One of the reasons why the story of Henry VIII resonates as much as it does to this day is that it combines sex with almost unimaginable cruelty. We watch telling after telling of the story, which reaches its gruesome apex with the horrific executions in 1452 of the barely-twenty-year-old Queen, Katherine Howard, along with her lover Thomas Culpeper, and her former lover Francis Dereham from well before her marriage to the King. The series The Tudors on Showtime plays fast and loose in many ways with history, but its graphic depiction of the torture and executions of Culpeper and Dereham are straight out of history (Warning: highly graphic video):

The Spanish Ambassador at the time, Eustace Chapuys, wrote an account of Katherine's fall and the executions of Dereham and Culpeper:

This year on 13 November Sir Thomas Wriothesley, secretary to the king, came to Hampton Court to the queen, and called all the ladies and gentlewomen and her servants into the great chamber, and there openly before them declared certain offenses she had committed in misusing her body with certain persons before the king's time, because of which he there discharged all her household; and the morning after she was taken to Sion, with my Lady Bainton and two other gentlewomen and certain of her servants to wait on her there until the king's further pleasure. And various people were taken to the Tower of London, such as my Lady Rochford, Master Culpepper, one of the king's privy chamber, and others.

On 1 December Thomas Culpepper, one of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, and Francis Dorand, gentleman, were arraigned at the Guildhall in London, for high treason against the king's majesty, in misdemeanor with the queen, as appeared by their indictment which they confessed to, and they were sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered, the lord mayor sitting there as chief, the lord chancellor on his right hand, and the duke of Norfolk on his left hand, the duke of Suffolk, the lord privy seal, the earls of Sussex, of Hertford, and various others of the king's council sitting with all the judges also in commission that day.

And on 10 December the said Culpepper and Dorand were drawn from the Tower of London to Tyburn, and there Culpepper, after exhorting the people to pray for him, stood on the ground by the gallows, knelt down and had his head struck off; and then Dorand was hanged, dismembered, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered. Culpepper's body was buried at St Sepulchre's church near Newgate, and their heads were set on London Bridge.

For some reason, we fail to draw parallels between the tortures meted out by corrupt European royals during long-ago history and what is being done to human beings in our name in our own time. We like to think we're somehow more enlightened.

Except that we're not, as Sebastian Doggart horrifyingly reveals over at Down With Tyranny:

War criminal? Torturer? Condi Rice?!

I had the same response while making my investigative documentary on Rice, American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi. Over the course of researching and producing it, I have come to share Professor Gilbert’s view that the gravity of Rice’s crimes and misdemeanors, still largely unknown to the American people, outweigh the benefits of President Obama’s view that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

The conviction that we need to read the page of history before we can turn it underpins American Faust. Through the form of a biographical documentary, we tell a Faustian story of a woman whose hubris tempted her into a pursuit of power that destroyed her core values, and hurtled America into a perilous new direction. It’s a portrait of a woman who has changed the world but about whom most people know very little. It overturns the popular misconception of Rice as a yes-woman to Bush and reveals her as his chief confidante-- with deeper and more enduring influence than even Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Karl Rove-- and thus responsible for much of the Bush legacy.

[snip]

it was Condoleezza Rice who is primarily responsible for the Bush Administration’s torture program. It was she who ordered the CIA to use torture techniques including genital mutilation, fingernail extraction and electrocution in countries across the world. The CIA agents who carried out these interrogations were acting under orders which came directly from the chairwoman of the Group of Principals: Condoleezza Rice. The role of the Principals-- a group that included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales-- was to select and authorize ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ proposed by CIA Director George Tenet.

According to Christopher Anders, attorney for the ACLU: “The CIA would come in and give a presentation of what they wanted to do, to the point where, where they were choreographing interrogations and the torture from the basement of the White House itself.”

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Kessler says: “These ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ included water-boarding, fingernail extraction, and sleep deprivation. Condi signed off on the orders to the CIA with the words, ‘This is your Baby, go do it!’” Richard Clarke, US chief counter-terrorism adviser between 1992-2003 concurs: “Rice decided what torture to use on what person.”

American Faust reveals that the techniques that Rice approved went far beyond the mock executions and water-boarding already made public. Our film has first-hand accounts of torture techniques that make stress positions look like a slap on the wrist. Binyam Mohamed had his penis cut, and acid poured into the wounds. Khalid el Masri was drugged, sodomized and imprisoned without charges. Abu Omar was tied to a wet mattress and electrocuted. Mamdouh Habib had his fingernails torn out.

Even John Ashcroft, known for a nutty rendition of his song Let the Eagle Soar but not for his leniency to Moslem prisoners, objected to the torture meetings that Rice chaired: "Why are we talking about this in the White House?” he asked. “History will not judge this kindly."

