PROBLEMS SOLVED

CONDOLEEZA RICE


[Kat spotted this earlier today and I thought I'd comment.]

Did you know that all the United States' pressing foreign policy issues have been dealt with? What, you didn't get that memo? Well, I assume that they must be since Condi Rice finds herself with enough time for campaigning this election season.
In what has almost always been a nonpartisan position, Secretary of State Rice has apparently slapped that tradition squarely in the face. From the Washington Post:

Two weeks before crucial midterm elections that could tip the balance of power in Congress, Rice has been on a media blitz that appears aimed mainly at conservative media outlets, particularly radio talk shows. Secretary of state is traditionally a nonpartisan position, and Rice's media itinerary differs sharply from the practice of her predecessors during election campaigns, according to State Department records.

Joe at Americablog sums it up nicely:

This is just another example of the Bush team putting politics over policy. Condi is campaigning instead of dealing with all the major problems created by her boss. They have no plan for Iraq, it's all just politics to the Bush team.

In just four days, we as a nation can begin to mitigate the extensive damage caused by this reckless and thoughtless administration. Let's do everything we can to make Bush start quacking right away.

DIGGING DEEP

CONDOLEEZA RICE
(w/A LITTLE SCORN FOR
KATIE COURIC AS WELL)


The woman has been employed with the federal government for almost six years. She spent four years as the National Security Advisor to the president of the United States. She has spent the last year and a half as the Secretary of State of the United States. She's seen a lot. She's done a lot. She has testified before Congress on more than one occasion. She has testified in front of the 9/11 Commission. With all that being said, I have only one question: Why in the blue hell is Katie Couric doing a puff piece on her on one of the most prestigious and longest running news programs in television history? Really, with all of the problems she should be dealing with, why is it important that we know that when she works out (and there were scenes of her on a stairmaster) she listens to Led Zeppelin? Do the people who have a loved one who died in Iraq give a flying crap that she plays classical piano? And of course, no puff piece on arguably the most powerful woman in the world would be complete without asking her about her love life and one day getting married. Funny, I don't recall Chris Wallace asking President Clinton how his love life with Hillary is going, so why should Rice's social life or lack thereof have any relevance whatsoever? Of course, this also illustrates that if Couric is going to waste time asking inane questions that have no relevance then you just know that she will prove herself completely inadequate when it comes to asking the hard questions and then hitting Rice with strong followups when Rice inevitably spouts some administration bullshit. And there was certainly enough of that here as well..
I guess one other thing that I'd like to know is why CBS is paying to dollar for Couric so that she can bring her Today Show-level of investigative journalism to the so-called Tiffany network? If this is the kind of groundbreaking and insightful reporting that she'll be bringing to the table, then CBS got themselves quite a catch.

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.