B143-DES92
Condoleezza Rice: 21st Century Sally Hemings or Alfred E. Neuman?
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 4/17/04
Perhaps it’s just me, but after watching National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission I was struck by the
fact that despite her impressive c.v. the woman is just plain dumb. Quick funny-
What do the Bush Administration & New York City Transit Authority have in
common? Answer- They both rely on tokens. Yes, we know about the Bush
family’s favorite ‘boy’- Colin Powell. But, let’s face it, his manhood
has been placed in a blind trust ever since he privately started grumbling late
last year that he was made to look like a fool when all he testified to the UN
before the 2nd Gulf War turned out to be untrue. Powell has been none
too secretly placed ‘out of the loop’ in regards to most matters. That left
an opening for another of the Bush administration’s trained ‘Negroes’ to
step in- & this time they hit the jackpot! Old Condo is black- & a
woman! Plus, she’s willing to have just about any puppetmaster stick their
hand up her dress.
Watching Condo perform before the 9/11 Commission was entertaining. Yes,
she’s not that bright, but she can be trained like few other Bush dogs can.
When Republican Commissioners lobbed her softball questions Condo was concise
& often had a yes or no answer pat. When Democrats asked her more probing
questions Condo did like a good quarterback whose team has the lead & the
ball & simply ran out the clock with circuitous & vague answers- for
each Commissioner only had 10 minutes to query. Former Democratic Senator Bob
Kerrey was correct when he accused her of filibustering rather than answering.
The Bush administration still views 9/11 & its aftermath as a game- not a
real-life tragedy.
Still, what was revealed by the prior testimony of ex-Terrorism Czar
Richard Clarke & ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was Condo’s own
utter incompetence regarding National Security issues. When she claimed that she
gave directives down to FBI field offices, only to have them state no such
directives were given, & after providing no proof that she ever gave such
orders, instead of admitting her deception Condo fobbed it off on the FBI’s
inability to carry out non-existent directives. Pre-9/11 it also is now clear
that Condo & Bush were far more interested in outmoded Star Wars-style
missile defense programs than Al Quaida. Yet, the lies that the Bushies were
‘all over’ Al Quaida from Day 1 were perpetrated long afterwards. Here’s
Condo on 5/16/02: ‘I
don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an
airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it
into the Pentagon....that
they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a
missile.’ Yet, we now know
conclusively that plans for hijacking planes & using hostages as bargaining
chips to release US-held terrorists were known by the administration. This,
however, was not deemed a priority.
Other than
Clarke & O’Neill other former Bushies have blown the whistle on Condo
& Co. Despite stating prior to Gulf War 2 that the US sought peaceful
resolutions to the ‘situation’ in Iraq it’s now clear that this was all a
lie. Ex-State Department Planner Richard Haas said a March 2003 New Yorker
piece, when asked when he knew the country was gonna invade Iraq he replied, ‘The
moment was the first week of July (in 2002), when I had a meeting with Condi.
I raised this issue about were we really sure that we wanted to put Iraq front
and center at this point, given the war on terrorism and other issues. And
she said, essentially, that that decision's been made, don't waste your breath. And
that was early July. So then when Powell had his famous dinner with the
President, in early August, 2002 the agenda was not whether Iraq, but how.’
Toss in the now obvious lies about WMD (although it could be argued they had
good reason to think saddam still had them since Reagan & Bush-Daddy gave
him plenty of them in the 1980s), the faked intelligence reports by Britain,
& it seems Condo has spent 3+ years doing exactly what? It certainly
hasn’t been securing the nation.
This is where
Sally Hemings comes in. She, of course, was President Thomas Jefferson’s slave
& mistress, as well as mother of at least 1 of his children. For years
Jefferson denied their liaison until genetics recently proved that he most
likely did father at least 1 of her kids. Ok, now we have Condo Rice- a woman
who seems to have, bizarrely, whet the sexual appetites of quite a few Right
Wingers I know- men whose miscegenatory fantasies find release in this woman. Why
is that bizarre? Well, given her gap-toothed dentition, speckled mien, &
really odd grin throughout her testimony (I mean, this was a somber event,
not a place where smiles should abound- yet why was she so scowl-faced at the
President’s 4/13/04 speech/press conference?) I realized she was merely a
darker, breasted Alfred E. Neuman- the cover boy from MAD magazine. Yet,
why would that not deter so many Rightists from their desire for her? Not to
mention why would the Bushies tolerate her incompetence?
I can only conclude that the answer to that is that there is more between
W & Condo than is being let on. Think Sally Hemings. After all, this is no
intellectual giant we’re talking about. Not that I have anything good to say
about predecessors in her position such as Henry Kissinger- but, let’s face
it, as slimy as old Hank was the man was devilishly good at political
gamesmanship & strategy. Condo is sort of a dull history teacher from Junior
High- sort of like that teacher from the old Wonder Years tv show who
droned on in a monotone while conducting a slide show. Oh, & did I mention
that like VP Dick Cheney old Condo had huge ties to Big Oil? Chevron- a
former employer- even named a tanker after her. That’s enough to get even a
good old boy like W’s engines running.
Yet, I- & most of the country- are left after both Condo’s 4/8/04
testimony & Bush’s 4/14/04 speech & news conference with a plethora of
questions that are unanswered in regards to the last few years’ incidents.
Among them are:
1) Why was the Administration so focused on 20th Century Cold War era policies of National Defense & not on the 21st Century threat of terrorism?
2) Why did Bush & Co. ignore Al Quaida for so long, then knowingly drag us into a war in Iraq- which had nothing to do with Al Quaida- if not for the war profiteering that is going on now by companies like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton?
3) Knowing the Taliban’s ties to Al Quaida, why didn’t the Administration do more pre-9/11 to remove the Taliban from Afghanistan? & why has it allowed the Taliban to creep back into positions of power in that country?
4) Why did the Administration evacuate Bin Laden’s family members from the US right after 9/11 without so much as a single interview, yet 100s of other innocent Arabs were detained without warrant?
5)
Why has there yet to be a single, comprehensive Marshall Plan-like idea
for Iraq put forth by the Administration despite having been focused on Iraq
since 9/12/01?
The manifest failure of Condo in her duties, had they occurred during Clinton’s terms, would have been roundly ridiculed by the dominant Right Wing Media Elite, & alarums for her dismissal would have abounded. Yet, here they are treated as blithely as a Janet Jackson ‘wardrobe malfunction’. So now that we know to Right Wingers that being good in her office is not critical to Condo’s survival, just where does her being good at something count? Hello Sally Hemings!
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