Condi's falling star beginning to fade as GOP joins growing war criticism

[Imagevision]

With Rumsfeld gone, Condi Rice has faced increased, and somewhat unfamiliar, criticism. At a Senate hearing on Jan. 11, she confronted a wall of opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats. During hearings this week on Iraq, several of her predecessors were pointed in their disapproval of her job performance.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III took issue with Ms. Rice’s refusal to engage Syria diplomatically. Back in his day, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “We practiced diplomacy full time, and it paid off.”

James A.Baker, Henry A. Kissinger, Madeleine K. Albright, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski — were diplomatic in their critiques of the administration’s foreign policy, all left the impression that as America’s top diplomat, Ms. Rice was not engaging in real diplomacy.

As the Bush administration’s overall foreign policy has come under fire, and other senior officials have left the administration, Rice is starting to take the heat previously reserved for Rumsfeld.

Kenneth M. Pollack, a research director at the Brookings Institution, said: “It is no longer the case that Rumsfeld is the administration bad guy. People will look much harder at Condi’s role now, and Iraq is really going to rest on her shoulders.”

In the past, most of the criticism has come from the left. But now the disapproval has spread, and Republicans are joining in. The starkest example came on Jan. 11, when Ms. Rice faced a room full of skeptics as she defended, before a Senate panel, President Bush’s new Iraq strategy. “You’re going to have to do a much better job” explaining the rationale for the war, Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, told her, adding that the administration could no longer count on his support.

“That’s what we hire a secretary of state for, not to sit there and proclaim categorical statements, but to engage in the process,” said Mr. Brzezinski.

Rice sometimes takes criticism personally. Last fall, she telephoned Sr. Bush, who employed her on his National Security Council in the early 1990s, after Bob Woodward’s book “State of Denial” reported that the elder Mr. Bush had said that she had been a “disappointment” and “not up to the job.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/washington/04rice.html?ei=5094&en=fcaed80c5bc456e0&hp=&ex=1170651600&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1170595921-aRuoEhu36JsJq7GS4QgcRQ

[Hardrada]

1. I take this stupid criminal administration personally!

[IWantAChange]

2. Amazing what Congressional Oversight and FACTS can reveal.

The damage done to this country by the Repugs eliminating oversight shortly after the 'Republican Revolution' will haunt us for generations.

[Aviation Pro]

3. Rice was never qualified to hold any position...

...other than "school marm" to Bush. She failed miserably at that too. Any Stanford grads want to sound off about her tenure there. I do know that she was worthless in terms of being a Sovietologist.

[Faygo Kid]

4. She is a war criminal

She is an integral part of this cabal that took us into war based on lies. She was there at the beginning. She bears responsibility for this immoral war based on lies. May history judge her just as harshly as the rest of the neocon warmongers.

[Imagevision]

5. Rice failed badly as the NSA director, she thought she knew more then Richard Clarke

[rodeodance]

6. i never understood how she maintained her higher ratings in the first place!

[neoblues]

7. How could poor Condo be blamed? She didn't do anything...

In fact, she never did anything** in any of her positions (not counting lying, screwing up, missing critical and overwhelmingly important actions, pissing off foreign leaders, making America look feeble, confused and corrupt, fellating the boss's ego among other things, etc).

**counting only useful, productive, honest, important, reasonable, decent actions (and such like)