Where are They Now ? No 423 : Condileezza Rice

Well informed, wry and entertaining ,Tony Karon puts the drive by diplomacy of our favourite piano playing expert on Russian cold war stratergery in context on his enjoyable blog.

Birthpangs of a Post-Bush Middle East

"I’ve marveled for some time now at the abundance of unmistakable evidence to the contrary, so much of the mainstream media in the U.S. appears to feel dutybound to parrot Condi Rice’s giddy fantasies about processes underway in the Middle East, and her Administration’s central role in shaping them. For months now we’ve been fed this pile of manure about the U.S. orchestrating a “realignment” in the region, with moderate Sunni Arab states joining with the U.S. and Israel to isolate and confront Iran, Hamas and others Washington dubs “extremists.” Then, last week, as she set out on her umpteenth “Looking Busy” tour of the region, we were served up grand accounts of how Condi was choreographing a complex diplomatic dance aimed at reving the “peace process” (a word that, like “gold standard”, has survived in the media’s lexicon despite the institutions and practises it describes having long passed from the scene)."

Condi's free ride in the Middle East Asia Times 5/4/07

Another detailed piece in which he unpick's the lady's pointless peripatetic wandering other than as a device to clock up her Air Miles. He quotes Gideon Levy ib Ha'aretz last Agust (2006)

"Rice has been here six times in the course of a year and a half, and what has come of it? Has anyone asked her about this? Does she ask herself? It is hard to understand how the secretary of state allows herself to be so humiliated. It is even harder to understand how the superpower she represents allows itself to act in such a hollow and useless way. The mystery of America remains unsolved: How is it that the United States is doing nothing to advance a solution to the most dangerous and lengthiest conflict in our world?"

Far call from those overnight stays in the Austin Gubernatorial Mansion and having tankers named after her.