But perhaps they will make a Showtime series about it. And our descendants will, just as we do, think they are more enlightened than that.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, The Tudors, torture

Ceasefire, Georgia;.... and as today goes on we may see more response to that report on the ground, but according to Mick Ware, don't be so sure. Ware, reporting as usual for CNN, after his fantastic reporting in Iraq, is once again on the front lines, this time in Georgia: that fly swat, fool hardy, leap towards democracy, (the fools being anyone that believes Bush's swagger and promises of support in this when we can barely hold our-own-selves up militarily or diplomatically.)

Yesterday, Ware appeared on the front lines of this war, which appear different than what we are used to seeing of war front lines, reporting that Russian forces have cut off the main access points for humanitarian aide; access points that our boy Bush has warned them again and again to keep open....not that Russia's mini-me President, Medvedev, the mouthpiece of Vlad (whose trusty, soulful eyes have held Bush enthralled for years,) is taking advice from Bush, or is in any way swayed by America's maimed diplomatic powers, or even the threat of an impending return to the Cold War. It all appears pretty calm except for the occasional flare here and there of violence. Of course the Russians are in control here and only real diplomacy and pressure from NATO will make any sort of stand down real.

Bush, on his way to that tumble weed vacation-land, again spoke of freedom, US support, and how the use of this kind of force is unacceptable in the 21st Century...yeah...uh-huh.... As Jill Brilliant would say, "pot, meet kettle." The US may be sending some food, but it seems that the rest of our support amounts to empty promises of an army spread too thin, and a lame duck that no one takes seriously anymore; The US Navy? Where? Not so much...sorry for the false alarm!....Off to clear some brush! Hi-ho! By the end of his time in office, Bush will have spent 499 days on vacation, give or take the few days that he has cut in order to egg on the break-away republic's war, and run the other wars that hes got going, into the ground. He is not much for cutting vacations short, as we learned during Hurricane Katrina.


If Bush in any way grasped the seriousness of his lack of diplomatic prowess and the rumblings of another cold war heading this way, he would surely stay at his post. But, just like everything else, he shows his lack of concern and interest, much less focus, by picking up that damned stiff, expressionless dog and heading down towards hell-country to bake his brain clearing brush or whatever it is he does down there.



Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, (who appears in producer Lauren's pretty damned funny of you're a politic's geek, McCain Mispronunciation Guide, reposted on Seder's blog here,) yesterday spoke at a podium next to Condeleeza Rice at a different podium, about this conflict being about "looking evil in the eye...", which brings to mind the infamous meeting of Vlad and Bush in 2001, who was heard to exclaim:

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

"I was able to get a sense of his soul."

And seemingly, as the years have gone by, that feeling has grown; until it stopped growing, that is, and Vlad backed away, and Bush, instructed no doubt by teh Jesus to spread democracy, decided to say fuck it to his supposed ideals of maintaining the end of the cold war, and push ahead with his democratize-the-world stance, even as our frail democracy cracks under the stress of deregulation in the age of fascism and greed. Not that our current brand of deregulated, executive-has-the-power, check-and-balances be damned, democracy should be recommended to any state

And there is Russia specialist Condi Rice, stiff as Barney the dog under Bush's arm, standing proudly at the podium, knowing that this thing is rigged; the fix is in. This isn't about bullying and democracy; its about bullying and world dominance with oil and passageways, and time ticking away in which to move the chess pieces to their proper places. Condi is one cool character, and her cold repetition of the talking points on this thing doesn't help matters when you stand her next to a passionate, if less than circumspect man, who is merely trying to lead his country away from a looming beast that is not goign to be stopped right now. Of course, e is probably dirty too...who isnt these days?
Thank God no one is paying attention!




Vlad's soul, sure.... Only perhaps the most truly soulless sociopath can see into the soul of another of his ilk. And regarding the lie of democracy that has been used on more than one war in my time, I suppose I don't have to go into my usual rant here about how democracy is an evolution that comes about naturally due to the desires of a population hungry enough to fight, die, and/or travel across oceans in the bellies of ships, for it. I suppose I don't have to mention that even the slightest push of encouragement, or shove from a nation that might like to have some hand in those particular oil pipelines, can be not only conflict of interest but deadly. We have lost our bargaining power in the diplomatic world, and surely no Georgian force will win a war with Russia without the nukes of the USA behind it. And, of course, ultimately, oil itself is not even whats going on here.

The issue of the oil flowing through Georgia is important, not in the amount of oil, because it supplies only 1% of the global annual demand, but more because of the power that it represents as an independent conduit or pipeline, and its ability to effect dependence on Russian and Middle Eastern supplies. Georgia has no oil of it's own, but rather, since the 1990's has served as a conduit for oil that is pumped from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, providing the only possible pathway without passing through Russia or Iran.

