Condi is off to a great start

What do you expect, given her history?

PARIS, Feb. 9 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stood before the audience at the Institute of Political Studies on Tuesday afternoon and rewrote cold war history, to the consternation of many in the highly sophisticated audience.

In an answer to a question from the floor, she told her audience that in 1947 Greece and Turkey had suffered through civil wars. Greece, yes, but Turkey?

"It was a glaring mistake," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States, an independent research organization at the French Institute of International Relations. "She's smart, yes, but I don't think she is as knowledgeable as one would expect with a career like hers."

[...]

On Wednesday, Le Monde ran a cartoon of Ms. Rice perusing a menu in a restaurant as the waiter asks, "We can also heat up some French fries for you."

[...]

[A]t a private breakfast on Wednesday with six French intellectuals at the American ambassador's residence, Ms. Rice revealed her steely, deeply ideological side.

She shocked at least some of her guests by branding Iran a "totalitarian state," said four of those who took part. She added that the free world was wrong to accept the Soviet Union on its terms during the cold war and must not make the same mistake now with Iran, they added.

A number of guests challenged her assertion, but Ms. Rice is not the type to back down. She called her characterization of Iran deliberate. A year ago, she said, she would have called Iran's Islamic Republic authoritarian. But after flawed parliamentary elections last spring that produced a conservative majority, she said, it moved toward totalitarian, a term that historians tend to use restrictively to define violently absolutist regimes that govern through terror.

"I tried to explain that Iran was not like the Soviet Union, that the mullahs were deeply unpopular but unlike their predecessors over the last 150 years they were not in the hands of the British or the Russians or the Americans," said François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "She gave no proof that Iran was totalitarian, because she didn't have any. It was scary. Unless there is some give on the American side we are heading for a real crisis."

[...]

While most of the discussion focused on Iran, Ms. Rice was much more willing to absolve Pakistan's military-led government of any tyrannical tendencies. When Mr. Parmentier called Pakistan "the most dangerous country there is," Ms. Rice acknowledged that the country was dangerous but said it was "on the right track" and "improving," participants said.

[...]

France, Britain and Germany, Iran's negotiating partners, know that any meaningful benefits for Iran depend on American support, something that Ms. Rice made clear would not be forthcoming. Such an approach, she said, would only help sustain the hard-liners' grip on power.

"I told her that it is my sense that public opinion in Europe, and maybe even elected officials, are ready to accept the idea that Iran may have some kind of nuclear weapons capability with some limitations," said Nicole Bacharan, an expert on the United States at the Institute of Political Studies. "She was startled. She wasn't quite aware of what she is up against."
  NY Times article

Yes, that is scary.

The European Union said it is going ahead with plans to lift its 15-year-old embargo on arms sales to China, rebuffing a plea by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
  Bloomberg article

Anti-Americanism is picking up speed. And other countries are taking the opportunity while the gettin's good to pull away from entanglements with the US. China and Russia are making deals with Venezuela, and everywhere people are inching toward the euro and away from the dollar.

Japan is expected to cut funds (what the Japanese call the "sympathy budget") it provides to U.S. forces on Japanese soil.

The essential truth of the moment is that we are at our limits. And our friends will not count on America stretched as thin as we are. And our enemies will maximize their situations when we can do little about it.

Iran and North Korea know that America's bark is loud but bite is probably pretty soft right now. And the Europeans are doing their best to take on a global strategic dilemma -- their very first -- without the U.S. in the lead.
  Steve Clemons post

Hundreds of people opposed to the US-led war in Iraq are due to demonstrate across Britain, including a rally where protesters mimic death, outside the Houses of Parliament in London, organisers say.

The event on Tuesday, organised by the Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), will mark the second anniversary of a huge anti-war march, which attracted more than one million people to the British capital in an ultimately futile bid to stop the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
  Aljazeera article

On 3rd February 2003, as part of ongoing resistance at Shannon Airport, the Pitstop Ploughshares disarmed a US warplane. Within the month, three of the four companies contracted to ferry US troops and weapons had left Ireland. The Pitstop Ploughshares are currently out on bail. Their trial will take place in Dublin's Four Courts on March 7th 2005.

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  article

Yes, that's Martin Sheen.