he also said -- Martin Luther King -- quote, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. And one of the things that matters most to my people in California and the people of America is this war in Iraq. Now, it took you to page three of your testimony to mention the word Iraq. You said very little, really, about it, and only in this questioning have you been able to get into some areas. Perhaps you agree with President Bush who said, All that's been resolved -- I'm quoting today's Post. Bush said in an interview last week with The Washington Post that the '04 election was a moment of accountability for the decisions he made in Iraq. But today's Washington Post-ABC poll found that 58 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation to 40 percent who approve and only 44 percent said the war was worth fighting.

BOXER: So in your statement, it takes you to page three to mention the word Iraq. Then you mention it in the context of elections, which is fine. But you never even mentioned indirectly the 1,366 American troops that have died or the 10,372 who have been wounded, many mentally. There's a report that I read over the weekend that maybe a third will come home and need help because of what they saw. It's been so traumatic to them. And 25 percent of those dead are from my home state. This from a war that was based on what everyone now says, including your own administration, were falsehoods about WMDs, weapons of mass destruction. And I've had tens of thousands of people from all over the country say that they disagree -- although they respect the president, they disagree that this administration and the people in it shouldn't be held accountable. I don't know if you saw the movie The Fog of War. War is a nightmare. You know that. Colin Powell, I think, was the most eloquent I've heard on it, because he's seen it himself. He's been there and done it. And I don't want to have you in a circumstance where you're writing something, years later, about the fog of war. And I'm fearful, if we don't see some changes here, we're going to have trouble. And I think the way we should start is by trying to set the record straight on some of the things you said going into this war. Now, since 9/11, we've been engaged in a just fight against terror. And I, like Senator Feingold and everyone here who was in the Senate at the time, voted to go after Osama bin Laden and to go after the Taliban and to defeat Al Qaida.

BOXER: And you say they have less territory; that's not true. Your own documents show that Al Qaida has expanded from 45 countries in '01 to more than 60 countries today. Well, with you in the lead role, Dr. Rice, we went into Iraq. I want to read you a paragraph that best expresses my views -- and ask my staff if they would hold this up -- and I believe the views of millions of Californians and Americans. It was written by one of the world's experts on terrorism, Peter Bergen, five months ago. He wrote: What we've done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams. We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure bin Laden has long predicted was the U.S. long-term goal in the region. We deposed the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shia fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a defensive jihad that has galvanized jihad-minded Muslims around the world. It's hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terror. This conclusion was reiterated last Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank, which released a report saying that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of professionalized terrorists. That's your own administration's CIA. NIC Chairman Robert Hutchings said Iraq is, quote, a magnet for international terrorist activity. And this was not the case in '01. And I have great proof of it, including a State Department document that lists every country in which Al Qaida operated prior to 9/11, and you can see the countries. No mention of Iraq. And this booklet was signed off on by the president of the United States, George W. Bush -- was put out by George Bush's State Department and he signed it. There was no Al Qaida activity there. No cells. Now, the war was sold to the American people, as chief of staff to President Bush Andy Card said, like a new product. Those are his words. Remember, he said, You don't roll out a new product in the summer. Now, you rolled out the idea and then you had to convince the people as you made your case with the president. And I personally believe -- this is my personal view -- that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth. And I don't say it lightly. And I'm going to go into the documents that show your statements and the facts at the time. Now, I don't want the families of those 1,366 troops that were killed or the 10,372 that were wounded to believe for a minute that their lives and their bodies were given in vain. Because when your commander in chief asks you to sacrifice yourself for your country, it is the most noble thing you can do to answer that call. I am giving their families, as we all are here, all the support they want and need. But I also will not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth. Now, perhaps the most well-known statement you've made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America with the image of quote, quoting you, a mushroom cloud. That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped. And I will be placing into the record a number of such statements you made which have not been consistent with the facts. As the nominee for secretary of state, you must answer to the American people and you are doing that now through this confirmation process. And I continue to stand in awe of our founders, who understood that ultimately those of us in the highest positions of our government must be held accountable to the people we serve. So I want to show you some statements that you made regarding the nuclear threat and the ability of Saddam to attack us. Now, on July 30th, 2003, you were asked by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill, if you continue to stand by the claims you made about Saddam's nuclear program in the days and months leading up to the war. In what appears to be an effort to downplay the nuclear weapons scare tactics you used before the war, your answer was, and I quote: It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year. So that's what you said to the American people on television: Nobody ever said it was going to be the next year. Well, that wasn't true. Because nine months before you said this to the American people, what had George Bush said? President Bush at his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center: If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little longer than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. So the president tells the people there could be a weapon. Nine months later, you said no one ever said he could have a weapon in a year, when, in fact, the president said it. And here's the real kicker: On October 10th, '04, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, three months ago, you were asked about CIA Director Tenet's remark that prior to the war he had, quote, made it clear to the White House that he thought the nuclear weapons program was much weaker than the program to develop other WMDs. Your response was this: The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear programs; that left unchecked he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year. So here you are, first contradicting the president and then contradicting yourself. So it's hard to even ask you a question about this, because you are on the record basically taking two sides of an issue. And this does not serve the American people. If it served your purpose to downplay the threat of nuclear weapons, you said, No one said he's going to have it in a year. But then later, when you thought perhaps you were on more solid ground with the American people, because at the time the war was probably popular, or more popular, you say, We thought he was going to have a weapon within a year. And this is -- the question is, this is a pattern here of what I see from you on this issue, on the issue of the aluminum tubes, on the issue of whether Al Qaida was actually involved in Iraq, which you've said many times. And in my rounds -- I don't have any questions on this round because I'm just laying this out -- I do have questions on further rounds about similar contradictions. It's very troubling. You know, if you were rolling out a new product like a can opener, who would care about what we said? But this product is a war. And people are dead and dying. And people are now saying they're not going to go back because of what they experienced there.
And it's very serious. And as much as I want to look ahead -- and we will work together on a myriad of issues -- it's hard for me to let go of this war because people are still dying. And you have not laid out an exit strategy. You've not set up a timetable. And you don't seem to be willing to, A, admit a mistake, or give any indication of what you're going to do to forcefully involve others. As a matter of fact, you've said more misstatements: that the territory of the terrorists has been shrinking when your own administration says it's now expanded to 60 countries. So I am deeply troubled. Thank you.

