NEWS: Rice's #2 Choice Could 86 Her Nomination

POLITICS: Rice's #2 Choice Could 86 Her Nomination

With the nomination of Condoleeza Rice to replace Colin Powell, an interesting question arises: who will be her deputy? Richard Armitage, current Deputy Secretary of State, will be resigning with Colin Powell, so the position is open. The choice that seems to be getting the most talk is one of the people that Colin Powell is alleged to have referred to as a "fucking crazy": John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in the first Bush term. Bolton is known as a very hawkish neo-conservative, who butted heads rather violently with Powell in his time in Washington, especially about North Korea.

More ominously, Bolton is the chairman of the Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative group that calls for a more aggressive foreign policy to topple regimes hostile to America more readily, and was one of the groups calling most loudly for Saddam's overthrow.

As Fred Kaplan writes in his column in Slate.com, if Bolton does become the #2 at State, it probably means that Condi will just be a figurehead there. Bolton has shown no respect for the hierarchy of the State Department, and will likely make sure that Condi's State Department serves the aims of other administration neoconservatives including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

In short, this is part of a larger pattern of this administration doing all they can to run out anyone who doesn't toe the Bush line. Whether it's Porter Goss making sure that that the CIA is stocked with analysts and agents who rubber-stamp Bush's foreign policy, or Condi possibly being yoked to a guy who's worked hard to undermine those who want a more multi-lateral, moderate foreign policy, this is an administration that continues to place raw political gain over the larger security and standing of this nation.

...running... out... of... outrage... energy.. GASP... fuck...

i wonder if this bolton fellow is the man they really wanted at state, and they just shoved condi rice out there to put a more pleasant face on the whole thing... wait, was i hating america again?

Like somebody else said, they've run out of first-string crazies, now they're pulling the guys off the bench.

i wonder if this Bolton guy is just as Pentecostal as Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

Couldn't we just stop beating around the bush and just resurrect Mussilini into a cyborg/zombie and give him a cabinet position?

is rummy a penecostal? i didn't know that. i always figured he'd be a snake handler.

I heard it was Michael Bolton.

They don't have a whole lot of choice. If they make a furor over every cabinet nominee that the Bush administration comes up with they'll just be given the obstructionist label again and lose even more seats in the next midterm election. Bush is aware of this and so he just keeps putting up neocons because he knows that most of them will be approved anyway.

The only way out of this is for the moderate Republicans to take a stand. And I don't see that happening any time soon.

They'll show unity until the mid-terms. After that it will be every man for himself, especially if the Dems continue beating the deficit drum.

omg you mean to tell me our country could be in trouble?!?!?!?!!!!!

I believe we all have to come to grips with reality and face the facts that we are fucked for the next four years.

Our only real bright-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel is the Hillary/Oprah ticket for 2008.

where do these people come from?

i was raised by devoted catholics, spending a total of 12 years in catholic schools. My dad died when i was 8, leaving my mom to raise me on her own while working full-time. he was also an alcoholic, and my brother is a heroin addict. i have always been the shortest and skinniest, not to mention socially awkward. if anyone should be crazy, it should be me. (i'm not whining, i know plenty of people have it rougher than me, i'm just trying to make a point.)

and yet, even i can see that invading every country that doesn't kiss our ass will make us even bigger targets for extremists and other greedy criminals who seek to take advantage of our aggressive policies.

this is supposed to be the country of freedom, acceptance, and tolerance. where the hell was this asshole born? who does he think he is? who does he think we are? does he think at all?

i can't believe that people who claim to be "better" than us because they have a "stronger" faith than us are some of the most hateful and violent idiots our country has to offer.

goddamn our system sucks.

it's not insanity, morals, or "strategery," it's fucking greed.

edited to add: it's actually greed sprinkled with a total lust for power.

[Edited on Nov 27, 2004 5:54PM]

We awoke one day, turned over, and began to hear the death rattles of the worlds largest super power.

All the warning signs were there,
but no one listened

It started slowly at first, an attack here, an economy hickup there.

then,
all the sudden

it all collapsed and we wandered around, looking at one another asking ourselves:

"What did we do wrong, what did we not see?"

i hate them.

"Why should I have to change my name? He's the one who sucks!"

OMIGOD! Bush is appointing people who views comport with his own! THIS SETS A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT!

Normally presidents appoint political and ideological enemies to important posts.

[Edited on Nov 28, 2004 1:09AM]

I love that movie.

Wow, for a second there the fi-dolla "comport" seemed to smooth out the thirteen year old girl "OMIGOD!" (if only you were to hand write it so that you could put a little heart under the exclamation mark)

I would suggest you need to upgrade your irono-meter to at least the “got my learners permit” level when talking about issues of this gravity , but that's just me.

How ‘bout this as an answer to your sarcastic yelping--there is clear evidence that our government has been hijacked by this group. What is the evidence? Hmm, uh, well--maybe you should take a look at the official and unofficial Bushco team and how many of them are involved in this organization. Forget fucking conspiracy, this is in plain sight Now, maybe it's just me, but I think it might be a little worrisome to see that external, EXTREMELY fucked, organization having that much control in our government.

