NYT: With Rumsfeld Gone, Critics of War Look to Rice

[deminks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/washington/04rice.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — For six years, first as national security adviser and then as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice worked under the cover of a very effective shield: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was the administration’s lightning rod for criticism over its handling of Iraq.

But in recent weeks, with Mr. Rumsfeld gone, Ms. Rice has faced increased, and somewhat unfamiliar, criticism. At a Senate hearing on Jan. 11, she confronted a wall of opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats. During hearings this week on Iraq, several of her predecessors were pointed in their disapproval of her job performance.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III took issue with Ms. Rice’s refusal to engage Syria diplomatically. Back in his day, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “We practiced diplomacy full time, and it paid off.”

This week, Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, released three letters demanding that Ms. Rice make public the administration’s requirements for actions to be taken by the Iraqi government to earn continued American support. Along with the letters, and Ms. Rice’s reply — which indicated that the Iraqis had already missed most of the benchmarks — the senators also released an irate statement.

[Joanne98]

1. AL-QUEDA: DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN THE UNITED STATES!

[Igel]

2. Do you think Baker's referring to the Taif Agreement?

So many problems were postponed from the late '80s and early '90s. They weren't resolved, alas.

[gratuitous]

3. You meanies! Don't yell at Dr. Rice

She's just a girl!

What kind of bullshit is this? Dr. Rice is in the big chair, she's the Secretary of State. That translates to "unfamiliar" criticism and the implication that it's somehow unfair that she's held to some kind of standard and accountability. The article goes on and on about how bad Dr. Rice feels when people say mean things about her (like, she's totally incompetent, in so far over her head that drowning in the Marianas Trench would be a step up), but not a word about how she's actually going to do her job as the head of the State Department.

[teryang]

4. These elected hypocrites should criticize themselves...

...get off their asses and cut off the finances for war.

[peacetalksforall]

5. Do you remember the part of Joseph Wilson's history - he was

the Charge d'Affaires in Iraq before Iraq War I. He was the last person to attempt to negotiate with Hussein. He was doing his job as an employee of the people in the State Deparment.

Rice is not doing her part for the people. Doesn't represent us to the world.

Rice only works for the oil companies and affiliated people.

"For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council."

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm

[Erika]

6. This war has always been about oil

and Condi represents oil.

[SquireJons]

7. It's about f#!%ing time

Rice has got to be the most inept cabinet official in my life time. She's not a real Secretary of State, like Albright nor was she really the National Security Advisor. She has always been window dressing for the administration. In either of her cabinat positions, she never had any influence over policy, either in her role as NSA or Secretary o State. She has no authority and as far as one can tell from her public statements, no ideas at all. She is a complete bust and a doormat. In many ways, she is the anti-example of minorities in government. Right up there with Clarance Thomas.

What kills me is that her six abysmal years in office, where she has accomplished nothing and presided over unprecedented failure and catastrophe, has many wingnuts wanting her to run for president.

President? On that record of failure and ineptitude? It seems the very notion of having competent people in positions of responsibility is at best quaint, to rebublicans these days.

Rice allowed herself to be used as a sewer pipe of propaganda during the run up to the invasion. As far as I'm concerned, Rice is a war criminal.

[sendero]

8. "somewhat unfair"?

The fact that this platitude-spouting intellectual lightweight is still at her post is what is unfair.

She is second only to Bush himself in her abject inability to say anything with any meaning, truth or insight whatsoever.

Maybe she knows something about the old Soviet Union, but her comments make it abundantly clear she knows nothing at all about the Middle East and she is in way, way, way over her head.