RICE: Senator, may I respond?

LUGAR: Yes. Let me just say that I appreciate the importance of Senator Boxer's statement, that's why we allowed the statement to continue for several more minutes (inaudible) time.

BOXER: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I lost track of the time.

LUGAR: But, clearly, you ought to have the right to respond. And then, at that point, we're going to have a recess. But will you please give your response?

RICE: Yes. Senator, I am more than aware of the stakes that we face in Iraq, and I was more than aware of the stakes of going to war in Iraq. I mourn the dead and honor their service. Because we have asked American men and women in uniform to do the hardest thing, which is to go and defend freedom and to give others an opportunity to build a free society which will make us safer. Senator, I have to say that I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It is not my nature. It is not my character. And I would hope that we can have this conversation and discuss what happened before and what went on before and what I said, without impugning my credibility or my integrity. The fact is that we did face a very difficult intelligence challenge in trying to understand what Saddam Hussein had in terms of weapons of mass destruction. We knew something about him. We knew that we had gone to war with him twice in the past, in 1991 and in 1998. We knew that he continued to shoot at American aircraft in the no-fly zone as we tried to enforce the resolutions that the U.N. Security Council had passed. We knew that he continued to threaten his neighbors. We knew that he was an implacable enemy of the United States, who did cavort with terrorists. We knew that he was the world's most dangerous man in the world's most dangerous region. And we knew that in terms of weapons of mass destruction, he had sought them before, tried to build them before, that he had an undetected biological weapons program that we didn't learn of until 1995, that he was closer to a nuclear weapon in 1991 than anybody thought. And we knew, most importantly, that he had used weapons of mass destruction. That was a context that, frankly, made us awfully suspicious when he refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction programs, despite repeated Security Council resolutions and despite the fact that he was given one last chance to comply with Resolution 1441. Now, there were lots of data points about his weapons of mass destruction programs. Some were right and some were not. But what was right was that there was an unbreakable link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. That is something that Charlie Duelfer, in his report of the Iraq Survey Group, has made very clear: that Saddam Hussein intended to continue his weapons of mass destruction activities, that he had laboratories that were run by his security services. I could go on and on. But, Senator Boxer, we went to war, not because of aluminum tubes. We went to war because this was the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a man against whom we had gone to war before, who threatened his neighbors, who threatened our interests, who was one of the world's most brutal dictators and it was high time to get rid of him. And I'm glad that we're rid of him. Now, as to the statement about territory and the terrorist groups, I was referring to the fact that the Al Qaida organization of Osama bin Laden, which once trained openly in Afghanistan, which once ran with impunity in places like Pakistan, can no longer count on hospitable territory from which to carry out their activities. In the places where they are, they are being sought and run down and arrested and pursued in ways that they never were before.