According to the UK Times Online:

The pipeline is a central element in Georgia's independence from Russia. In the words of Georgia's President Saakashvili, “All strategic contracts in Georgia, especially the contract for the Caspian pipeline, are a matter of survival for the Georgian state.” Saakashvili's miscalculation was to assume that Western reliance on Caspian oil would translate into material support against Russian aggression.

Miscalculation indeed; it depends on what you think material support means. Immaterial support is sure popping up all over the place in terms of bravado and all, and it looks like our relationship with Russia, such as it is, is at stake. But can we really afford to get into this now, what with our weakened state and the fact that we have done little to nothing to reduce our dependence on oil?

Worse than that is that if you scratch the surface, as our good friends at They Gave Us a Republic have been doing daily on this story, you find some pretty scary things in the background: The US and Poland have signed a deal that enables the US to put a missile interceptor base on it's land, thus enabling the protection of the often bombed pipeline. Poland is now in the sights of Russia....mistake!

Further, Ian Welsh over at Firedoglake, has an interesting piece here that explains why Russia may well be setting up a number of these "wars of reunification," having to do with the Ukraine's rising power and the loss of particular strategic sites looming. The Ukraine has been pushing to join NATO, and that is something that Russia is dead set against. The time frame in which Russia might regain not only the strategic sites, but put down breakaways and Ukraine, is growing smaller because America may well get out of Iraq and finish in Afghanistan in the forseeable future, and thus be available to actually help the Ukraine and these breakaway states. Sean-Paul at the Agonist reiterates what Ian says and also adds that Russia will go to any lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, with the power that implies.

Today, in light of the ceasefire, Mick Ware appeared again and again, in front of new rubble, discussing how the Russians are digging in rather than pulling back, and Reuters noted that just prior to the ceasefire, 5 were killed in Gori, a front in the dispute, including journalists, who have been seemingly targeted trying to cross the border into this front-line city. I trust Ware and his punch drunk, breathless reporting; he has never steered me wrong, and he drives the wingnuts crazy!

John Cole at Balloon Juice noted that in all of the craziness, at least the US was able to provide some sorta humanitarian aide, after foolishly egging this thing on from the sidelines. He provides a rather more concise view of the happenings over there than my drifting ramblings, and he also knows teh PhotoShoppe as is evidenced thusly:




you gotta love it!!
God Bless America!...damn the torpedoes!

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, George W. Bush, oil, russia

The rumors that Condoleeza Rice is lobbying hard to be John McCain's running mate have been flying fast and furiously in the past few days, her denials notwithstanding. Rice would be a compelling choice; after all, the Democrats are now limited to either a black person OR a woman, whereas Rice would raise the ante for the Republicans to both. And for some strange reason known only to that fetid morass that is the conservative brain, Republicans adore her. I suspect it has more to do with Republican male fantasies about Condi in her dominatrix attire than about her competence. After all, we're talking about THIS woman:



And this one:

On June 21, the US Central Command, which controls American military forces in the Persian Gulf, went to "delta" alert - its highest level - for American troops in six countries in the region. The American embassy in Yemen was closed for part of the summer; other embassies in the Middle East closed for shorter periods.

But what had Rice done at the NSC? If the NSC files were complete, the commission's historian Warren Bass and the others could see, she had asked Clarke to conduct inter- agency meetings at the White House with domestic agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI, to keep them alert to the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike.

She had not attended the meetings herself. She had asked that the then attorney-general, John Ashcroft, receive a special briefing at the Justice Department about al-Qaeda threats. But she did not talk with Ashcroft herself in any sort of detail about the intelligence. Nor did she have any conversations of significance on the issue with the FBI director, Louis Freeh, nor with his temporary successor that summer, the acting director Tom Pickard.

There is no record to show that Rice made any special effort to discuss terrorist threats with Bush. The record suggested, instead, that it was not a matter of special interest to either of them that summer.

Maybe she's an expert on a country that no longer exists (the Soviet Union), but she's dumb as a box of rocks in terms of her ability to add two and two and get four when it comes to terrorism.

Now it turns out that those fuck-me boots may not just be about Republican male fantasies after all -- the woman really is a masty piece of work:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

Can you imagine a more cynical move than a guy who spent five years being tortured in a Hanoi prison choosing a strong advocate of torture as his running mate as a means of upping the "groundbreaking" ante?

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, cynicism, John McCain

Either Hendrik Hertzberg has a peculiar sense of humor or he's gone completely off the deep end. Because in this week's New Yorker, he suggests that John McCain choose Condoleeza Rice as his running mate:

This space is usually devoted to pristine moral reasoning, but, hell, it’s an election year. Let’s get down and dirty. If McCain really wants to have it all—to refurbish his maverick image without having to flip-flop on the panderings that have tarnished it; to galvanize the attention of the press, the nation, and the world; to make a bold play for the center without seriously alienating “the base”—then he can avail himself of a highly interesting option: Condoleezza Rice.

