As part of my ongoing fascination with the oddly anti-Bush articles appearing in Insight magazine, an off-shoot of Sun Myung Moon’s far-right Washington Times, the latest issue suggests the neocons, who consistently railed against Colin Powell when he led the State Department, are none too pleased with his successor.
Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against [tag]Secretary of State[/tag] [tag]Condoleezza Rice[/tag], saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda.
The conservatives, who include Newt [tag]Gingrich[/tag], Richard [tag]Perle[/tag] 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] [tag]Powell[/tag], Condi is loyal to the president. She is just incompetent on most foreign policy issues.”
According to Insight — which is far from impeccable in the credibility department — Iran is “exploiting Miss Rice’s inexperience and incompetence to accelerate its nuclear weapons program,” and Rice’s shortsightedness has exacerbated the problems with North Korea.
Gingrich said (though it’s not altogether clear if he spoke to Insight or if the magazine was quoting him from a different interview), “We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you’re doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you’ll get out of us is talk.”
It’s culminating in scuttlebutt that that Rice’s policy, such as it is, will fall apart in the coming months, leading to her dismissal after the midterms.
The critics within the administration expect a backlash against Miss Rice that could lead to her transfer in wake of the congressional elections in 2006. They said by that time even Mr. Bush will recognize the failure of relying solely on diplomacy in the face of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“At that point, Rice will be openly blamed and Bush will have a very hard time defending her,” said a GOP source with close ties to the administration.
This strikes me as highly unlikely. If Gingrich, Perle, & Co. believe poor job performance and/or policy failures would be enough to prompt Bush to fire Rice, they just haven’t been paying attention to this administration’s tolerance for incompetence. Besides, their version of a poor Secretary of State is “someone who stands in the way of more war,” which is probably a minority view outside the Project for a New American Century.
On a less substantive point, for those keeping score at home, this is the ninth Insight article since November that casts the Bush gang in an unflattering light. In May, there was an article about division between the president and the first lady about a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In late March, there was an article about Bush effectively delegating his responsibilities. Two weeks before that, it was a piece on Cheney becoming a political liability who will be thrown overboard after the midterm elections. Two weeks before that, it was “the largest crackdown in decades against whistleblowers in government.” The week before, it was an item on Karl Rove threatening to “blacklist” any Republican who goes against the president on warrantless-wiretaps. In January, Insight quoted “administration sources” talking about internal turmoil at the Bush White House. In November, Insight ran an item explaining that Bush has become melancholy and paranoid.
It’s odd, considering that we’re talking about the far-right [tag]Washington Times[/tag]’ “sister publication.”