Democrat attacks Rice over claims of 'mushroom cloud'

[emad]

Independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
19 January 2005


Condoleezza Rice, a leading cheerleader of the war in Iraq and President George Bush's nominee for Secretary of State, was yesterday accused of misleading the American people over the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of her confirmation process, Ms Rice was accused of contradicting comments made by both herself and the President about Saddam's nuclear capabilities. Her contradictions, it was said, constituted a "very troubling" pattern.

Ms Rice's chief tormenter was the California senator Barbara Boxer, who said: "I don't want the families of those 1,366 to believe for a minute that their lives were given in vain, but I will not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on truth," she said.

Ms Boxer accused Ms Rice, currently Mr Bush's National Security Adviser, of altering what she said about Saddam's nuclear capabilities. Before the war, said Ms Boxer, Ms Rice had raised the spectre of a "mushroom cloud" if Saddam was not ousted. After the war, when it became clear that Saddam possessed no such weapons, Ms Rice claimed she had never raised such threats.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=602278