To deal first with the obvious: Rice may be “only” the second woman and the second African-American to be Secretary of State, but she is indisputably the highest-ranking black female official ever to have served in any branch of the United States government. Her nomination to a constitutional executive office would cost McCain the votes of his party’s hardened racists and incorrigible misogynists. They are surely fewer in number, though, than the people who would like to participate in breaking the glass ceiling of race or gender but, given the choice, would rather do so in a more timid way, and/or without abandoning their party. And with Rice on the ticket the Republicans could attack Clinton or Obama with far less restraint.

By choosing Rice, McCain would shackle himself anew to Bush’s Iraq war. But it’s hard to see how those chains could get much tighter than he has already made them. Rice would fit nicely into McCain’s view of the war as worth fighting but, until Donald Rumsfeld’s exit from the Pentagon, fought clumsily. And it would be fairly easy to establish a story line that would cast Rice as having been less Bush’s enabler than a loyal subordinate who nevertheless pushed gently from within for a more reasonable, more diplomatic approach.

Rice is already fourth in line for the Presidency, and getting bumped up three places would be a shorter leap than any of the three Presidential candidates propose to make. It’s true that her record in office has been one of failure, from downgrading terrorism as a priority before 9/11 to ignoring the Israel-Palestine problem until (almost certainly) too late. But this does not seem to have done much damage to her popularity. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken when opposition to the Iraq war was approaching its height, she enjoyed a “favorable-unfavorable” rating of nearly two to one. The conservative rank and file likes her. Though she once described herself as “mildly pro-choice,” she is agile enough to complete the journey to mildly pro-life. And she is a preacher’s daughter.

The reason it's difficult to tell if Hertzberg is joking is that this is precisely the kind of cynical, "I'll take your black guy and your white woman and raise you a black woman" plan that I'm quite certain is being seriously considered over at Camp McCain. Because even now, Condi is the Republicans' Black Friend; the one they can trot out to show that despite the appalling race-baiting that's still an integral part of Republican politics, they really, really do love the Negroes (sic). She looks great in clothes! She plays the piano! She was an ice skater! Wow!

What they don't tell you is the level of her responsibility for allowing the attacks of September 11, 2001, to play out.

For years, my answer to the question "Who benefitted?" from the attacks pointed to some degree of Administration complicity; most likely complicity-by-looking-the-other-way. I used to be regarded by many people as crazy, but as the fallout has continued to benefit the Bush Adminstration and their most wealthy allies; and as we have continued to suck up to the Saudis while invading a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, it's hard to believe the official story.

Via Cliff Schecter comes an excerpt from a new book that has to make you wonder whether Condi needed a fucking engraved announcement to realize what was going on -- or if she deliberately looked the other way:

Even reporters in Washington who covered intelligence issues acknowledged they were largely ignorant that summer that the CIA and other parts of the Government were warning of an almost certain terrorist attack. Probably, but not necessarily, overseas.

The warnings were going straight to President Bush each morning in his briefings by the CIA director, George Tenet, and in the presidential daily briefings. It would later be revealed by the 9/11 commission into the September 11 attacks that more than 40 presidential briefings presented to Bush from January 2001 through to September 10, 2001, included references to bin Laden.

And nearly identical intelligence landed each morning on the desks of about 300 other senior national security officials and members of Congress in the form of the senior executive intelligence brief, a newsletter on intelligence issues also prepared by the CIA.

The senior executive briefings contained much of the same information that was in the presidential briefings but were edited to remove material considered too sensitive for all but the President and his top aides to see. Often the differences between the two documents were minor, with only a sentence or two changed between them. Apart from the commission's chief director, Philip Zelikow, the commission's staff was never granted access to Bush's briefings, except for the notorious August 2001 briefing that warned of the possibility of domestic al-Qaeda strikes involving hijackings. But they could read through the next best thing: the senior executive briefings.

During his 2003 investigations it was startling to Mike Hurley, the commission member in charge of investigating intelligence, and the other investigators on his team, just what had gone on in the spring and summer of 2001 - just how often and how aggressively the White House had been warned that something terrible was about to happen. Since nobody outside the Oval Office could know exactly what Tenet had told Bush during his morning intelligence briefings, the presidential and senior briefings were Tenet's best defence to any claim that the CIA had not kept Bush and the rest of the Government well-informed about the threats. They offered a strong defence.

