There is a bifurcation in Bush country. There is an excellent piece at Jack Wheeler's inestimable site, To the Point, the oasis for rational conservatives (PAID but worth the price of admission.)
I'm not exactly clear if Condi capitulated to the Arabist DoS (State) or she was always left leaning but I do know it's affecting foreign policy in a dangerous, reckless way. Her hatchet man Nicolas Burns, a well known EU sympathizer, has acknowledged the serious and mortal threat but lacks the spine to make the tough call.
I understand Michael Ledeen spoke at a small lunch in DC today. The situation with Condi/Iran reminded him of Churchill's observation about Chamberlain going to Munich to negotiate with Hitler: "He had a choice between dishonor and war. He chose dishonor and got war." Cheney and Rumsfeld are all we have left. That's why the CIA weasels and the Traitor Media will now focus all their guns on them.
A year and a half ago, just after GW’s second inauguration, in Cheney and Condi, you first learned of the Bush-Cheney plan to have Condi Rice replace Dick Cheney as Vice-President.
Then, in 44, you learned that Bush’s private nickname for Condi is “44” – meaning that as his dad and he are known in the White House as “41” and “43,” he intends for her to be the 44th President of the United States.
But in Cooling on Condi, we let the other shoe drop and discussed Condi’s inability to control her State Department’s compulsion for appeasement regarding Iran.
Nonetheless, all indications have continued that the Cheney-Condi Switch was still on track, scheduled to be implemented this fall as an ultimate October Surprise to lock in GOP House/Senate victories in November.
Until now. Earlier this month, Condi insultingly and gratuitously dissed Cheney, and threw her lot in completely with the spineless pinstripes infesting Foggy Bottom. And over no small matter, but the most critical foreign policy issue of the moment.
At the center of the drama is one of the great unknown heroes of America’s victory in the Cold War, a geopolitical genius with the distinctive name of Enders Wimbush.
If you talk to anyone who was a dissident or democracy activist in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union in the 1980s, they will eagerly tell you about the enormous impact that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty – RFE/RL or “The Radios” – had in liberating the Soviet Empire.
Enders Wimbush was the Director of Radio Liberty, broadcasting into the Soviet Union itself (Radio Free Europe focused on the “satellite” colonies of Eastern Europe), during the Reagan Administration.
He was determined to give a voice to those within the Soviet Union calling for freedom, rather than have Radio Liberty be like Voice of America, purveying left-slanted news and popular music.
Radio Liberty broadcasts were thus listened to avidly by millions within the Soviet Union, who were inspired by them to achieve the unthinkable. When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and Eastern Europe broke free of the Kremlin’s grasp, it was inconceivable that the Soviet Union itself would break apart.
But break apart it did – thanks in large part to the broadcasts of Enders Wimbush’s Radio Liberty.
Wimbush is now the Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Future Security Strategies. He recently authored a paper entitled A Communications Strategy for Regime Change in Iran.
So it was that Wimbush got a call from someone in touch with Dick Cheney’s office to inform him that the president of RFE/RL, Tom Dine, was retiring, and would he consider throwing his hat in the ring to be Dine’s successor?
“The Vice-President views Iran as one of the country’s most urgent national security threats, if not the most,” Wimbush was told. “He has read your paper and thinks you could play a role in solving this threat as you did in the Cold War.”
Wimbush replied that the task of fixing The Radios after well over a decade of decline and abuse was immense. Also immense was the pay cut he would have to accept. Nonetheless, there was no way he could reject a request from the White House.
The RFE/RL presidency is chosen by a vote of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees all non-military US international broadcasting, including Voice of America and Radio Marti to Cuba. There are currently seven members (there are two vacancies), three of whom are Republican, three are Democrat, with the seventh being the Secretary of State, who normally designates a surrogate.
Condi’s designate on the BBG is Karen Hughes, George Bush’s closest political confidante next to Karl Rove, and Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
The vote took place in Prague (where RFE/RL is headquartered) on June 10th. It was a choice between Wimbush and Jeff Trimble, Tom Dine’s former deputy and now interim president. Trimble, as a left-wing liberal, was the candidate of the three Democrat board members – especially Jeffrey Hirschberg, a Washington attorney who is in Putin’s pocket with extensive business interests in Russia.
Hirschberg was so frantic to block Wimbush – who would have no qualms about broadcasting the flaws and fascism of Putin’s Russia – that a month ago he had begun a smear campaign against him so disgusting that Wimbush had his lawyer consider a character-defamation lawsuit.
At the Prague meeting, the three Republican members made it clear that Wimbush had the strong support of the office of the Vice-President, the office of the Secretary of Defense, and members of the President's National Security Council.
They then placed a conference call to Bill Marsh, who was Wimbush’s boss at The Radios. “A number of people have told us how ‘fantastically creative,’ as one of them put it, Wimbush’s thinking is. We want your opinion of his management abilities,” they asked him.
Marsh’s reply was that there was no question that Wimbush was “the best manager in the history of The Radios.”
Now came the vote. Three for Wimbush. Three for Trimble. And then Karen Hughes cast the deciding vote – for Trimble.
It was a direct, purposeful slap in Dick Cheney’s face. The State Department, afflicted as always with terminal testicular atrophy, had gotten the vapors over Wimbush’s call for regime change in Iran. It knew this is what Cheney wants. But it’s not what Karen Hughes wants.
She wants Moslems to love us. If America’s public face, The Radios, did anything but appease the mullahs in Iran, why, Moslems might get offended. That’s the way she thinks. She is hopelessly out of her depth, dangerously incompetent in her amateurish efforts at “public diplomacy.”
Thanks to her, now The Radios will continue to languish as a purveyor of left-slanted news and pop music, instead of developing strategic programming that can shape the security landscape to America’s advantage.
And the State Department can happily continue to appease Iran.
This was Condi’s doing. As her designate, Karen Hughes voted at her decision. And to add insult to injury, Condi then proceeded to personally call Democrat Senator Joe Biden, to ask him to organize the defeat of Rick Santorum’s bill for $100 million to pro-democracy groups in Iran.
The bottom line is that Cheney is so infuriated at Condi that he may now balk at stepping down and giving her the vice-presidency. “I think you better give her a new nickname,” he reportedly told GW. “I’m going to stick around a while.”
And what will George do? The tip-off will be what he does with Karen Hughes. If he ships her back to Texas where she belongs, that will be a sign that he’s getting serious on Iran and has ordered Condi to stop being a squish.
If not, Condi may have to kiss the vice-presidency and its stepping-stone to the Oval Office goodbye.
[Note: When asked to confirm this story, Wimbush declined with a terse “no comment.”]
