Even giving Rice the benefit of the doubt about eventual consequences. her pride does bring up the etermal question: pride at what price and who pays the price?
At any rate, it's a mite too early to claim the prize, Condi, maybe a century too early! No one knows who will be around when the prize is ready for claiming.

It struck me how much we argue about the wrong things when it comes to Iraq. We argue about the meaning of words and accuse everyone of flip-flopping, or tacking to the right or left, when we should be arguing about how to get out of Iraq so that we can attend to other pressing problems. After the flap about WHAT OBAMA MEANT, I realized that I don't much care what he meant, as long as he has a plan to get out, not to stay in.

I've heard it said that he intends to use the withdrawal of US troops as a cudgel to make the Iraqi government and neighboring countries take up responsibility tor the consequesnces, instead of leaving everything to the US. An attempt to do that sounds smart to me. It's not as if tremendous risks weren't involved.

Happy 4th, Damozel !