This Is Scary

Check out this exchange between Charlie Rose and Condi Rice. From Think Progress:

ROSE: I sense — and you can tell me this is absolutely wrong — that the Administration and you as the point person are looking for a strategy for the United States to exit from Iraq.

RICE: No, we’re looking for a strategy that is going to do what we went there to do, which is to help the Iraqis create a more stable environment, lay a foundation for democracy and national reconciliation to evolve in Iraq, and to leave an Iraq or to have an Iraq that is able to defend itself and secure itself.

[…]

RICE: So our friends in the neighborhood need to know and the Iraqis need to know that we are not looking to leave Iraq. That’s not why this President went into Iraq and it’s not how –

ROSE: Ever?

RICE: Charlie, we are not going to leave an Iraq that is not capable of defending itself and with a foundation for future reconciliation.

ROSE: Do you believe you’ll have the support of the American people to do that?

RICE: I think that the American people are looking for progress and so are we.

[…]

ROSE: But nobody can answer the question: If it doesn’t happen, what?

RICE: Charlie, because as the President said to you, we’re focused on having it happen.

Yea, don't worry Charlie, We've got the number one fuck-up in the free world, George Bush, on the case, and nothing he ever touches turns to shit.

To make a baseball analogy, if George was the manager of the '27 Yankees, he could have brought that team in for a last place finish, and that would have been hard to do. But George Bush understands that things are hard to do, I've heard him say so.

So, no Charlie, we're never leaving, but we did just get a great deal on body bags.

Human Rights Abuse Report

The US has released its annual Human Rights Abuse Report. Sadly, it does not address our own abuses thus making the report less effective in its efforts to portray the abuses committed by other governments.

Even worse, Condi Rice came out with this bullshit statement to justify the report's lack of self-examination. "We do not issue these reports because we think ourselves perfect but rather because we know ourselves to be deeply imperfect," said Rice.

The statement seems to say, yea, we do it too, but look over there. That is even worse than what we are doing. The only problem with this approach is that we are fully capable of stopping what we are doing, if only Rice and the rest of the administration would put down their foot and stop it. They refuse to do so.

There really isn't a lot we can do to stop human rights abuses in some of the worse offenders, but the one thing we can do is take the moral high ground and attempt to shame these offenders in the eyes of the world. Unfortunately, under this administration, we have lost that moral high ground and it could very well take years to get that back.

Bush Administration: Worst Foreign Policy Team Ever Assembled

Not content with fucking up American diplomacy, the Bush administration is now meddling into possible diplomacy between other sovereign nations. From Haaretz:

The United States demanded that Israel desist from even exploratory contacts with Syria, of the sort that would test whether Damascus is serious in its declared intentions to hold peace talks with Israel.

In meetings with Israeli officials recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was forceful in expressing Washington's view on the matter.

The American argument is that even "exploratory talks" would be considered a prize in Damascus, whose policy and actions continue to undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and the functioning of its government, while it also continues to stir unrest in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. presence there.

It is also known that Syria, like Iran, continues to provide Hezbollah with arms and equipment.

According to senior Israeli officials, the American position vis-a-vis Syria, as it was expressed by the secretary of state, reflects a hardening of attitudes.

When Israeli officials asked Secretary Rice about the possibility of exploring the seriousness of Syria in its calls for peace talks, her response was unequivocal: Don't even think about it.

Well now, we can't have Israel even raise the possibility of successful diplomacy where the Bush administration is incapable of achieving any. That would be a loss for the Bushies and we can't have that. There may be something a little more sinister at work here, though.

I'm not sure who pushed this story up into the press. It could be more hawkish members of the Israeli government, or ours, or both. The intent is clear, however. That intent is to emasculate Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Consider it mission accomplished.

Olmert has taken heat since last summer's war with Hezbollah in which by most accounts would be considered a loss, although I would consider it a tactical draw. I think most neoconservatives view even the possibility of negations between Syria and Israel as the latter suing for peace, thus forwarding a weak posture. I disagree.

Syria actually put forth the olive branch, whether disingenuous or not. It behooves both to see if some compromise can be made, because these two countries are going to eventually have to learn to live together, or mutually destroy each other. Both actually have WMD, chemical for Syria, nuclear for Israel. They both also have an interloper creating an impasse for peace, that being the Bush administration. If I were the Israelis, I'd tell Condi to go to hell.

Found via TPM

Throwing My Hat In The Ring

I hereby do, on this day, November 28th of the year 2006, announce my candidacy for Time magazine's Man / Person of the Year. What have I done to deserve the award? Arguably, not much. Actually, it isn't even arguable, I haven't done much. But, if Time is indeed considering Condi Rice for the award as CNN was reporting this morning, then I as well deserve consideration.

Perhaps we should take a look back on the Princess of Foggy Bottom's year and try to figure out why she should deserve consideration.

Well, there was her input into the war between Hizbollah and Israel. No wait, she was simply and roundly dismissed by all parties involved in the conflict. Condi was utterly hapless in all her attempts to get both sides to listen to her, and by proxy, the United States of America.

While we are in the region, how's the Road Map For Peace progressing in the Palestinian conflict? Haven't heard much about that this year, have you?

Skipping to the south side of the Mediterranean, did Condi manage to get anything accomplished in Darfur? Nope, I had to endure the umpteenth Nicholas Kristof article in Sunday's New York Times where a young woman was gang raped while searching for firewood. Completely off-topic, but can we seriously get these people some fucking Kingsford? It's maddening.

Oh wait, I almost forgot our stunning success with North Korea. All they did this year was defy convention after convention in setting off missiles on the Fourth of July and attempting to detonate a nuclear device. Luckily, our own failures were only exceeded by Kim Jong-Il's.

As for Iraq, well, she doesn't even get to play in that room.

It's quite possible that statesmanship in the world hasn't been at this low a point since WWII, so why in the world does Rice deserve consideration for Person of the Year? She is an absolute failure among failures in the White House. Even George Bush managed to get to first base with Angela Merkel, although if Rice would have been in that saddle I expect she would have went a little lower.

Thus, I conclude that I am at least as deserving of the award and demand my own consideration.