The team's investigators began to match up the information in the senior briefings and they pulled together a timeline of the headlines just from the senior briefings in the northern spring and summer:

"Bin Ladin Planning Multiple Operations" (April 20)and "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real" (June 30)It was especially troubling for Hurley's team to realise how many of the warnings were directed to the desk of one person: Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser. Emails from the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director, Richard Clarke, showed that he had bombarded Rice with messages about terrorist threats. He was trying to get her to focus on the intelligence she should have been reading each morning in the presidential and senior briefings

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3)

"Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot" (May 23)

"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (May 26)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (June 23)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (June 30),

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)

Other parts of the Government did respond aggressively and appropriately to the threats, including the Pentagon and the State Department. On June 21, the US Central Command, which controls American military forces in the Persian Gulf, went to "delta" alert - its highest level - for American troops in six countries in the region. The American embassy in Yemen was closed for part of the summer; other embassies in the Middle East closed for shorter periods.

But what had Rice done at the NSC? If the NSC files were complete, the commission's historian Warren Bass and the others could see, she had asked Clarke to conduct inter- agency meetings at the White House with domestic agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI, to keep them alert to the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike.

She had not attended the meetings herself. She had asked that the then attorney-general, John Ashcroft, receive a special briefing at the Justice Department about al-Qaeda threats. But she did not talk with Ashcroft herself in any sort of detail about the intelligence. Nor did she have any conversations of significance on the issue with the FBI director, Louis Freeh, nor with his temporary successor that summer, the acting director Tom Pickard.

There is no record to show that Rice made any special effort to discuss terrorist threats with Bush. The record suggested, instead, that it was not a matter of special interest to either of them that summer.

And why not? We've focused on the August 6 PDB as if it came out of nowhere and it was just Bush being his bratty, snippy self, not wanting something like, oh, say, an impending attack on this country interfere with his well-deserved vacation after barely six months in office. But now we know that there was a flurry of e-mails from Richard Clarke, who WAS reading the intelligence reports, and WAS trying to get Condi to pay attention ALL FUCKING SUMMER -- but either she was told not to bother Captain Codpiece or she was too busy fantasizing about being the second Mrs. George W. Bush to think that maybe...just maybe...she ought to let the President of the United States know that there was a serious threat of an attack on this country, even if he'd said he didn't want to be disturbed.

So which is it? Was she negligent, thinking with the wrong part of her anatomy, too stupid to realize what Clarke was telling her, or part of an Administration conspiracy to let an attack play out as a justification to get the neocon vision of American empire in the Middle East rolling?

Whatever the reason, this ought to disqualify Condoleeza Rice from ever holding a high position in Washington ever again.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice

Fasten your seat belts, folks, it's SupercalifragilisticexpialiTuesday, that bloated day of primaries at the end of which an old man with anger management problems will finally get the all-but-confirmed Republican nomination he's coveted for nearly eight years. It's a nomination he's wanted so badly that he stood by and allowed the campaign of a man who did get it in 2000 to trash his wife and child -- and then stood by that very man as the latter proceeded to destroy everything he touched.

On the Democratic side, the picture is far less clear. Barack Obama has been closing on Hillary Clinton in late polls, and if he has a strong showing today, watch the Democratic race get even nastier than it's been thus far. For me, sitting here in New Jersey, the fact that for the first time in my lifetime, the New Jersey presidential primary actually matters is a mixed blessing at best. John Edwards is still on the ballot, as are Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, but without Edwards having a reasonable shot at reaching the 15% threshold for delegates, to vote for my first choice seems wasted.

The choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is not one I anticipate making joyfully. Clinton's campaign seems longer on specifics, even when they're specifics that I don't like and that are politically suicidal, like garnishing the pay of low-wage workers to pay for health insurance. Obama is inspiring, but his insistence on "a new kind of politics" doesn't take into account the way Republicans operate when their power is on the line. Is he really that naïve, or is he just carrying concealed until he can see the whites of their eyes? Barack Obama's is a candidacy of confidence and faith, and my faith these days is somewhat lacking. That's not to say I won't make that leap, because the thought of having to live the Clinton Dramas all over again makes me want to take to my bed, but I wish I could hit that button more joyfully today than I will.

Before the State of the Union address, the inimitable Tweety started rhapsodizing about Condoleeza Rice being mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate on the Republican side:

OLBERMANN: Let's pick up on the point that I interrupted you at at the start of the hour; the idea that we may have just seen a vice presidential candidate walk in.

MATTHEWS: Condoleeza Rice, despite the difficulties of this foreign policy, including the war which is immensely unpopular -- a very small number of Americans like the war in Iraq or the decision to go to war in Iraq -- Condoleeza Rice has escaped largely unscathed by that. People really like her, she's likeable, and impressive. And I have to think given the ethnic, you know, excitement - let’s call it American excitement about Barack Obama. If he doesn’t make it to the nomination a lot of people on the Republican side might say, well why don’t we try do something to offset that and take advantage of the hope of having an African American at a high level of government.