RICE: So we can have a semantic discussion about what it means to take or lose territory. But I don't think it's a matter of misstatement to say that the loss of Afghanistan, the loss of the northwest frontier of Pakistan, the loss of running with impunity in places like Saudi Arabia, the fact that now intelligence networks and law enforcement networks pursue them worldwide means that they have lost territory where they can operate with immunity.

BOXER: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to take 30 seconds, with your permission. First of all, Charles Duelfer said, and I quote -- here it is. I ask unanimous consent to place in the record Charlie Duelfer's report.

LUGAR: It will be placed in the record.

BOXER: Which he says, Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to '91, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years. Here's the point: You and I could sit here and go back and forth and present our arguments, and maybe somebody watching the debate would pick one or the other depending on their own views. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the facts. So when I ask you these questions, I'm going to show you your words not my words. And, if I might say, again you said you're aware of the stakes in Iraq. We sent our beautiful people -- and thank you, thank you so much for your comments about them -- to defend freedom. You sent them in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later, the mission changed when there were none. I have your quotes on it. I have the president's quotes on it. And everybody admits it but you that that was the reason for the war. And then once we're in there, now it moved to a different mission. Which is great, we all want to give democracy and freedom everywhere we can possibly do it, but let's not rewrite history. It's too soon to do that.

RICE: Senator Boxer, I would refer you to the president's speech before the American Enterprise Institute in February prior to the war, in which he talked about the fact that, yes, there was the threat of weapons of mass destruction but he also talked to the strategic threat that Saddam Hussein was to the region. Saddam Hussein was a threat, yes, because he was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And, yes, we thought that he was -- that he had stockpiles, which he did not have. We had problems with the intelligence. We are all, as a collective polity of the United States, trying to deal with ways to get better intelligence. But it wasn't just weapons of mass destruction. He was also a place -- his territory was a place where terrorists were welcomed, where he paid suicide bombers to bomb Israel, where he had used Scuds against Israel in the past, and so we knew what his intentions were in the region, where he had attacked his neighbors before and, in fact, tried to annex Kuwait, where we'd gone to war against him twice in the past. It was the total picture, Senator, not just weapons of mass destruction, that caused us to decide that post-September 11th, it was finally time to deal with Saddam Hussein.

BOXER: Well, you should you read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that particular vote. But again, I just feel, you quote President Bush when it suits you, but you contradicted him when he said, Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. You go on television, nine months later, and said, Nobody ever said it was going to be.

RICE: Senator, that was just a question of pointing out to people that there was an uncertainty, that no one was saying that he would have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war.

BOXER: Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope that you will rethink it.

RICE: Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will reframe from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much.

BOXER: I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You contradicted the president and you contradicted yourself.

RICE: Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion. But I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly.

THIS IS QUESTIONING AT NEXT ROUND OF SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE:

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CA): Thanks so much, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to make a couple of comments, and then I'm going to continue the questioning on the torture issue.

I hope that you'll consider what colleagues have said on both sides of the aisle about a lack of consistency in our foreign policy. For example, Senator Dodd at one point said we were in trouble in Latin America. And I would say, having come back from a six-day conference with Senator Lugar, bipartisan, on Central and South America, it's true because they don't sense a consistency. As Senator Chafee points out, you praise Uribe for democracy even though we were told at this conference that he's trying to pass a law which would forbid sitting governors and sitting senators from running against him, and you condemn the head of Venezuela, Chavez, after having the administration -- not you personally -- briefly praise a coup. And it wasn't until the OAS spoke up and said, well, wait a minute, that's wrong, then we backed off. So we really do need more consistency here.

For example, in Mexico, where the PRI is coming back, we've got to pay attention to Mexico. And I hope that will be a priority because I know they're very distressed and disappointed that they don't feel they were a priority. We've got immigration issues in my state that I know you're very aware of, coming -- being a resident there. And we've got to deal with these issues. And we have a situation where the PRI now is trying to disqualify someone who wants to run.

So we've got a lot of democracy issues there, and I think we need to be evenhanded.

And also, I think Senator Biden's point -- and I think Senator Lugar might have picked up on it, I'm not sure -- that for the "axis of evil" countries we have a certain set of criteria, but yet it doesn't extend to other countries like China and Russia and other places that I think Senator Chafee mentioned.

