Image via WikipediaVia WaPo - ‘No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington’ by Condoleezza Rice by Glenn Kessler:
"Rice is much more open detailing the administration’s struggle to deal with Iraq’s descent into violence during Bush’s second term. She congratulates herself on forcing more State Department officials into the field, but she might want to read “We Meant Well”— a hilarious and often depressing account by a foreign service officer of what really happened on the ground."
Read in full here.
Oh, she congratulates herself - now, that's a must read section. Wonder if that infamous town hall made the cut in her book, complete with invited reporters at a ready to record those "whinny" diplomats who dared asked questions about what do you do after you get to Iraq.
Kessler writes that the former Secretary of State "congratulates" herself on "forcing more State Department officials into the field." Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot! Why is she congratulating her own excellent self? I bet she did not know that most Foreign Service folks were already serving in the field before she came to Foggy Bottom? Or that the civil servants were hired to man the fort on C. Street not the blackholes of ....
Pardon me? Oh, you mean, she "forced" them into the war zones in 2007? Must be it. Except wait a minute .... neither her then Director General of the Foreign Service or Deputy went over there to serve. I heard they worked REALLY hard at HR to get people to go; remember the prime candidate exercise? So basically, some suckers went to the war zones and others got their ambassadorships to some pretty sweet island countries in the Pacific or elsewhere without ever having some Baghdad dust on their shoes. You say it's unfair? But who says bureaucratic life should be fair?
I'll have to wait until my public library gets a copy of this book. Sorry, I can't, I just can't bear to part with my donated dollars for Dr. Ferragamo's legacy shoring book.
2 comments:
Well, obviously the best reason to get it from the library is that it will be boring. The chances of anybody actually reading the entire thing are slim to none.
Thanks Peteykins. Actually, I can think of a few souls who will wade through this book cover to cover, boring or not -- Rummy for one. Dick also. Jerry Bremer? George Tenet? Colin? Wolf-somebody.
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