It's as if presidential politics were a poker game: "I'll take your black guy, and raise you a black WOMAN!"

But I wonder who these people are who "really like her." I'm sure she's charming on the Washington cocktail party circuit, which is no doubt who the "people" are to whom Matthews is referring. I would hope that those Americans who don't nibble cocktail weenies with members of the Bush Administration remember things like this:



Of course the fact that Philip Zelikow was the Administration's mole on the 9/11 commission, charged with making sure the Administration bore no blame in the final report, shouldn't have been news to anyone, despite the news coverage this week of Philip Shenon's new book about the Commission. It also shouldn't shock anyone that, as Shenon describes in the book, "Whatever her job title, Rice seemed uninterested in actually advising the president. Instead, she wanted to be his closest confidante — specifically on foreign policy — and to simply translate his words into action." National Security Advisor as groupie -- yup, that's what we want in a dangerous world -- a vice presidential nominee whose entire record in the previous administration comes from her crush on her boss.

If Condoleeza Rice has emerged unscathed from her record of horrific incompetence, it's because of the media's reluctance to criticize her. But there is no amount of gilt-edging that you can put on this woman that's going to make her pass muster as anything other than a harbinger of the Bush family tentacles extending beyond George W's disastrous presidency and into the next one. I have no doubt that Rice is an intellegent woman. Whether her inexplicable love for the dubious charms of George W. Bush have made her do stupid things, or if it's just misplaced ideology is anyone's guess. But to set her up as some kind of one-upmanship device in the event of a black Democratic nominee is not only the same kind of affirmative action against which Republicans have been ranting for decades, but the worst kind -- the kind that would put a Washington talking head's idea of "ethnic excitement" above the appalling ineptitude of her track record.

Labels: 2008 election, Condoleeza Rice, Republicans

Sometimes you run across something that's so brain-boggling absurd that it just leaves you speechless. If you want to know why I seem to be a bit uninspired lately, it's because I'm encountering Outrage Fatigue. Every day I get up at 5:30 AM, pour a cup of coffee, sit down at the computer, and see what fresh horrors life in the Bush years has wrought upon us while I slept.

If you want to see something that fully encapsulates why there are days when an icepick judiciously self-applied to my own forehead seems like Blessed Relief, here you go:

The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow's commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.

I'm going back to bed.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, hypocrisy

It's Saint Condi, too, who was involved in shady dealings with Hussein in the name of cold hard cash:

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.

The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public.

The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal.

The $64 billion program was set up in 1996 by the Security Council to help ease the effects of United Nations sanctions on Iraqi civilians after the first gulf war. Until the American invasion in 2003, the program allowed Saddam’s government to export oil to pay for food, medicine and humanitarian goods.

Using an elaborate system of secret surcharges and extra fees, however, the Iraqi regime received at least $1.8 billion in kickbacks from companies in the program, according to an investigation completed in 2005 by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.

By imposing surcharges on the sale of crude oil, the Iraqi regime skimmed about $228 million from its oil exports.

A report released in 2004 by an investigator at the Central Intelligence Agency listed five American companies that bought oil through the program: the Coastal Corporation, a subsidiary of El Paso; Chevron; Texaco; BayOil, and Mobil, now part of Exxon Mobil. The companies have denied any wrongdoing and said they were cooperating with the investigations.

As part of the deal under negotiation, Chevron, which now owns Texaco, is not expected to admit to violating the U.N. sanctions. But Chevron is expected to acknowledge that it should have been aware that illegal kickbacks were being paid to Iraq on the oil, the investigators said.

The fine is connected to the payment of about $20 million in surcharges on tens of millions of barrels of Iraqi oil bought by Chevron from 2000 to 2002, investigators said.

These payments were made by small oil traders that sold oil to Chevron. But records found by United Nations, American and Italian officials showed that they were financed by Chevron.

[snip]

According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron’s board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.

Ms. Rice resigned from Chevron’s board on Jan. 16, 2001, after being named national security advisor by President Bush.

Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, referred inquires to Chevron.

Sort of makes all of Condi's bloviatings about Saddam Hussein being the Most Evil Man Ever seem just a wee tad disingenuous now, doesn't it? So can we stop touting her as presidential material now?

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, corporatism, corruption, greed

Last night they took Laura Bush off the thorazine long enough to make an appearance on Larry King to try to convince people that Iraq isn't completely FUBAR. C&L has the sorry video.

