Condi to the rescue

And not a moment too soon is she being put in place to slam a lid on dissention at State.

All major U.S. intelligence agencies share a pessimistic prognosis for Iraq's future, according to a senior administration official. The assessment of the State Department's intelligence bureau is so grim that it's referred to as the "I agree with Scowcroft's analysis" report.

That's a reference to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to former President George Bush. Scowcroft said this month that the Iraqi elections could deepen the conflict, and "we may be seeing an incipient civil war."
  Detroit Free Press article

In October 2003, President Bush announced he was "giving his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq." With great fanfare, Rice was appointed head of the "Iraq Stabilization Group," intended to coordinate committees on counterterrorism, economic development, political affairs and media messages. The purpose of the group, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, was to "cut through the red tape and make sure that we're getting the assistance there quickly." But seven months later, the Washington Post reported, "the four original leaders of the Stabilization Group have taken on new roles, and only one remains concerned primarily with Iraq." Within the White House, the Post noted, "the destabilized Stabilization Group is a metaphor for an Iraq policy that is adrift."

[...]

Condoleezza Rice has shown an unprecedented willingness to take time away from her job to engage in partisan political affairs. The Washington Post reports that Rice broke the "long-standing precedent that the national security adviser try to avoid overt involvement in the presidential campaign" by giving pro-Bush speeches in key battleground states, including Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, beginning in May 2004. Rice's actions were sharply criticized by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, who "said the national security adviser is the 'custodian' of the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and should be seen as an objective adviser to the president."
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Well, the curtain has obviously fallen on that era.