>>It's hard to imagine that the famously loyal Bush would hand Rice the public humiliation of a devotion<<

That has already graced the pages of the supermarket tabloids.

...is the reason these idiots are beginning to attack Ms.Rice.I am no fan,but these neocon fools think she isn't aggresive enough?Is she not following them to their eschatological goals?Conflagrate the Middle East and Jesus comes...This is just madness...Madness.

Rice is merely one of the arms of Shiva the destroyer. The PNAC blames Rice for a "blink" in Bush foreign policy... truth is, the policy itself is a demonstrated failure. The Middle East is destabilized without Saddam (for all ihs faults) buffering Iran, and contrary to Bush's past rhetoric, America and the world are NOT safer.

Putting this on Rice's shoulders is disingenuous. The fault goes with the administration of her husband, er, the President.

Rice is one of the more "competent" members of this administration. How do you justify firing her? Besides, isn't Bush the "decider"? I thought she was more or less his puppet, anyway. Same thing with Rumsfeld. Sure he's an idiot, but at least he has the resumé. You can't say that for many other people in the White House. Especially the president. How does someone so supremely unqualified for his job fire an employee for incompetence?

The person Dick Cheney would love to have as Secretary of State is his daughter, Elizabeth. Cheney hates the State Department and always has. He sees them as a bunch of namby-pamby wimps while he, Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense, is a real he-man. Listen to what Cheney had to say about diplomats in a speech before the Cato Institute in June of 1998, when he was the actual CEO of Halliburton (instead of the position he holds today, that of Shadow CEO of Halliburton):

"I think it is a false dichotomy to be told that we have to choose between "commercial" interests and other interests that the United States might have in a particular country or region around the world. Oftentimes the absolute best way to advance human rights and the cause of freedom or the development of democratic institutions is through the active involvement of American businesses. Investment and trade can oftentimes do more to open up a society and to create opportunity for a society's citizens than reams of diplomatic cables from our State Department"

He also hates the idea of imposing sanctions on countries, because in his mind, sanctions don't work. What works is American businessmen, American corporations going around the world and instilling democracy via business deals with American companies. Listen to his further musings on how to properly run the world:

"What I've tried to do today is make the policy case against sanctions. They don't work. And as long as they don't work I think it is important for us to continue to remind people that we need to have some concern for the efficacy of policy before we advocate it as something the United States ought to pursue. I think it is important for us to recognize as a nation the enormous value of having American businesses engaged around the world. To recognize that engagement does more to encourage democracy and freedom, to open up societies, to create opportunities for millions of people who up until now have not been able to participate, than just about anything else we can do. We should look upon the capacities and capabilities and the desire of American businesses to be involved around the world as a valuable asset and not as a club that we can use to punish those who disagree with policies or goals or objectives of the United States."

Ah yes, the US corporation as world savior. And what better way to have the US impose its democratic business deals on the world then to first have corporations partner with our armed forces and later - ever so insidiously - have those corporations take over the armed forces?

Couldn't happen here, could it?

(sarcasm)

Anyway, Cheney installed his daughter Elizabeth over at the State Department soon after the Supreme Court handed the reins of power over to him and Junior. He made up an entirely new office "The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs", for dear daughter. She was placed there, as Colin Powell's friends will tell you, not just to direct Middle Eastern policy (because it is the Middle East, not the "Near East" Liz concentrates on), but to function as Dick Cheney's eyes and ears at State, ratting on those who disagree with neocon values. Liz was later promoted to "Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives".

Oh.... and Liz Cheney is also head of the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), a unit within the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs which has an $80 million budget to promote democracy in Iran and to develop administration policy for Iran and Syria.

Liz Cheney's husband, Philip Perry, is the General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, functioning as Dick Cheney's eyes and ears over there.

Dick's Deferment Baby sure came in handy, didn't she?

That said, I find it surprising that Condi Rice would anger Cheney. She knows the score over at the State Department; she'd have to be a complete idiot not to. I believe she is probably the next best thing to having Liz Cheney in charge as far as Dick is concerned. So I wouldn't be surprised if this "fire Condi" stuff is nothing but chatter... a diversion thrown out to conservatives and to the media's DC watchers. You know, like staff meetings where the staff is allowed to vent and backbite to management, and go away feeling as if something happened and that something will change, when in fact nothing happened and nothing will change. I think they're just blowing off a little steam. Unless Cheney really does want Condi out and Liz in.

Condi is going to get dumped for "insufficiently aggressive" diplomacy? She helped make a mess of Iraq, but that wasn't caused by being insufficiently aggressive. If she is supposed to be more aggressive with Iran, then we must be headed for war there too. But as a diplomat, Condi's main problem is that nobody in the world believes that we will invade Iran any time soon. As long as we're bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military is stretched to its limits. The Iranians know it, so they're giving us the finger. That's the central failure and irony of the Bush Administration's foreign policy-- they fabricated the case for WMD's in Iraq, and so exposed us all to the real threat of WMD's produced by Iran and North Korea. Condi deserves a healthy share of the blame, but the real culprits are Cheney and Rumsfeld.