why Condi Rice shakes her head

The question: Did Rice ask for all this unprecedented power? Or was someone assigning power to her (a newbie and naif) to keep it away from others?


February 13, 2001: Interagency Counterterrorism Communications Now Channeled Through Rice President Bush issues a little-noticed directive that dramatically changes the way information flows among top Bush administration officials. It states that attendees of National Security Council (NSC) meetings shall continue to include the president, vice president, secretary of state, treasury secretary, defense secretary, CIA director, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and assistant to the president for national security affairs. However, other officials, including the “heads of other executive departments and agencies, as well as other senior officials” are excluded from the automatic right to attend NSC meetings. Instead, they “shall be invited to attend meetings of the NSC when appropriate.” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is given a pivotal position. In addition to attending all NSC meetings, she is responsible for determining the agenda of all the meetings. The directive also states, “The existing system of Interagency Working Groups is abolished.” Instead, Rice will coordinate a series of eleven new interagency coordination committees within the NSC. She is designated the executive secretary of all eleven committees, meaning that she will schedule the meetings and determine agendas. She is made chairperson of six of the committees, including “Counter-Terrorism and National Preparedness,” “Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence,” and “Records Access and Information Security.” Professor Margie Burns will later ask rhetorically, “How could the White House ever have thought that abolishing the interagency work groups was a good idea, if security was the objective? Why was so much responsibility placed on the shoulders of one person, Condoleezza Rice, whose previous experience had been at Stanford University and Chevron?”


Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, National Security Council, Margie Burns, George W. Bush
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=george_w._bush

the press to showcase her Channel suits and Ferragamo shoes. Remember she went shopping when New Orleans was devastated by Katrina and people were dying.

...awesome and unprecedented power came responsibility for whatever happened?

Consider first her highly educated background that gives her an encyclopedic database of knowledge from which to choose her words. That would be very useful as a political analyst or cabinet official if it weren't for one thing. She has the same personality, charisma, and ability to see grey areas as a pocket calculator.

Often touted as a trained concert pianist, I've heard her play on TV. She has all the skill of a player piano, accurately hitting each note on perfect cue without adding any emotion or embellishment. In other words, she lacks the soul of a good musician and is unable to do anything other than sight read to the best of her ability.

In her miscast role of Secretary of State she quickly found herself in over her head for the very same reason. Her negotiating duties lacked the required diplomacy and tact that is an obvious prerequisite of the job. Bush may just as well named an iPad preloaded with talking points, demands, and ultimatums to send out as a global diplomat representing American interests.

Rice was much more suited for her previous duty as head of the NSA where analytic minds pick apart at data on an endless daily basis and prepare mind numbing reports of facts and figures. Something befitting a robot.

was not what was needed ten years after it ceased to exist. But then again, you would think she would have had some grasp of "Containment".

It was an example of Bush's random appointment by loyalty instead of expertise. Many more miscasts were evident in the eight years:

Powell as Secretary of State instead of defense.
Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary instead of dept of Prisons.
Paulson as Treasury Secretary instead of routine building maintainence.
Rove as Head of Political Affairs instead of Bureau of Waste Management.

I'm seeing her as the figurehead on the bow of a big old ship -- the carved maiden.

choice for the most powerful Undersecretary of State position. Douglas Feith and other Cheney cronies/henchmen with philosophies like Bolton's were running their own special intel shop in the DoD, circumventing even the CIA.

Condi was clueless window dressing for National Security and when she became SoS after Powell, remained clueless for the most part, although she did have the sense to begin listening to people who were not ideological zealots and who knew what they were talking about towards the end of her SoS tenure. Because Bush II really did trust her, that was one source of the rift between Bush II & Cheney towards the end of II's second term.

Powell seems to have regretted how he let himself be used by the warmongers, although not nearly enough, IMO. I'm not sure whether Condi ever "got" it completely. But she did manage to prevent the Cheney-Bolton faction's favorite wet dream once Saddam Hussein was out of the picture, i.e., war with Iran. And for that, I for one, thank her.

The Chicago Tribune, among other prominent papers, mentions that Rice
"wrote her doctoral thesis on the Czechoslovakian army and its
relationship with the Soviet Union." (Bush Taps Rice for State:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0411170278nov17,1,2506435.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-utl&ctrack=1&cset=true )

That thesis was rife with gross errors in chronology, IIRC she had the President of Czechoslovakia in the country at a time that he was in fact in Paris and no longer in power.

The Russians never took her seriously. She was a shill.

Think of the possibilities: She could attack the NBA after accusing it of having WMD! :/

(I just made myself throw up a little in my mouth.)

...for the fact that she was his concubine.