DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY...

CONDOLEEZA RICE


Did you know that the Iraq War is almost exactly like the Gork War of 48,293 B.C.? True story. See, Crunk and his tribe were at war with Hock and his tribe. Things weren't going well for Crunk's tribe and some members of the tribe wanted to pull out, especially Rook, who felt it would be best to cut and run back to their own cave. Of course, the sentiments most certainly provided comfort to Hock's tribe after they heard Rook's comments. In fact, one would think that Rook's comments emboldened Hock's tribe. Meanwhile, Crunk expressed anger at Rook, comparing him to an appeaser of failed Nork regime some sixty years prior to the Gork War. Crunk knew that staying the course was the right thing to do even though Crunk had no actual plan to defeat Hock. All that Crunk knew was that it was important to take the war to Hock or Hock would take the war to Crunk, even though Hock was militarily inferior to Crunk, given that Hock only had short sticks while Crunk had long sticks. Oh, and Crunk at rocks, too.
The point is, Crunk stayed the course, even though guys like Rook kept trying to get him to cut and run. This stalemate between Crunk and Hock eventually ended years later when Rook hit Crunk on the head and told the tribe to come home from Hock's cave. The end.

Expect Dr. Rice to head down this path in the not too distant future. The woman seems basically immune to the idea that history is sort of written down and is easily refuted when you try and make stuff up out of whole cloth. Such was the case back in 2003, where she began her trip through "Non-Existent Historyville", after falsely claiming that the occupation of Germany after WWII resulted in many Allied deaths at the hands of the "werewolves", supposed Nazi dissidents who fought against the Allied occupation.
Rice's exact words via the White House website:

There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes. But as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. S officers—called 'werewolves'—engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants.

An old article from Slate debunks this bit of historical horsepoop. Short version of Slate's article - Rice is nucking futs about this werewolf thing and totally oversells the group (if it can even be called that) in an effort to develop an excuse for the problems facing our troops in the recently liberated Iraq.

Her trip down Fractured History Boulevard has now lead her to the American Civil War. The Daily News has the full bit, but Rice appears to be implying that those who do not support Bush's Iraq policy are like those who would have approved of slavery after advocating a Union withdrawal. The whole thing just doesn't any sense. I've had to read the article a half dozen times in order to attempt wrap my head around it. The only historical parallels that I can draw between the American Civil War and the Iraq conflict is that they both involve a civil war and in both cases people died, but that's true of any war, so it really doesn't count. After those two, her analogy crumbles under even the slightest amount of scrutiny.
Of course, that doesn't stop Condi from throwing in a few straw men, which is the preferred debating tool of choice among the administration.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.
"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'" Rice said.

Dr. Rice, can you actually identify any of these people to whom you refer? Any names? Perhaps they're ancestors of the same people who hope to quell the appetite of terrorists or whatever other nonsense this administration is peddling in a given week.

So, here is my bold prediction: Rice will continue down this odd historical path in the future. I can see her claiming that the Iraq war is like the 100 Years War because it's a war that'll take a long time. Or maybe the Iraq War is like the War of the Roses in that neither war had anything to do with actual roses. Finally, expect her to reference the Gork War sometime in the spring of 2007.