I put this out there because I know it's all tough, and we play the game and we need all of our friends to be with us, and we overlook certain things. But we will lose credibility. So I hope you can think about that as you, I believe, will try to restore credibility for this country.

Now, we sparred over the weapons of mass destruction, and I just want to place something in the record because I don't want to go on and on because we just won't agree. So we might as well say you see it one way, I see it another. But I thought what I'd put in the record is a statement by the president's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, right after the war started.

And I ask unanimous consent to place this statement in the record.

SEN. LUGAR: It's placed in the record.

SEN. BOXER: At a press conference he said, "The fact of the matter is we're still in a war, and not everything about the war is known. But make no mistake, as I said earlier, we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about."

That's Ari Fleischer. I'd like to place that in the record because we're not going to agree, but at the end of the day -- that's why I'm trying to put in statements that say that my view is not coming from me, it's coming from people who were all around you.

Now, Senator Dodd gave you a great moment in history to show your humanity on the issue of torture. He said I'm not talking to you as a nominee, I'm talking to you as one human being to another. And you answered in legalisms. Then Senator Feingold gave you another chance and you didn't take the opportunity. Now, I respect that, but I'm distressed about it. And I agree with Senator Dodd, it's very, very disappointing.

So I'm going to press you a little further not only on what you've said on it, but what you've actually done on the issue.

What you said today: "What happened in Abu Ghraib was unacceptable, was abuse. It made us all sick to our stomachs. And I think we could all agree."

Did you see the photos, all of the photos that were available from that prison?

MS. RICE: I saw -- I don't know if I saw all of them, but I saw enough of them to know that it was a stain on our country.

SEN. BOXER: Well, I appreciate that. I went up to see the photos. And at my age we take stress tests, also because of the work we're in, we take stress tests. And they tell you when you get up on that machine, just keep on going until you can't take anymore. That's how I felt when I was watching those photographs. I saw things there that will be burned in my memory forever. And that's why I'm so supportive of making sure that America stands tall -- tall -- the leader in the world against torture.

And I am very upset at certain things that occurred, and I want to tell you what they are. You said on July 1st, 2004, when you commented on the abuses that took place in Abu Ghraib -- and we're going to just put this up here -- you said, "What took place at the Abu Ghraib prison does not represent America. Our nation is a compassionate country that believes in freedom. The U.S. government is deeply sorry for what happened," and so on. You said that about Abu Ghraib. I thought your remarks were very appropriate.

Now last Thursday we find out that after the Senate unanimously approved an amendment to restrict the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, you wrote a letter, along with Mr. Bolten, to the members of the conference committee, asking them to strike that language from the final bill. And unfortunately, that is what they did, at your request.

Now -- (to staff) -- can you bring this over here, so I can see it? I want to read you the operative language that you asked to be struck from the bill, that was struck from the bill. "In general" -- and by the way, this was written by Joe Lieberman and John McCain -- John McCain, a man who knows what torture is. So he wrote this, with Joe Lieberman.

"In general, no prisoner shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment that is prohibited by the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States." Pretty straightforward, pretty elegant, bipartisan -- passed the Senate, that amendment, unanimously, every single member.

A letter comes, and the newspaper writes that at your request, "At the urging of the White House, congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers. In a letter to members of Congress sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday" -- this is last week -- "Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, expressed opposition to the measure, on the grounds that it, quote, 'provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy.'"

Now my understanding of this is that it is a restatement of what the law is. So again, I am so distressed that we hear from you -- even though you had a chance today to put your personal touch on it, we hear good words about how it was terrible, what happened at Abu Ghraib -- and again, I know you're aware that the overwhelming number of those people were set free from Abu Ghraib.

So those people stand in that pyramid who are being sexually abused. They were set free, the vast majority of them. And yet when we had a chance, the bipartisan senators voted to say this has to end, this has to stop. Who writes a letter? You do, telling them to drop this.

Why on earth did you do that after we passed this unanimously? And you say that what happened in Abu Ghraib was unacceptable and it was abuse. It is to me rather stunning. So can you explain to me why you wrote that letter?

MS. RICE: Senator, it was our view in the administration that, first of all, this was covered in the Defense Authorization Bill, which the president did sign.

SEN. BOXER: But this has to do with the intelligence community, not the military.

MS. RICE: And secondly --

SEN. BOXER: So it's not covered.

MS. RICE: But all government agencies were covered in the defense authorization.

SEN. BOXER: This was just the intelligence officers. Go ahead.

MS. RICE: All government agencies were covered in the defense authorization. So intelligence was covered --

SEN. BOXER: No, it wasn't.

MS. RICE: -- was our view.

Secondly, we did not want to afford to people who did not -- shouldn't enjoy certain protections those protections. And the Geneva Conventions should not apply to terrorists like al Qaeda. They can't or you will stretch the meaning of the Geneva Convention.

But Senator, I have to go back to the broader point here.

SEN. BOXER: One second. Excuse me, I just want to clarify something.

MS. RICE: Yeah.

SEN. BOXER: (Confers off mike with aide.) Got it. Thanks.

Go ahead.

MS. RICE: Nobody condones torture. Nobody condones what was done at Abu Ghraib. In fact, you had everyone from the president of the United States on down, in effect, offer an apology to those who had endured that treatment. The people who perpetrated it have been punished and are being punished. It's being investigated. It's looked into as to whether there was a broader problem. The United States reacted the way that democracies react when something goes wrong. And something definitely went wrong at Abu Ghraib. And nobody condones or excuses what happened at Abu Ghraib.

The problem of how to deal with unlawful combatants, though, in a different kind of war is, frankly, a very difficult problem.

You have people who kill innocents with impunity. You have people who burrow into our country and try to harm us. You have people who have engaged in large-scale acts against children in Russia and against commuters in Madrid. And this is a different kind of war, and these are combatants with which we're not accustomed.

SEN. BOXER: So do you, then, oppose that language in the defense bill? You seem to oppose it in the intelligence bill --

MS. RICE: We didn't oppose the language in the defense bill. The president --

SEN. BOXER: I'm asking you now. You said that you should --

MS. RICE: -- the president signed it.

SEN. BOXER: No, no, no. I'm asking about you. You said --

MS. RICE: The president signed it.

SEN. BOXER: No, no, you're -- you're missing -- you're not listening to the question. You said you don't want to extend these international laws to all prisoners. However, it is extended in the defense bill. And this was just extending it to the intelligence officers. Now you're -- so that's why I'm asking you, since you said you can't extend it, do you support it in the defense bill? Whether the president signed it, I'm asking your opinion.

MS. RICE: Of course I support it in the defense bill, Senator.

SEN. BOXER: But you've gone in the intelligence bills and --

MS. RICE: No. Senator, we think the intelligence are covered in the defense bill. It was unnecessary to have it in your bill.

SEN. BOXER: But then you go to say that these -- that these agreements are not covered.

MS. RICE: I was making -- I was making a broader point, Senator, which is that the Geneva Conventions should not be extended to those who don't live up to the obligations of the Geneva Convention.

SEN. BOXER: Okay. Okay. Well, let me just say this, Mr. Chairman. The person who wrote this, Dick Durbin, Senator Durbin, senior senator from Illinois, he offered the language to the Defense Department bill. He then said the Senate Intelligence Reform Bill would have simply extended these requirements to the intelligence community.

Now, I'm getting two messages from you. One is you -- we didn't need this because the intelligence community is already covered. If that was the case, why not leave it in, so the world can see that we're not only willing to put it in the defense bill, but in the intelligence bill? Because obviously, colleagues here -- John McCain kind of knows what he's doing in legislation, and so does Senator Lieberman. They're the ones who did this -- a hundred to nothing, it was passed through the United States Senate. I think people felt it was important in light of Abu Ghraib to stand up and be elegant on the point. And I'm going to read it one more time, if you'll hold it up, because what they said was quite elegant. And it doesn't have, you know, any extra words at all: "In general, no prisoner shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment that is prohibited by the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States." And everyone in the Senate, Republican and Democrat, it was a shining moment for us.

And then in a letter -- and it just comes to light last week -- that you write, you ask that this be stricken. And I have to say that's the problem I have. There are beautiful words, and then there's the action.

MS. RICE: Senator, it's --

SEN. BOXER: (Inaudible word) -- there's contradictions. And I don't think --

MS. RICE: Senator, it's the law of the land.

SEN. BOXER: -- that you have explained it, because by saying we didn't need it, it was in the defense bill, A, people don't agree with that in the Senate; and B, so what if it was duplicative, that we said it twice that torture is wrong and we will obey international laws?

I think it just shows that this is not an issue that you feel very comfortable with. You had an opportunity when Senator Dodd asked you, you had an opportunity to say how you felt personally about it. You had a chance to embrace this language, which was embraced by Senator McCain and Lieberman and every member of the Senate. And yet you write a letter, and as a result, it's dropped. And I just think it's a sad day for us. That's how I feel.

Thank you.