Internecine Squabbles, Ten Months Later

by emptywheel

Before I comment on Helene Cooper's amusing article on the Condi v. Dick turf wars, I would like to review where this squabble was ten months ago, last July when Israel was bombing the shit out of Lebanon. Last year, Dick's surrogates were openly calling Condi incompetent.

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration�s national security and foreign policy agenda.

The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"The president has yet to understand that people make policy and not the other way around," a senior national security policy analyst said. "Unlike [former Secretary of State Colin] Powell, Condi is loyal to the president. She is just incompetent on most foreign policy issues."

Not that I disagree, mind you, but I think Newt and Perle have some mighty big rocks inside their teeny little glass house.

Here we are, ten months later, and it appears that Condi is speaking from a stronger position. It helps, of course, to have a senior UN official call your opponents "the new crazies," as Baradei seems to have done (Dick is probably regretting that Bolton never succeeded in getting Baradei fired, huh?).

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought today to minimize any sense of division within the Bush administration over Iran after the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency delivered a pointed new warning against what he called the “new crazies” pushing for military action against Tehran.      

“The President of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course,” Ms. Rice said here. “That policy is supported by all of the members of the cabinet, and by the vice president of the United States.”

Though honestly, this looks like the same old strategy they used with John Bolton, when he unilaterally violated the Administration's stated position on North Korea to push for more hawkishness.

In a news conference today, Ms. Rice maintained that Vice President Cheney supports her strategy of trying to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions through diplomacy. A senior Bush administration official separately denied that there is a deep divide between Ms. Rice and Mr. Cheney on Iran.

But, the official said, “the vice president is not necessarily responsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every single member of his staff.“ The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about any divide within the administration.

This time, it's David Wurmser unilaterally-with-Dick's-tacit-approval subverting the Administration's state policy.

In interviews, people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney’s staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the report, and said that some of the hawkish statements to outsiders were made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is now the principal deputy assistant to Mr. Cheney for national security affairs. The accounts were provided by people who expressed alarm about the statements, but refused to be quoted by name.

You know, we've gotten rid of Bolton and Wolfowitz and Libby. I think perhaps it's time to turn to Wurmser.

Update: And speaking of deliberately subverting the Administration's stated policies, this entire article is worth a read:

With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, some of Taiwan’s most fervent allies were swept back into power in Washington, particularly at the Pentagon, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

They included such key architects of the Iraq War as Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy, and Steven Cambone, Rumsfeld’s new intelligence chief, Wilkerson said. President Bush’s controversial envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, was another.

While Bush publicly continued the one-China policy of his five White House predecessors, Wilkerson said, the Pentagon “neocons” took a different tack, quietly encouraging Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian.

“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.” [my emphasis]

Comments

[P J Evans]

Can we get rid of Cheney, too? Just so we don't have to do this every few months for the next two years?

[Mimikatz]

That is a prerequisite to impeaching Bush. Cheney first.

[itwasntme]

Those little mischief makers!

[ab initio]

Nailing Shooter would mean that the Scooter firewall needs to burn and Fitz can connect the dots tangibly.

[P J Evans]

the vice president is not necessarily responsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every single member of his staff

Only when the VP is a Republican.

[JGabriel]

Insight (quoted by EW @ top): "The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Brilliant! When all else fails, blame it on the black girl.

Typical Republicans.

[hauksdottir]

Actually, blaming "it" on everybody or anybody else IS typical of Republicans. There is nobody with the personal courage to admit to a specific mistake in the entire Administration from the President on down.

"mistakes were made"

...but not by any of them as individuals acting intentionally.

They think they are doing God's will (or the President's will as the same thing), so they can't possibly be doing the wrong thing. If God said to smite Iraq, then any mistakes were due to how they obeyed the command, not to the command itself. If God said to increase and multiply, that ought to apply to people in your department and the number of wives and mistresses as well as children at home. If God's favor is shown by personal wealth, then anybody who wants to be holier than the other guy has to find ways to gain wealth, even if deferred or indirect, such as benefiting the wife or nephew.

If your theocracy is absolute, omniscient, infallible... and you are basking in all that glory... then the stain of corruption couldn't possibly threaten to blacken your heart no matter how many laws you've broken, bribes you've accepted, countries you've invaded.

As the Religious Right tightens its grip upon the Republican Party and the neocons continue to advance their Project for a New American Century, we will see ever more mistakes and ever less personal accountability.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

http://www.mediamax.com/leftiblog/Hosted/WithGodOnOurSide.mp3