Bush's top female enabler

[donsu]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/09/07/condi_rice/index_np.html


Bush's top female enabler
Like Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers, Condi Rice dotes on her boss and shields him from critics. Meanwhile, the State Department suffers neglect.


About two weeks after the 2004 presidential election, on Nov. 13, the British Embassy in Washington held a surprise 50th birthday party for Condoleezza Rice. Upon her arrival ambassador David Manning presented her with a red Oscar de la Renta-designed gown for which the embassy staff had managed to secure the "state secret" of her size. When Rice changed into the dress and emerged like Cinderella she was met by her Prince Charming, dressed in a tuxedo, the man she once called "my husband," President Bush.

At the State Department's senior policy meeting the following Monday, an official remarked about the red dress, "It gives new meaning to 'they have your number.'" The next day Bush announced his appointment of his national security advisor as his new secretary of state.

-snip-

Rice so jealously guards her relationship that her former deputy at the State Department, Robert Zoellick, left after only about a year in his post, feeling himself excluded from playing a serious part in foreign policy decision making. Since his resignation in June, there has been no replacement or mention of one. After observing Zoellick's frustration, no serious person wishes to get between Rice and her object of affection, and as a result there is no one in charge of running the State Department on a day-to-day basis.

-snip-

This May, as the situation in Iraq drastically worsened, Rice directed the senior staff that she wants no more reporting from U.S. embassies. She announced in the meeting, according to one participant, that people write memos only for each other and that no one else reads them. She said she didn't and wouldn't read them. Instead of writing reports, the diplomats should "sell America," she insisted. "We are salesmen for America!"

-snip-

But the more delirious the rhetoric, the more hollow the policy. "There is no plan for Iraq," a senior national security official with the highest intelligence clearance and access to the relevant memos told me. "There is no plan. No plan."
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but we do have a Oscar de la Renta red dress

a much more dangerous dress then a blue one

SOS SOS the criminally insane are in charge of the united states

[WCGreen]

1. Boy that Condi would make a good president.....

He He HE HE.....

[pooja]

2. Awe, someone please post the picture?

[AnneD]

3. Red ....

the traditional colour for.....er well...uh.....

[Benhurst]

4. I used to be an Anglophile.

I want to thank Tony Blair for curing me.

For the past six years, I've even found myself blurting out "Vive la France!" for no apparent reason.

Thanks, Tony. I never could have done it without you.

[Supersedeas]

5. oh, Zoe was all about analyzing 'historical' documents--who has time?