Addicts.
>From Adbusters.org
The Excuse Makers: Condoleezza Rice August 4, 2005
http://adbusters.org/blogs/print.php?id=76
Here’s the thing about excuse makers: their goal is not to address criticism head on, so much as it is to swiftly shut it down. Why waste time by taking a hard look at complicated questions? Why go through all the trouble of seriously examining the consequences of one’s own actions, in the past and in the present? And so making excuses is the antithesis of offering reasons.
In a July 28th television interview with Jim Lehrer, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed her status as a seasoned excuse maker, along the way demonstrating the favorite tactic of excuse makers everywhere: accusing an interrogator of making excuses.
Asked by Lehrer about the connection between US foreign policy decisions and the apparent rise in global terrorism, Secretary Rice responded by scolding everyone who would dare ask about root causes:
“When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill. And they want to kill in the name of a perverted ideology that really is not Islam, but they somehow want to claim that mantle to say that this is about some kind of grievance. This isn't about some kind of grievance. This is an effort to destroy, rather than to build. And until everybody in the world calls it by name — the evil that it is — stops making excuses for them, then I think we're going to have a problem.“
And the result of her tirade? Rice got her way — Lehrer changed the subject.
Read the entire transcript or listen to the interview at the Online Newshour: “Newsmaker: Condoleezza Rice.” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec05/rice_7-28.html
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Leigh www.leighm.net