"How the hell has Condoleeza Rice got away with it for so long?"

Cragg Hines, DC bureau chief for the Chronic (I love him mostly because he drives these people batshit) serves:

A cheeky Brit pol is ragging on the bearer of the Vestalian aura within the Bush crowd, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

What's more, the guy is a leading light in the Conservative Party, once such great chums with Bush's Republicans. ...

And the incipient backbiting I'd hope this guy's screed generates could make the dust-up between Rice, incensed professional woman, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California flamer-mother, look like the sitcom episode it was.

Actually, Johnson's extended paragraph could have been dictated by any number of Rice's erstwhile allies in the American conservative movement. Johnson knows some of the same folks I do who have been dishing Condi's intellectual capacity and judgment from the get-go.

Here's the extended paragraph he refers to, from the blog of MP Boris Johnson (bold emphasis added to make it easier to read):

It is one of the great mysteries of modern geopolitics. How the hell has Condoleezza Rice got away with it for so long? There she is, Secretary of State of the United States and one of the most powerful people on the planet. It is Condi Rice who leads on behalf of you, me, the entire Western world, in waging this deepening Cold War with Iran. She is the girl who threatens Ahmedinejad with Armageddon, or whatever our policy is. And yet if you read State of Denial by Bob Woodward (as you must) it is clear that she was the most stupefyingly incompetent National Security Adviser in the history of that office. She was warned, in some detail, about 9/11. The CIA made a special trip to see her on 10 July 2001 to say that al-Qa'eda was planning something huge and imminent, and that a 'strategic' response was necessary. Uh-huh, said Condi, and did zip; and at every stage in the catastrophic 'War on Terror' her behaviour is characterised by this same weird zen-like passivity. Soon after the invasion the question emerges: should the US send many more troops? Condi somehow fails to offer an opinion. The Americans' first hapless proconsul, Jay Garner, asks her before setting out what the game plan is. Where is power to reside? he asks. Who do we want to run the country? You might have thought this was a fairly crucial question, but 'Rice said nothing.' When Garner's successor, Jerry Bremer, makes the appalling mistake of de-Baathifying Iraq, she doesn't seem to grasp the significance of what is going on. And yet she was so important in the decision-making process that she was one of only two people consulted by Bush before he made his decision to go to war. The whole thing is terrifying. I absolutely refuse to take seriously any American urgings to get tough on Iran as long as she is still part of the show. Rumsfeld was demonised until Bush finally whacked him. Colin Powell was whacked. How come Condi is still flying around telling us what to do? One of the many reasons for regretting the death of Robin Cook, Labour's conscience over Iraq, is that he never had the chance to interrogate her. I was all set to write the headline, 'Cook Turns Up Heat On Rice.' It's about time someone did.

At every critical point in her administration tenure Rice has been out to lunch, literally or figuratively; shopping for shoes and attending Broadway plays while New Orleans drowned being the most obvious and appalling example.

She initially forgot about a briefing from George Tenet on July 10, 2001 regarding the al-Qaeda threats in advance of 9/11, but later on when her recall improved she also remembered that she had asked that former AG John Ashcroft receive the same briefing one week later. (He also currently disavows recollection of his briefing, yet something happened during mid- to late July -- six weeks before the World Trade Center towers were hit -- that scared Ashcroft so badly he ceased flying commercial aircraft.)

She confused Bush as being her "husb..." even though she's never been married.

Finally, when Bush asked Rice to focus on Iraq when she was still at NSA he said her job was "to help unstick things that may get stuck, is the best way to put it. She's an unsticker."

Now there's an unsettling visual.

"And for me, it's leaving time"

I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky….I’ll remember, I’ll remember…sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people.

There is one thing, an important thing, I have to tell you before I go. What I’m going to tell you is more than a fact. It is a Truth. I have spent six years checking it out, and I know it to be true. The people who subscribe to The Texas Observer are good people. In fact, you’re the best people in this state. I don’t care if you think that’s pretentious or sentimental—it’s just true.

If I got to naming you, I would never stop, so I won’t. But please believe me that all of you whom I know and many of you whom I know only by letter are in my mind as I write this—even if I do forget your names half the time. Always excepting, of course, the turkey who sends me hate mail after my annual gun-control editorial. Turkey, turkey, turkey.

