Et Tu, Condi?

We've gotten all this talk over the last few years from various members of the Bush Regime about how the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was the correct one and that anyone who says otherwise is a traitor. And that's one of the reasons why I found Karl Rove's recent attempt to blame Congress for the Iraq Catastrophe so interesting. I mean, if it was such a great decision to begin with, Karl, then why are you so lamely trying to distance yourself and your former boss from it?

Condi Rice has also engaged in a bit of history re-writing herself. As anyone who occasionally reads this blog knows, I don't have much respect for our current Secretary of State, and this lack of respect on my part pretty much started when Rice uttered her now-infamous statement: "I don't think anybody could have predicted ... that [terrorists] would try to use an airplane as a missile." Of course, there were plenty of pre-911 predictions along these lines. Let's face it, Condi -- you blew it.

It turns out, however, that this wasn't Rice's only attempt to distance herself from her own incompetence. Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, author of The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy, recently revealed on C-Span that after Bush promoted Rice to Secretary of State, she continued her attempts to distract the public from her own miserable performance as National Security Adviser (from Think Progress):

She had a very deliberative public relations strategy when she became Secretary of State to help erase the images of how ineffective she had been as National Security Adviser. And I describe how one of her aides even planted a question with a friendly journalist to ask whether she would be interested in running for president — to give her the aura of someone who might have presidential aspirations, make her seem more powerful than she was.

And that all helped negate American memories over her very direct role in the invasion of Iraq.

I've long thought that all the talk about Rice becoming president was silly in the extreme, so it makes me feel a little better to learn that such talk was all bullshit anyway.