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Sunday, July 25, 2004

The towering intellect of Condoleeza Rice

is the subject of this post.  How did I choose this topic ? Well as I have mentioned I use
google as a spell chekcer for proper names (<- notice I reelly nede a spel checker).

I searched for Condoleeza Rice (the sister of NSA Condoleezza Rice) and found the following
utterly awesome site.  I hasten to add that, having once been the google certified leading expert on Gulbudin Hekmatyar, I am not snearing.  I don't know who this rotten guy is, but it is well worth pruning the url at least to this

The Condoleeza Rice Bio (headlined Condoleezza Rice) includes the imortal but, alas, no longer unique sentence "However, the only time you're likely to see "towering intellect" and "Condoleeza Rice" in the same sentence is... well, you just read it. "  Being a bit rotten myself, I couldn't resist making that sentence false. 

Also I think that Dr Rice is really smart.  Consider her experience with the 9-11 committee. 
First, it was tentatively agreed that she was covered  by executive priviledge and she was interviewed privately and not under oath.  Then there was a hoo ha and she had to testify publicly under oath.  At least 4 commissioners (the Dems other than the bipartisan and unanimous Lee Hamilton) were very eager to press her on points where they had found her claims other than convincing.  If she repeated her claims she faced criminal liability.  If she refused to repeat them, the amicable discussions about the content of the unanimous bipartisan report would have to be based on the assumption that she had lied.  This is changing the rules in the middle of the game.  Besides the game was she was defending the Bush administration which is impossible.

The result was she came off as cool calm collected and polite while 3 of the 4 abovementioned Democrats came off as rude, aggressive and pushy, because they tried to keep her from running down the clock by taking a full minute to answer a yes or no question with "I don't recall".  In noted contrast, Kerrey mistook her for Richard Clarke.

In particular she and Ben Veniste played the game of he can't quote the August 6th PDB but he can ask her leading questions (leading as in Furher is leader in German).  Dancing on the edge of perjury, she refused to be lead.  Then the ever downwardly loyal Bush administration published the damn thing showing that Ben Veniste's questions were close to reading excerpts a classified document after the words "did the August 6th PDB say. "   That is, again the rules of the game were changed. 

Now I use the words perjury and Condoleezza in the same sentence all the time, but I'm afraid she stayed on this side of the line.  I conclude that Dr Rice is an intellect.  As for towering, just look at her towering over Dick Cheney.

I also liked the bio of George Tenet especially

Tenet performed such important duties as coordinating directives on priorities and directing the oversight of negotiations, not to mention preparing reports on such oversight and indeed coordinating oversight activities, not to mention coordinating the oversight of legislative statutory reporting requirements.
You can clearly see how all this experience would prepare a man for intelligence work. The only active verb to be found anywhere on Tenet's resume was "kiss" and the only subject for that verb was "ass." This particular specialty would, in the final analysis, vault him to the top. 

I don't want to be accusative but I think the author meant "the only direct object for that verb."

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