I wanted to call this “The Long Goodbye” but Kaye won’t let me. She wanted to call it “Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.”

I love you. Good-bye my friends.

The closing paragraphs of Molly’s goodbye column to Texas Observer readers published June 18, 1976, as she left to join The New York Times.

Barack's poster, Hillary's arms, and Abe's conservative agenda

Another drive-by

Too busy still to put my own thoughts up so here's some of the reading I'm liking:

-- Vince (and other of my Texblog brethren and sisteren) say that giving Tom Craddick any more power this session is a bad idea. But a comment to Vince's post suggests it would be the better of two evils. Update (5 p.m.): The resolution is defeated, handing Speaker Craddick a loss.

-- Here's your Libby trial update from Marcy Wheeler and Jeralyn Merritt, courtesy Steve Gilliard and Easter Lemming (the Warren Zevon link is icing).

-- Vista's here. This crap by Bill Gates -- planned obsolescence promoted on the Daily Show -- really makes me want to go buy a Mac. Dwight has, as he always does, the best tips on how to make the switch. I'll wait until the last possible moment, i.e., if one of my computers needs replacing or MS stops updating XP. Hopefully that moment will be a few years from now.

-- Some local news: a good article on the state's programs to support families is here, with a cool quiz. I scored a 70. The Auto Show is in town and it's much greener than in the past; this is still one of the best diversions that comes to Houston. I particularly want to go examine the new crossovers -- I drive an Equinox but am lustily eyeing the new Nissan Rogue. The Chronic also has the news that electricity deregulation has failed Texans. This article is about ten days old but provides an update on Jim Turner, who may yet have some political ambitions. And j-a-x has some of the best skyline photos I have seen.

Out of Iraq: photos from yesterday

Washington:

San Francisco:



Seattle:



Sarasota:



Austin:



Houston:

Sunday Funnies

Cold, wet bloggerhea

-- Shelia Jackson Lee is hosting "Iraq War Summit: What Next?" today in downtown Houston. The conference will be followed by a silent march.

-- the Discovery Channel scoops CNN relative to an old story: that TWA 800 was brought down by a missle and not a spark in the gas tank. I've always thought that the biggest argument against any conspiracy theory is preventing someone from talking to Mike Wallace (or writing an expose') years later. Keeping hundreds of military personnel quiet -- after retirement -- ten years after seems far-fetched to me. Yet Kristina Borjesson wrote that book almost five years ago.

See, this isn't about a plane crash; it's about a coverup by the corporate media.

Ted Kennedy asks his Republican colleagues: "What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?" Watch it:



This would be an excellent question to ask our two miserable excuses for Senators from Texas, who have been filibustering the minimum wage bill.

-- Molly Ivins has been hospitalized in her continuing struggle against breast cancer. My family, as some may recall, is going through the same thing at the moment. My advice to Molly fans: say a little prayer (or whatever you say in this circumstance).

-- the Scooter Libby/CIA leak trail has been diligently live-blogged and summarized by Jane and Christy at firedoglake. Here's the two most recent entries. The end of the week's two revelations were: a) Scooter being thrown under the bus by Cathie Martin, former Cheney spokeswoman (and current deputy communications director for the president) ; and b) Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett have been subpoened to testify.

-- The Iraq escalation will 'work' this time, according to the president, because he "told them it had to."

Really.

It's not even clear who he is referring to when he says "them". Is it the generals? the Iraqis? I no longer believe it's alcoholism affecting his thinking. The president is just plain delusional.

Help Lara Logan

From: lara logan
Subject: help

The story below only appeared on our CBS website and was not aired on CBS. It is a story that is largely being ignored, even though this istakingplace verysingle (sic) day in central Baghdad, two blocks from where our office is located.

Our crew had to be pulled out because we got a call saying they were about to be killed, and on their way out, a civilian man was shot dead in front of them as they ran.

I would be very grateful if any of you have a chance to watch this story and pass the link on to as many people you know as possible. It should be seen. And people should know about this.

