http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/101003I.shtml

Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By Maureen Dowd
New York Times

Thursday 09 October 2003

It's easy to see why the Bush crowd is getting so tetchy.

The itch to ditch officials who fritter away the public trust
is growing, as Arnold and his broom bear down on Sacramento.

And we know now that our first pre-emptive war was launched
basically because Iraq had . . . a vial of Botox?

Just about the scariest thing the weapons hunter David Kay
could come up with was a vial of live botulinum, hidden in the home
of an Iraqi biological weapons scientist.

This has very dire implications for Beverly Hills and the East
Side of Manhattan, areas awash in vials of Botox, the botulinum
toxin that can either be turned into a deadly biological weapon or
a pricey wrinkle smoother.

And it may have dire implications for the Pentagon and White
House if Americans come to believe that their trust was betrayed
when the president and his team spread the impressions that Saddam
was about to blow us up and that he was behind the 9/11 attacks.

It doesn't help to have a
former-NATO-commander-turned-presidential-contender running around
telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of dunces.
Or a former-diplomat-turned-angry-husband-of-an-outed-spy running
around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of
backstabbing lawbreakers who are dead wrong on Iraq.

The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating,
as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The
president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the
Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.

Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the
Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious
gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter,
driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.

The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization
Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to
get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring
power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security
adviser's office inside the White House.

Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She
outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new
alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.

It was the first time the chesty defense czar - who had tried
to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly
refers to as "the Department of Nice" - had been downgraded by the
president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.

"And because he is a cantankerous egomaniac," one longtime
Rummy watcher said, "he compounded his own problems by
acknowledging it in public, further undermining his own stature."

President Bush clearly realizes that Mr. Rumsfeld and Paul
Wolfowitz have gotten him into a fine mess. He wants his trusted
Mother Hen, as he calls Condi, the woman who probably spends as
much time with him as Laura - weekends at Camp David, vacations at
the ranch, workouts at the gym - to make it all better. This will
be the first time Ms. Rice, a Soviet expert who has functioned
mostly so far as First Chum, will have her reputation on the line.

Some Republicans worry that it's risky to move accountability
for postwar Iraq closer to the Oval Office because then there's no
one else to blame.

In a meeting with foreign reporters on Tuesday in Colorado
Springs, Rummy made no effort to mask his displeasure, saying he
had not been consulted, even though Condi said he had, and cattily
referring to the "little committees" of the N.S.C. When a German
broadcast reporter pressed the defense secretary, he hissed: "I
said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"

One of Rumsfeld's Rules is: "Avoid public spats. When a
Department argues with other government agencies in the press, it
reduces the President's options." Hmm.

Maybe Rummy hasn't brushed up lately on the Washington rulebook
he wrote in the 1970's - after his stints as President Gerald
Ford's chief of staff and secretary of defense. Otherwise, he might
have recalled this Rumsfeld rule before he bullied the world and
ripped up Iraq: "It is easier to get into something than to get out
of it."

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