I'll admit that a Blumenthal column in The Guardian is something that by its very nature is likely to cast the Bush administration in a negative light. But even if it's tone is expected, this column is still worth reading. For one thing it reminds us of the fact that Condi Rice couldn't organize a one-car parade. And secondly, it's just delicious with a capital D. It's filled with razor-edged criticism. Some highlights:
Posted by armand at December 30, 2004 05:57 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics"The transition to President Bush's second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of I, Claudius."
"At the same time the vice president, Dick Cheney, has imposed his authority over secretary of state designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former under secretary of state to James Baker and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state."
"Words like 'incoherent' come to mind," one top state department official told me about Rice's effort to organise her office. She is unable to assert herself against Cheney, her wobbliness a sign that the state department will mostly be sidelined as a power centre for the next four years."
"Rice has pleaded with Armitage to stay on, but "he colourfully said he would not", a state department official told me.""In private, Baker is scathing about the current occupant of the White House. Now the one indispensable creator of the Bush family political fortunes is repudiated."
"Secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, whose heart beats with the compassion of a crocodile, clings to his job by staging Florence Nightingale-like tableaux of hand-holding of the wounded while declaiming into the desert wind about "victory"".