Condoleeza Rice, United States Secretary of State:
“It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.”
Some days I think they’re actually trying to give Greg Djerejian an aneurysm.
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[…] You wish that I made up the crazy talk in the above paragraph. It makes national leaders look like emotional infants, the kind of knuckle chewing manic you wouldn’t trust alone in a Chuck-E-Cheese. It’s also the simple truth. Condoleeza Rice: […]
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[…] You wish that I made up the crazy talk in the above paragraph. It makes national leaders look like emotional infants, the kind of knuckle chewing manic you wouldn’t trust alone in a Chuck-E-Cheese. It’s also the simple truth. Condoleeza Rice: […]
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[…] You wish that I made up the crazy talk in the above paragraph. It makes national leaders look like emotional infants, the kind of knuckle chewing manic you wouldn’t trust alone in a Chuck-E-Cheese. It’s also the simple truth. Condoleeza Rice: […]
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[…] You wish that I made up the crazy talk in the above paragraph. It makes national leaders look like emotional infants, the kind of knuckle chewing manic you wouldn’t trust alone in a Chuck-E-Cheese. It’s also the simple truth. Condoleeza Rice: […]
cleek
sounds like something a Dilbert manager would say.
Nikki
The perfect description of how this administration operates.
Shygetz
Bad politics, maybe. Bad politics…is she drunk?
Shygetz
Sorry, should read:
Bad politics, maybe. Bad policy…is she drunk?
Third Eye Open
Is this some sort of sick, political “Schrodinger’s cat” theory?
We refuse to discuss the possibility that our plan won’t work…it only emboldens the enemy
Cyrus
So does she actually believe this? Is this what she’s been told to say to go along with Bush? Would she know better if she were analyzing events from a safe distance, but is fumbling and in denial when she finds herself caught in her current position?
Open question: which of the above would be worst?
I’d almost (almost) like to hear Darrell or Filthy’s opinion. Unfortunately, if they comment in this thread at all it’ll very probably be non sequitur after non sequitur. But it would be hilarious, or at the very least educational, to see someone try to defend that statement.
Ryan S.
It’s clear Mr. President, you cannot survive on your wits alone.
Jake
As I said yesterday
If I went camping or hiking using the Dr. Rice Sparkle Fairy Recipe for Success, I’d be dead. I just hope the troops aren’t being forced to follow this hollow-headed approach to combat. Plan a retreat route? Don’t be silly. You want armored vehicles and body armor? Huh, you defeatocrats must be planning to get blown up.
But this explains the “You go to war with the army you have,” perfectly.
p.lukasiak
okay, lets give Condi a break here….
she left out the word “publicly” as in
Matty
better
rachel
Uh… What did she use to do before she went into politics? I can’t think of a single line of work where having a backup plan is unnecessary.
…unless you’re like the Black Knight of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame, for whom failure was just a success that hadn’t happened yet.
The Other Steve
I’m going to start an office pool of on what week Bush’s approval rating hits sub-20
demimondian
p.lukasiak suggests Condi may have pulled a Neil Armstrong, having really meant:
You know — that would actually make sense.
That’s how I know it isn’t right.
ThymeZone
It’s an acceptable twist, p-luk, only if you assume that your audience is passive. If you’re making a second rate made-for-tv movie, or writing a play.
This is a democracy. The people, and their representatives, the congress, are supposed to be active partners in the thing. These meatheads show up with a cockamamie strategy and don’t have a fallback plan to share with us?
Then, they’re done. Get out. Come back when you have one.
That’s pretty basic stuff we’re talking about. Like the commentary here says, you wouldn’t hold a meeting at work, or even go camping, without a plan B.
demimondian
rachel — Dr. Rice is a distinguished political scientist. She cut her teeth as a Kremlinologist.
They didn’t need a backup plan for when they were wrong; they needed one for when they were right. Fortunately, that never happened, so they never tested their plans.
Tim F.
That certainly upgrades the quote from dangerously stupid to only slightly moronic, since it isn’t a particularly bad idea to let people know that you have the retreat covered.
However, I think it means something that these guys really do not plan for failure. Whenever something goes wrong, particularly in Iraq, they seem to get caught utterly flat-footed. I don’t know whether Rice intended it to sound the way it came out. You’re probably right to suggest that she didn’t. But if so I would put it under the classic definition of a gaffe, which is to say a politician accidentally telling the truth.
