Fried Rice

The evening before her crucial 9/11 testimony, Condi Rice is being questioned on a new front. Former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal argues that Rice "destroyed the Middle East peace process" through her "negligence and incompetence." Blumenthal's Salon.com article is detailed and informative, but essentially sounds like something we've heard before: Bush and Rice fell for the neoconservative agenda, and the "Road Map" political solution was doomed from the outset in the hands of these misguided ideologues.

Here is Blumenthal's scathing conclusion:

The story of the Middle East debacle, like that of the pre-9/11 terrorism fiasco, reveals the inner workings of Bush's White House: The president, aggressive and manipulated, ignorant of his own policies and their consequences, negligent; the secretary of state, prideful, a man of misplaced gratitude, constantly in retreat; the vice president as Richelieu, secretive, conniving, at the head of a neoconservative cabal, the power behind the throne; the national security advisor, seemingly open and even vulnerable, posing as the honest broker, but deceitful and derelict, an underhanded lightweight.

 

Tomorrow's news cycle will be dominated by the increasingly disturbing news from Iraq, as well as Condi Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission. Meanwhile, Bush is still on vacation in Texas...