In the wake of the neocon disaster in Iraq and the explosure of the Iran fraud, it is now the job of neocon factotums like Apple Annie Applebaum to assure us that Condi is in control and that she has effectively marginalized Cheney and his merry band of warmongers. Apple Annie assures us that "Condi has now dispensed with pretty much everyone who underestimated her to begin with, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, but for all practical purposes Dick Cheney, too."

And yet when it came time to replace Phil Zelikow as her State Dept. advisor, Condi chose the devout neocon Elliot Cohen. And yet when it became necessary to find another job for Wolfowitz after his World Bank debacle, Condi offered him the chairmanship of the International Security Advisory Board, an influential State Dept. advisory panel.

Are these the actions of someone who as aced out Dick Cheney? Unlikely, unless Condi has elected to out-dick Dick and carry the banner of neocon aggression.

Condi remains a token, the calming and ostensibly reasonable face of a radical bush foreign policy that has scared the crap out of our allies and is increasingly scaring the crap out of the American people. Until Condi can make a State Dept. appointment that isn't straight out of the neocon handbook, one can only conclude that we are still watching an episode of Cheney In Charge.

Rice’s supposed “rise” is an optical illusion, perceived in relation to the precipitous fall of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. Rice has survived merely because she possesses the talent of walking in place with the bearing of a high-minded intellectual and diplomat. She walks among bold actors and ideologues, while she herself is timid and aloof. This allows her to wrap herself in success when things appear to be going well, and to distance herself from failure when things are going badly.

I tend to agree with the point, though, that Rice isn’t an ideologue. She has a conservative bent, but she’s not a forceful enough thinker or personality to adhere strongly to an ideology. She simply is a very polished and articulate tag-along.

With this book (and a couple others on the way), Rice is trying to pave the way for her post-Bush career. I can’t imagine that she would have much of one. No 2008 presidential candidate will run, let alone win, on the Bush foreign policy record. So Rice will have no place in the next administration. And it will be a long time, if ever, for Iraq to become stabilized enough, or the electorate to be ready to let go enough, for Rice to try for any political career of her own. Rather, she’s destined for a professorship or a senior appointment with a right-wing think tank, in other words, obscurity. Which is where she belongs.

And I loved it when the then NATIONAL SECURITY Advisor was being grilled by Congress, stammering for all to hear, "Yeah something about a memo about Bin Laden and flying hijacked jets into the World Trade Centers.."proclaiming her incompetence to the world.

I met a lot of people with sheepskins that could play a piano and were multilingual who had a lot more common sense.