Keith
Damn, when the Administration said “No” to Plan B, I thought they were talking about the morning after pill.
Mike
That is certainly the ONLY time this Administration tells the truth.
sglover
I think we should commend Sec. Rice for giving us such a useful insight into the thinking that went into our glorious Iraq adventure. You’d never hear Leonid Brezhnev owning up like that. So We’re still better than the USSR! And Saddam’s Iraq! So there!
Mike
What happened to RedState BTW? I tried to check out their opinion after the speech but I keep getting a blank page.
David
If anyone ever thought that the Bush administration has backup plans, Katrina should have eradicated that idea. A levee breach was the worst-case scenario (short of a storm so powerful that it would just squash the city like a bug). It was also unlikely, so “no one anticipated the breach of the levees,” and that was that.
Ryan S.
(snark)Maybe their server imploded from all the bull$#!% they put up(/snark)
chopper
i, for one, would like to suggest that dr. rice take up mountain climbing.
dreggas
Well when every plan and eveything in general is just a success that hasn’t happened yet you don’t need contingency plans.
Zifnab
Or hunting. I hear Cheney knows some great places to shoot.
jenniebee
It’s like they’re applying their sex-ed philosophy to foreign policy: just like condoms encourage people to have sex, having a contingency plan encourages military plans to fail.
To continue the analogy, any contingency plans they might have would probably have holes in it, so what’s the point?
Tsulagi
You’re missing Condi’s logic. The logic that has been the bedrock of this administration through dark times.
The plan never fails. It’s only your perception of its success that can be a failure. As Decider Man said in his speech outlining his plan, your TV screen may show Iraq blowing up and the place turns into a hell hole, but that’s just blinding your perceiving the success story. See, you cannot trust your eyes or brain when judging the plan.
LITBMueller
The Faith-Based Presidency in action! You see, there’s no need to have a contingency plan. God told George this would work. He has faith. So should you CLAP LOUDER!!!!!
ChristieS
Find ’em at redstate.com. The .org doesn’t seem to want to work today.
Punchy
Imagine that….
The Bush effigies in Baghdad are currently under construction…the gasoline and matches will be purchased tomorrow.
p.lukasiak
here is the quote in context…
I think that in context it was a “gaffe”…she was talking about publicly discussing “contingency plans”
That being said, I don’t think there is a “plan B” — that Bushco doesn’t do contingency planning because there are too many “unknown unknowns” for such planning to make any sense. And to a very large extent, they are right. With so much that can go wrong, it impossible to predict what the right action will be when things fall apart.
The problem is that Bushco doesn’t have the kind of flexibility in decisionmaking that makes policy adjustments possible in an appropriate timeframe. Bushco doesn’t do adjustments — Bush waits until there has been catastrophic failure before he considers changing course….
….and while Rice obviously meant “publicly speculate” about a “Plan B” in answer to the questions in the hearings, it is the fact that the word “speculate” is used twice that is damning. While contingency planning itself is speculative, if there was a “plan B” she would have said it was bad policy to discuss “Plan B”, not speculate about “Plan B”.
Andrew
Has anyone actually ever checked up on this?
I’m beginning to think that they found her working at a Waffle House and believed her when she said, “I done know me a lot about them Commies!”
Barry
She’s a schmuck poli junk scientist whose dissertation was panned; her ‘tooth-cutting’ as a Kremlinologist was limited to not forseeing the fall of the USSR.
Punchy
Punchy learned a word today. Really, just putting an “ologist” at the end of sumpin makes that perp an expert? Can I be a boobologist?
Faux News
Hmmm…Two scenarios come to mind:
Iraq is just a flesh wound
or
Brave Sir George marching on with Condi clapping the coconuts
Face
Tim…Mr. Cole…a thread on this??
This blogger is as straight-laced, non-hyperbolic, and measured as they come. He’s also infamous for having solid accurate inside sources. Holy fuck…if true….
demimondian
Only if you have no actual experience with the topic.
Zifnab
Yes.
TenguPhule
Bush Plan A: Flower and Candy Parades.
Bush Plan B: Deny Everything.
Bush Plan C: Blame the Democrats.
Bush Plan D: Let somebody else fix it after you’ve left.