Money quote:

This is their opportunity to seize the moment—ahhh—to build a really good and stable country. And many parts of Iraq are stable ahh..now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody

And Keith had a few choice words for Condi Rice.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, Keith Olbermann, Laura Bush

The idiotic Condoleeza Rice, yesterday:

Now, I want to say a couple things about this mission. First of all, this is an essential mission for the security and well-being of the United States of America. I know we talk a great deal about helping the Iraqi people to find their way out of violence, out of tyranny, to democracy and to living together in peace and prosperity. And that's a noble cause, and America has always been at its best when it uses its power for noble causes. But this mission, bringing a stable and secure Iraq, is also essential for the security of the United States of America. Because on September 11th when those 19 men drove our own airplanes into the Pentagon and into the World Trade Center and would have driven it into the Capitol in Washington, we realized that we were no longer isolated from danger and terror, that the great oceans that had protected us for almost 200 years were no barrier to fear and destruction on our own territory, and we recognized at that point that we were going to have to come to the source of the problem, that we were going to have to go on the offense, that no matter how well we tried to defend America with port security and airport security, we couldn't play defense because the terrorists only have to be right once and we have to be right 100 percent of the time.

Note the linkage of Iraq and the September 11 attacks again. Run it up the flagpole again and see if anyone salutes. Not to mention that her logic that we have to play offense by bombing any country that dares to look at us crosswise, she resembles nothing so much as Tom Davis in the old SNL sketch in which Davis and Al Franken are two politicians making ever-escalating and ever-more scurrilous claims about the other. Franken's tag line was "Vote for me. Pete....Tagliani", and Davis' was "We'll kill 'em BEFORE they can commit a crime."

Then there's this head-combusting statement:

I spent some time a couple of summers ago reading the biographies of the Founding Fathers. And I'm going to tell you something. By all rights, the United States of America should never have come into being. If you looked at fighting the greatest military power of the time, Great Britain; if you looked at trying to conquer this new land; if you looked at the squabbling between the Founding Fathers, they were wonderful, but boy, did they fight.

Hrm....I must have missed the part in the history books when Thomas Jefferson set off carriage bombs in front of the local apothecary. Because Condi the Moron is saying that the passionate arguments of the Founding Fathers are no different from this:

Two car bombs exploded in an outdoor market in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 56 people and injuring scores in the deadliest attack since U.S. and Iraqi forces began a major security push around the capital last week.

The twin blasts — which tore through the open-air market in the mostly Shiite district of New Baghdad — marked the first major response by militants to the sweep launched last week and a sobering reminder of the huge challenges facing any efforts against the well-armed factions.

The death toll was reported by police and ambulance service officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. At least 127 people were injured, they reported.

The explosions toppled wooden vendors' stalls and utility poles, and blood pooled in the debris. Victims were carried into hospitals on makeshift stretchers or in the arms of rescuers.

A separate car bomb in the mostly Shiite area of Sadr City killed at least one person and injured 10, police said.

Now here's what's interesting...these bombings took place in Shiite neighborhoods. Does Condi think that this is Shia-on-Shia violence? Or is it just perhaps possible that this is Sunni insurgents -- you know, the guys financed by the Bush family's best friends the Saudis -- instead of the Iran-backed militias that the Bush Administration wants so desperately to blame?

Labels: Baghdad, Condoleeza Rice, insurgency, Iraq

With the truly terrifying prospect of an attack in Iran looking not just possible, but certain and imminent, along comes a mind-blowing report that Republican 2012 presidential prospect and twofer Condoleeza Rice, arguably one of the most incompetent government officials in U.S. history, can't remember an Iranian offer for dialogue following the taking of Baghdad in 2003.

Spencer Ackerman reports:

just got off the phone with Flynt Leverett, a former CIA Mideast analyst and National Security Council staffer during President Bush's first term. Leverett says he finds it "really quite curious" that Secretary Rice is pleading a memory lapse on an Iranian offer shortly after the Iraq war to, among other things, recognize Israel.

Leverett himself says he "saw the actual document" detailing the offer, which arrived at the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau via fax around late April or early May of 2003, when he had left the White House to return to his regular post as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Leverett wasn't around to personally show Rice the document. But, he says, "What I was told from colleagues over at the NSC, people I knew on the NSC staff -- I dont know for a fact that it was put on (Rice's) desk, but it did go to the NSC. And I know for a fact that at State, it went all the way up to [Secretary of State Colin] Powell."

When the fax arrived at the State Department in 2003, the senior director for the Middle East at the NSC was Elliott Abrams. An NSC spokeswoman told Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, who broke the Iran-overture story last year, that Abrams has no recollection of the fax either.

What's more, Leverett says that he tried to include information on the fax in a New York Times op-ed he wrote in December of 2006 that was heavily redacted at the White House's behest. Even though the information had been reported before -- in Kessler's original Post story, for instance -- the White House held it back, claiming it was "classified."

