Bailing Sideways: Colin "What Doctrine?" Powell
Failing Upwards: Condoleeza "two lines" Rice

CNN

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has submitted his resignation to President Bush, the White House said on Monday.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is the "likely" choice to succeed Powell, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

Rice is "the president's choice," and an announcement is likely this week, another senior U.S. official said.

Hey, It's "The CEO Administration.™" The parody wouldn't be complete without the requisite "failing upwards." Condi's a Peter Principal®!

04.09.04

RICE: Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum -- I remember it as being only a line or two -- that there were Al Qaeda cells in the United States.



Fineman, MSNBC:

Does Rice really know her role?
How national security adviser's testimony hurt Bush

...A self-proclaimed expert at understanding "structural" change in large institutions, Rice wasn't aware — may still not be aware — that the nature of her job had changed by the time she took over as national security adviser in January 2001. Reared in the Cold War era, she saw herself following in the footsteps of Henry Kissinger. "National security" was largely a matter of global state-to-state diplomacy.

In fact, as her predecessor in effect warned her when he was turning over the keys, the model was no longer so much Kissinger as it was, say, Elliott Ness or J. Edgar Hoover...

Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, she acted as though the question was an odd one: It wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.

Guardian

Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row

A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq.

Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz....

Oh yeah, The grown-ups are in charge.

Worse than a crime, it was a blunder. - Talleyrand