PeterJ
p.lukasiak uttered:
Ok. Since the “Kerry hates the troops” crap, anyone on the right are not allowed to do this. If Ms Rice didn’t say publicly, then she didn’t mean to say it. No matter what. Call it Lex Kerry.
Andrew
I think that boobynotherapist is a rather more rewarding job.
cleek
I tried to check out their opinion after the speech but I keep getting a blank page.
have you been banned there recently? as far as i can tell, they completely blocked my IP addr from seeing their site, after the last time BlammMoe banned me. pussies.
Tony J
And to extend it still further, Operation: SuperSurge Me is El Residente’s application of the Rhythm Method to Iraq.
It hasn’t worked in the past, it will almost certainly achieve the opposite of what you’re hoping for, and it has consequences you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life.
Andrew
But the rhythm method works, some of the time.
Punchy
Zif–
That link. Wow. My first name is (absolutely true) Kevin. Just too damn funny. Or scary.
TenguPhule
Out of sight, out of mind.
Also known as the ostrich defense.
cleek
SuperSurge Me is El Residente’s application of the Rhythm Method to Iraq
or, the Coitus Interruptus method (a.k.a. the withdrawal method): come on baby, just let me leave it in a little longer, i can’t pull out tooo early. yeah. i’m almost done… no, it’ll be fine, trust me, i’m good at this.
Jake
If so she would have trotted out the usual sound bite about keeping it secret lest the enemy du jour discover what it is. Remember, any talk of defeat emboldens…someone.
TenguPhule
Classic throwaway lines.
I’ll pull out in time.
It’s my safe day today.
We have a new plan for victory in Iraq.
Tony J
So does increasing troop numbers, some of the time.
But if the timing is off….
Tony J
Sorry, but I’ve just got this horrible image of Malaki and Bush in a hotel room.
That’s not nice. Where’s the inner-eye bleach?
Krista
Uh-huh. You wrote that one yourself, didn’t you? C’mon…admit it.
Andrew
Sen. Abercrombie (D-HI) on Condi:
Good for him.
Jay C
The career of Dr. Condoleezza Rice, in a nutshell. And who says our Senators can’t come up with concise rhetoric anymore?
TenguPhule
That is merely the birthing pangs of the labor of freedom being contracted from the womb of liberty through the canel of democracy.
Mike
Not as far as I know. The last few times I just looked and didn’t post. I just wanted to get their impressions of the speech. I see that redstate.com is up though per Christie’s suggestion, and it appears that they are still stuck in De Nile. Figures….
Jay C
Speaking of
Bizarro WorldRedState – their site IS up (sorry, cleek, either a browser problem, or you’ve been blammed): check out their vapors over Sen. Abercrombie’s remarks on Condi Rice – “Democrat racism”, in a nutshell: although what Robert Byrd has to do with anything beats me – I notice they have little (if anything) to say in the least about why Dr. Rice is such a splendid SoS as to be immune from criticism; but far be it from me to point that out (I don’t feel like having to duck the blamstick just yet!)elledblu
Oh please. The number of women and black men who “get a pass” or some sort of advantage due to their race or gender is dwarfed by the number of incompetent or mediocre white men who have gotten where they are because they’re white men. (Not to mention the competent ones who get a huge boost simply for walking through the door with a white penis.) I can’t believe people are still spewing this kind of Michael-Douglas-in-“Falling Down” fantasy.
Anyone who can call Condoleeza Rice “the most overrated, underperforming individual in executive authority that I have ever seen.” when George W. Bush is the President of the United States is a racist, sexist fuck. No, liberals, Republicans don’t have a monopoly on racism and sexism.
John S.
I disagree entirely.
Bush certainly is the larger figurehead and has the final say on most matters when it comes to the executive, but as far as the actual job of helping to create foreign policy and forge relationships with other nations goes, the Secretary of State is far more culpable.
If you ask around Washington I think you will find a great many people that share the Senator’s sentiment. There were a lot of high hopes for Rice in her new role (for whatever reason), and thus far she has fallen quite flat. Hell, Dan Quayle may have been a more effective Secretary of State.
While Republicans certainly don’t have a monopoly on racism and sexism, I fail to see that angle in regards to Abercrombie’s remarks.
TenguPhule
No, Abercrombie is not. Rice is simply a hacktackular Fuckup who’s gotten free passes for being a black woman. Critics have had to tread softly because of that, not so with Bush.
