Yesterday, news broke that Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church would be given the honor of delivering the invocation at President-elect Obama’s inauguration. Warren has a record of deeply anti-progressive views, including likening gay marriage to polygamy and incest. Members of the progressive community, including PFAW and Human Rights Campaign, swiftly criticized the announcement. Today in his press conference, Obama attempted to defend Warren:
OBAMA: [I]t’s important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues. And I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion. […]
[W]hat we have to do is be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.
Watch it:
Obama also pointed to the fact that he has invited Rev. Joseph Lowery, who has “deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren,” to deliver the benediction at the end of the inauguration.
This morning, CNN aired an exit interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. During the interview, reporter Zain Verjee asked Rice if she “regretted her role in the Iraq war.” Rice responded by saying that she had no regrets about the war and is “absolutely so proud” of invading Iraq:
QUESTION: Do you regret your role in the Iraq war?
SECRETARY RICE: I absolutely am so proud that we liberated Iraq.
QUESTION: Really?
SECRETARY RICE: Absolutely. And I[base ']Äôm especially, as a political scientist, not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor, but as somebody who knows that structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein[base ']Äôs Iraq.
Watch it:
Rice’s pride is misplaced. Indeed, leaving aside the fact that the war was predicated on false intelligence, Rice cannot credibly argue as a “political scientist” that invading Iraq was in the interest of the U.S. “geostrategically.”
Contrary to Rice’s assessment of the strategic value of the war in Iraq, a group of the some of the nation’s most celebrated political scientists argued in a paid advertisement in the New York Times on the eve of the Iraq war that the invasion was not in America’s strategic interests and predicted several of the negative effects of the war:
