Rice Defends Her Integrity as Hearing Turns Testy
1 hour, 56 minutes ago U.S. National - Reuters
By Arshad Mohammed and Saul Hudson
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday defended her integrity and honesty as she clashed with senators about the Bush administration's justification for the Iraq war and its exit strategy.
Testifying at her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing, Rice was questioned about the number of U.S. troops sent to Iraq, the adequacy of Iraqi forces being trained to replace them and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that were the Bush administration's central justification for the war.
Rice, whose confirmation as the first black woman secretary of state is all but assured, vowed to press diplomacy to repair ties frayed by the war and argued that the White House sent enough troops to occupy Iraq despite the raging insurgency.
In a heated exchange, California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer argued that the Bush administration had shifted its justification for the war because it had failed to find stocks of biological and chemical weapons it had asserted were there.
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