Personally, I think this was long overdue and damns her with faint praise.
Invigilator
So seriously then, why does George W. get a pass? As Brad Delong keeps reminding us, the Cossacks work for the Czar!
demimondian
I don’t think that Rice is the most overrated and underperforming SoS ever — we’ve had some real winners in that position over the years, after all — but I do think she’s done a poor job. The nation’s diplomatic corps is imploding; many of our senior foreign service personnel are bailing, and it will take us a generation, at least, to rebuild that expertise. The diminution of the authority of State when compared to Defense is totally demoralizing.
I blame the Secretary for that collapse.
elledblu
If Abercrombie had called Rice a hacktackular fuckup, I would have no problem. But he didn’t. He said she was the most overrated, underperforming individual ever in a pool that includes the likes of George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and (thank you for reminding me John S.) Dan Quayle, among many others. And what about Tenet, Franks, and Bremer receiving the Medal of Freedom?
Further, he brought up the “whole question of race and gender”. If the Executive Branch were a bastion of spectacular accomplishment and supreme qualifications, where people were hired primarily on merit instead of cronyism and loyalty, he might have a point.
By the way, can those of you who agree with him give me some examples of the “free passes” that Rice has been given?
rachel
They made her Secretary of State after her totally non-stellar performance as National Security Advisor.
demimondian
Perhaps I’m confused, but I don’t remember when Quayle was SoS. Can somebody point me at the time interval?
elledblu
Pray tell, who exactly are the stellar performers? Dick Cheney? Was it his stellar performance as Secretary of Defense under Bush I that made Bush II choose him as his running mate? Or maybe Rumsfeld? Was he a stellar performer under Ford?
I’m looking for the “black woman” free passes, not the “Bush crony/loyalist” free passes. Anybody else?
demimondian – I think it was a hypothetical – s/might/may .
TenguPhule
You need to learn how to read politicese. That’s what he said, only politely with sharp knives.
The very fact that Democrats have had to tread very softly in their attacks on her compared to the rest of the Bush scum should clue you in as to the free passes she’s gotten.
Were she white and a man, the Democrats would have verbally slit her guts out long ago instead of waiting for majority power to start taking shots.
John S.
It was a hypothetical musing at who may have been a far less effective SoS.
And while I agree that there have been worse SoS than Rice, I think the convergence of her lackluster performance with the foreign affair situation she presides over amplifies her failings.
Ok, maybe Robert Smith sucked even more as SoS, but I think his shortcomings were far less detrimental to this nation.
jake
Fixed.
*In a strictly non-sexual way of course. Although you know what they say about people with a gap between their top front teeth…
demimondian
Given that Smith was SoS during a small insurgency called the War of 1812, I’m not sure that his incompetence could have picked a worse time to inflict itself on the United States.
The difference, I think, is that Madison was a supremely competent person himself. I’m not inclined to give Gee Dubya Shrubya the same pass.
elledblu
No, I meant: If Abercrombie had called Rice a hacktackular fuckup, instead of the most hacktackular fuckup ever, I would have no problem.
Why have the Democrats “had to tread very softly” with Rice and how does having majority power change this?
jh
Rice is a hack and has been getting the GOP “soft-bigotry of low expectations pass” since her tenure under Reagan.
This noted “Kremlinologist” completely failed to forsee the collapse of the Soviet Union and the most recent updates to her resume include “Failing to heed warnings of imminent attack by Al Qaeda leading up to 9/11”, “Totally Sucking as National Security Adviser”, “Totally Sucking as Sec of State” and “Shopping at Ferragamo whilst her fellow Americans languished in squalor in the wake of hurricane Katrina”.
She is the poster child for cynical Republican tokenism. A mediocrity in almost every respect.
Unlike the late Thurgood Marshall and his ascendency to the Supreme Court, Rice’s career does NOT embody integrity and excellence. Instead it reflects the vacuous narcissism of BAPdom and an unflinching willingness to be a patsy and bagwoman for one of the worst Presidents in history.
As both an African-American and as just a plain old American, I once had high hopes for Condi (and to a similar extent Colin Powell who fell on his own sword rather than have his reputation besmirched any further by this band of crooks) and I have been continuously disappointed by her lackluster performance in both of her appointed positions in this adminstration.
Like Bush, Cheney and the rest of the sorry lot currently in power, history is not going to be very kind to her.