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I absolutely cannot BELIEVE that the following story hasn't generated more outrage, but my take on it is that this is the last straw with me in my former respect for Condoleezza Rice. I was a HUGE Rice fan, but increasingly I have wondered where the actualy RESULTS have been from any of her work. As National Security Advisor, she utterly failed at managing the divide between State/Powell and Defense/Rumsfeld as Saddam Hussein's regime fell, with tragic consequences. Her diplomacy at State has achieved nothing memorably good on any front I can think of. I have always defended her, but I think I have been wrong (and Mr. Codevilla correct, in one of our issues earlier this year in which he attacked her). Why has her popularity, then, not suffered along with Rummy's and Bush's? It's a mystery.

Anyway, the outrage is from this Al Kamen story in today's Wash Post. The upshot is this: The very same guy at State (Alberto Fernandez) who went on Al-Jazeera and said that Washington had been arrogant and stupid in Iraq has been named the winner of the Edgar R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy. Tufts University chooses the recipient FROM A LIST OF THREE FINALISTS SUBMITTED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT. Read that again: State actually nominated this guy for this prestigious award and its $10,000 check.

If Condi Rice's State Department is truly so utterly stupid as to so highly value a guy who went on Al-Jazeera (Al-Jazeera, fergoshsakes!!!) to criticize his own country, on the dime of you and I the American taxpayers, then Condi not only has not cleaned up State's Augean Stables, but has shoveled more horsesh** INTO the stable doors. This is so outrageous it leaves me spluttering. It goes in the same category as the House GOP re-electing as their leader the same guy who handed out tobacco PAC checks on the House floor (Boehner). And the same category as the idiocy of a GOP-sponsored spending spree for eight straight years, starting in 1998. And so on.

I always have hated the cliche I am about to use, but it is the only one that fits: Is it any wonder whatsoever that the Republicans are known as "the stupid party"?!?!?!?!?!?

topics:
Iraq