It's no secret that the Bush Administration viewed the October 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq as a green light for the full PNAC monty -- a US-led conflagration throughout the Middle East, with our trusty sidekick Bibi Netanyahu riding right alongside George 'n' Jesus in the march towards Armageddon (or total Cheney cabal ownership of the entire world, whichever comes first). But Rice's claim not to remember, when the story is still available from WaPo, combined with Scooter Libby's repeated claims of "I don't remember", means that perhaps the entire White House apparatus is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's, and is therefore removable under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, Iran, Iraq

Oh, Good Lord:



From the article:

Rice is not accustomed to failure. The prodigious accomplishments of her youth--she learned Beethoven at 5, finished college at 19 and earned tenure at Stanford at 26--have been followed by a glide to global prominence. Even as the Bush Administration's support has slid to historic depths, Rice's image has been relatively unsullied. She remains not just the most glamorous member of the Bush Cabinet but also its most popular, with job-approval ratings 20 points higher than her boss's. Among the top officials in the Administration, she is the only one who could reasonably expect to have a political future beyond 2008.

The Economist has a somewhat different view of Bush's Other Wife:

Her fingerprints are on some of the worst mistakes of the first Bush term. She claimed the White House was unaware of the CIA's doubts about whether Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger, for example, despite the fact that her office had received two memos on the subject and a call from the CIA director. But her culpability is deeper than that. When Ms Rice ran the National Security Council (NSC), it was hopelessly dysfunctional—torn asunder by disputes between the hawks (Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld) and the doves (then secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage).

Dealing with a feud between such big political beasts was probably too much for anybody, let alone a relatively inexperienced newcomer. And Mr Bush bears ultimate responsibility for the acts of his administration. Still, Ms Rice spent more time with her boss than anybody else, briefing him every day and spending weekends with his family. She could have done more to force him to listen to Mr Powell's warnings, which he was temperamentally inclined to ignore. She could also have done more to warn him about the lack of preparation for post-Saddam Iraq.

Ms Rice was given a chance to redeem her reputation when she was made secretary of state in the second Bush term. Mr Bush signalled that he wanted a different foreign-policy approach from his first, which Mr Armitage once characterised as “Look, fucker, you do what we want.” She dreamed of reinforcing the expansion of America's hard power with an expansion of its soft power. And she brought valuable resources to her mission: a close relationship with the president, a penchant for multilateralism, a collection of deputies who wanted to reach out to the UN, and, for a while, an adoring press. But her bubble was burst by Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The administration started by trying to give Israel the time it needed to destroy Hizbullah. Ms Rice declared that the world was witnessing “the birth pangs of a new Middle East”. The policy was a disaster: America eventually had to broker a deal that left Hizbullah triumphantly in place. Ms Rice's words continue to haunt her on her current tour of the Middle East. If she is so keen on democracy, why is she cosying up to dictators in Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

The state of State
Ms Rice has also proved a disappointing manager of the State Department—the institution that was supposed to be the engine of a new diplomatic offensive. She has lost her number two, Robert Zoellick, and her personal adviser, Philip Zelikow, both impressive men, and still has a significant number of positions to fill. The department spent an unprecedented six months finding a replacement for Mr Zoellick.

These failures are surprising given Ms Rice's career before she entered government. As a child growing up in segregated Alabama, she concluded that she needed to be “twice as good” as whites in order to succeed, and notched up a stunning record of achievement—becoming a fine pianist and figure-skater as a child, graduating from university with top honours at 19, earning tenure at Stanford University at a tender age, and becoming provost of the university at 38.

But the traits that made Ms Rice such a perfect protégée may be working against her now she is at the top of the tree. Ms Rice made her career by impressing powerful establishment figures—from Brent Scowcroft (who brought her into the NSC when she was 34) to Messrs Bush senior and junior. But what happens when your patrons disagree about fundamentals? Ms Rice tried a dose of fudge during the first Bush administration (you can find people on both sides of the diplomatic wars of the first term who believed that she was on their side). But mostly she chose to flatter her current patron.

I'm really getting tired about what a fine pianist and figure skater Condoleeza Rice is. That has nothing to do with her job as Secretary of State. What baffles me is how someone who is on paper quite intelligent has turned out to be such an incompetent Secretary of State. Is it that her specialization in the Soviet Union colors her view of every foreign policy challenge? Or does her blind devotion and loyalty to -- dare I call it a crush -- George W. Bush blind her to what he really is?

It is undoubtedly a mark of how lame the Republican presidential field is for 2008 that Time is seeking to burnish Rice's reputation, for I'm sure that in her, Republicans see the "two-fer" who can defeat either Barack Obama OR Hillary Clinton. The problem is that she has done an absolutely abysmal job in the executive branch, and there's no reason to think that the woman who sat in front of Congress and euphemized the escalation of the Iraq form in the jargon of boob jobs is any more ready to be president than the either of the non-white-male Democrats against whom the Republican seem to want to run her.

Labels: 2008 election, Condoleeza Rice