If anyone has time to send a comment to CBS – about the story – not about my request, then that would help highlight that people are interested and this is not too gruesome to air, but rather too important to ignore.

Many, many thanks.

(Work-safe but not child-safe)

Hat tip to Matt Stoller.

Belatedly linking for choice

Since I'm tardy here are few of my favorite postings from others:



Agonist (Ian Welsh):

... (C)hoice is non-negotiable issue for me. I've been pro-choice ever since I first thought about the issue as a teenager.

The reason is elemental, as it is on both sides. If I were a woman, I would want to have the choice available to me. I would want to control my body. Without that ability to control her own body, a woman loses a certain amount of freedom.

MyDD (Matt Stoller):

The right to an abortion is about the right for women to control their own lives, and I won't accept any arguments that suggest that women shouldn't have the right to make very personal decisions or should have to make them in some sort of legal jeopardy. That's just immoral. I'm all for legislation reducing the number of abortions through legal assistance, economic help, and sex education, though I would point out that these tend to decrease all social ills and so I would support them for other reasons as well. But anything that makes the state sanction abortion as anything but an intensely private choice by women (and men to a lesser extent) in a vulnerable and difficult position in their lives is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Digby:

I come at it first from a fundamental belief in civil liberties. It's clear what the "right to life" agenda is and it has nothing to do with the fetus these people pretend to care so much for (until its born.) It has to do with sexual behavior. ... I'm a big believer in the fundamental argument which is that if women don't own their own bodies they are not free. It's just that simple.

My Left Wing (Lilian M. Friedberg):

When my mother was "forced"--not once, not twice, but three times at least--to bring a child into the world which she could not feed, there were no aspirations to be abandoned, no childhood dreams to be shattered, no adolescence or naiveté to be lost: that had already gone down the tubes when she became the primary breadwinner in the family as a teenager--waitressing and cleaning houses to feed and clothe her younger siblings.

I was also the product of rape. Marital rape. It must have been a very difficult decision for my mother: this child, to keep or not to keep. She kept. Even though she could not afford it. Even though she must have known what she was keeping was a lifetime reminder of rape--and of her own inability to "provide"--for yet another "unwanted child".

We both bore the scars of that decision-and to this day, I cannot tell you whether her decision was right. I've written about it ; many a time.

Mahablog:

Not one pro-life organization in the United States that supports the use of contraception? If you cruise around their web sites, you see that even those groups that don’t explicitly oppose the use of birth control don’t support it, either. For example, you can search the National Right to Life web site for a kind word on the responsible use of birth control until you turn purple; it isn’t there. But as Cristina Page documents, many state chapters have taken firms stands in opposition to any form of birth control.

Is there a corresponding degree of fanaticism on the pro-legality side? Not that I have found. No pro-legality association suggests that abortions should be forced on women who don’t want them. No pro-legality group I know of advocates abandoning the gestational limits on elective abortion set by Roe v. Wade. Not NARAL, not Planned Parenthood, not any of their affiliates. Instead, “legals” work to preserve the legal rights outlined in Roe v. Wade. And Roe v. Wade allows states to ban late-term elective abortions and place some restrictions on mid-term abortions. The notion that Roe v. Wade allows a woman to waltz into an abortion clinic and terminate a third-trimester pregnancy just because she feels like it is not, and never has been, true. Yet pro-legality organizations often are accused of being just as absolutist and extremist ...

Norbizness (from two years ago):

As a uterus-free person, this may be my first and last post on Roe v. Wade, but the disingenuous, historically fallacious, and insulting column by David Brooks (other comments here) required a little clean-up and attention. ...

When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate.

First of all, I live in Texas. In this, the year of our Lord 2005, we are trying to rip foster children from the loving homes that gay and bisexual couples are providing for them. I'm pretty sure that the 14 million women in this state would be enjoying no such right, nor would they be getting bus vouchers for the nearest state that would (California? Iowa?). The idea that the religious right would have never developed as a political force in the absence of Roe v. Wade is absolutely nuts; they were there all along and would have fought state-by-state to assert their political power.

Planned Parenthood's Lobby Day at the Texas Capitol is February 28.

Please don't scare me like that again