missing in action

I didn't want to talk about the Georgia-Russia mess for the last couple days because it was difficult to know which country started what, and why. But now that Russia finally decided it had proven its point and agreed to halt days after Georgia's unconditional cease fire, I think we should observe the following facts:

• George W. Bush's National Security Advisor and, in his second term, his Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, wrote her PhD dissertation entitled "The Politics of Client Command: Party-Military Relations in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1975." She was H.W.'s Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor during the key period after the Berlin Wall fell. She was supposed to be an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe/Central Asia.


• June 16, 2001 Joint Press Conference with Presidents Bush and Putin:
  

  [Question:] And to President Bush. Did President Putin ease your concern at all about the spread of nuclear technologies by Russia, and is this a man that Americans can trust?
  [...]
  PRESIDENT BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.
  
  There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him. (Laughter.)



• AFP wire report 19 hours ago:
  

  US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also been noticeably absent on the diplomatic scene, having failed to interrupt her holidays to fly to Tbilisi in support of the Georgian government.
  
  Instead senior State Department official, Matthew Bryza, who oversees the Caucasus region was sent, two days later than planned, to join a joint EU-US mediation effort to win a ceasefire.



• OK, so where was President Bush when the fighting broke out between Russia and Georgia?
  


• August 30, 2005:
  
  And around that same time...
  

  After catching a Wednesday night performance of Spamalot (where she was booed when the lights came up), the Secretary of Insensitivity went shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue. While browsing thousands of dollars in new shoes (replacement dominatrix boots?), a horrified fellow shopper shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” For being so forward, Condi rewarded her by having her security toss the shopper from the store — and then decided to cut her stay short to, uh, do her job.



• August 6, 2001:
  
  Why do we care about that document that Karen Hughes is handing President Bush...
  

  [9/11 Commissioner] BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 [2001] PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB [President's Daily Brief]?
  RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

  
  So what did the president do after he was briefed?
  

  Bush listened to the briefing, [Pultizer Prize Winning Author Ron] Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Summer reruns, I guess.