The appointment of this jackhole--along with the replacement of Ashcroft with a fellow that felt the Geneva convention was quaint and out of date might lead one to believe that Bush will take his "mandate" and shit the bed for our whole fucking democracy in the very near future. (OF COURSE, THERE’S NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT)

I know that you love Hitler references--and of course, they are off limits right? Well, just bear with me and take a moment to ponder what happened there without the (of course extremely important) holocaust and look at it in practical terms. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party took a country that was full of good, intelligent people and fucking drove it and most of Europe into a brick wall. How the fuck does that happen? I'll tell ya, it's because of fucktards like you and the bullshit that you espouse. You people who just want to jump on the nationalistic Jingoistic bullshit express that these geniuses think is going to line their pockets and make them little kings. It’s amazing, the power of poor self-esteem, isn’t it?

One should also take note of the fact that after the defeat of the Nazi's, a bunch of those fucksticks took a great deal of that ill-gotten wealth and headed down to South America while the regular folks in their country sorted out the mess they had made.

"Buckle Your Seatbelts"™



[Edited on Nov 28, 2004 7:55AM]

Yeah, I don't think that the hardcore neocons, including Perle, Bolton, and Wolfowitz, have any sort of religious motive at all. I think they want to establish a political order completely and utterly dominated and run by the United States. It would be a virtual sort of empire: we wouldn't directly run the world, but it would be clear that the consquences for defying us would be dire (if not outright military punishment, then economic punishment.) Oil is central to it, in this regard; if we can control the bulk of oil production, we not only have a weapon to use against other countries, we deny them one to use against us.

There are a ton of holes and problems in this scenario, but the main one I see is that I think that other countries are not weak enough to be blugeoned into submission like they think. Hardcore American opposition could really be the rallying force that coalesces the EU into a true superpower. Does China really want to be under the US thumb? Does Russia want to pull themselves together to have the US tell them what to do? The Project for a New American Century concept seems really old-school to me, and seems to totally miss that there are other strong countries in this world now that could shut us out.

That said, there is one person who I think does look at this from a religious perspective: George W. Bush. I'm not sure if he buys the whole Armageddon-is-nigh, and all the good Christians are going to be whisked off to heaven in diamond-studded chairots while the non-believers get their ass kicked down here, but I do believe he believes that the US is charged by God to rule the planet, that this nation is morally superior to all others, and opposition to us is at best moral turpitude, and, at worst, evil. It makes him very receptive and very vulnerable to a wide-reaching, sweeping conception of politics like the neo-cons. So, then, expect them to tighten their grip on foreign policy in the second Bush term.

Say, where are all those people who voted for Nader or didn't vote because Bush and Kerry "are the same" now?

Yeah those PNAC nutjobs need to go. All of them, and quickly, preferably painfully and permanently.

I agree with you - neoconservatives and conservative Christians have really just forged a marriage of convenience. The neocons realized in the late 90's that the "moral majority" style Christians could provide a formidable enough political force to vault them into power (which turned out to be true) but they don't seem to have much in common besides a view of American's dominance in the global playing field. Neoconservatism really is basically limited to the foreign policy arena while Christian conservatism is focused more on domestic policy so the fact that they aren't necessarily totally complementary ideologies hasn't been an issue. Yet, anyway.

The PNAC philosophy is just plain bizarre to me. It's a combination of hopelessly idealistic 1960's thought ("We'll invade Iraq and they'll all throw roses at our feet! Every middle eastern dictatorship will spontaneously form a pro-western democratic government!") with a harshly realistic, ultra-aggressive stance on basically every issue. The net result seems to be an increase in the polarization other countries with respect to the US. On the one hand you've got countries like Italy, Poland and Libya, who take the "you're either with us or against us" slogan seriously and so are now willing to basically do whatever the US tells them. On the other hand you've got France, Germany, North Korea and Iran (and no, I don't lump them together politically) who view the increased militaristic posturing as a sign to toughen up and take a stand against the US because they're afraid the alternative is to become a puppet.

It seems to have set the stage for either a complete US-led domination or a total catastrophe. If we pay attention to history I think it favors the latter scenario, sooner or later.

You know, why the hell did you have to go and ruin a completely good arguement with the shit comment:

"say where are all those people who voted for Nader, or didn't vote because Bush and Kerry "are the same" now?"

Kerry lost the fucking election dude, not Nader (need proof, look up the number of votes he got compared to the number Bush won by).

And the people that didn't vote for Kerry did so for good reason, but hey, whatever.

If you think Kerry, KERRY could pull this country out of the shit storm that he helped create, I think you put more faith in the neo-con agenda, and fail completely to see what it was Clinton, and his neo-liberal buddies that paved the way for it (one of which was Kerry).

But you know that's just the ninties, and all that WTO, and NATO, and bombing like a dozen countries, and bombing the Chinese embasy, and fast track planning on trade negotiations, the creation of NAFTA, and the FTAA. That was all Bush's fault too.