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Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

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According to a senior administration official today, Secretary of State Colin Powell and three other Cabinet members submitted their resignations. Besides Powell, who had argued Bush’s case for ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein before a skeptical U.N. Security Council in February 2003, others whose resignations were confirmed Monday included Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

The departures of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans had been announced last week. The resignations revealed Monday bring to six (out of 15) the number of Cabinet members to leave so far. We all know that Bush already has chosen White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to succeed Ashcroft.

Most of the speculation on a successor for Powell has centered on U.N. Ambassador John Danforth, a Republican and former U.S. senator from Missouri, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The leading candidate to replace Paige is Margaret Spellings, Bush’s domestic policy adviser who helped shape his school agenda when he was the Texas governor.

The daughter of a California peach grower, Veneman, 55, was the nation’s first woman agriculture secretary. Speculation on a potential replacement has centered on Chuck Conner, White House farm adviser, Democratic Rep. Charles Stenholm of Texas, who lost his seat in the Nov. 2 elections, Allen Johnson, the chief U.S. negotiator on agricultural issues and Bill Hawks, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.

Powell has had a controversial tenure in the secretary of state’s job, reportedly differing on some key issues at various junctures with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Powell, however, has generally had good relations with his counterparts around the world, although his image was strained by the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Powell, a former chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush, led the current administration offensive at the United Nations for a military attack to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, arguing a weapons-of-mass-destruction threat that the administration could never buttress.

Do you believe that they are in fact qualified and should be the new cabinet members? Or do you think others will or should take those places instead?

Source:

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/15/cabinet/

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/041115/ids_photos_ts/r625677528.jpg

Topic

Dr. Condoleezza Rice

In reply to Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

Let?s get this party started right. Condoleezza Rice is absolutely brilliant. She has performed exceptionally for the President in her role as national security advisor and if I were him I wouldn?t think twice before offering her the secretary of state position. I agree with a lot of Republicans that she should be somewhere on the presidential ticket in 2008.

Are you sure?

In reply to Dr. Condoleezza Rice

Perhaps you would like to take a look at what Fred Kaplan from MSN has to say about Condoleezza Rice, and why he thinks he thinks she is not exactly the best national security adviser.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098499/

She tells it as it is

In reply to Are you sure?

And not always in Bush’s favour. IN fact paret of her testimony points out how he completely ignored the warnings of 9/11 and how he sat back in his chair and smirked while saying, “nobody will die on MY watch”, (regarding Iraq and casualties).

She sees Bush as a smug, arrogant, puppet to the administration, at least ONE Republican can see him for who he really is.

So in your opinion…

In reply to She tells it as it is

So in your opinion, how good do you think she would play a role a successor for Powell?

She would play a political role

In reply to So in your opinion…

I think that just about says it all.

Untrustworthy and set on a personal agenda to achieve in politics, every man/woman for themself while pretending to be part of the team.

Did you have some other form of politician in mind? 😀

Check Websters

In reply to She would play a political role

I believe that IS the definition of a Politician.

Good news and bad news

In reply to Dr. Condoleezza Rice

According to MSN, sources say Powell’s replacement is Condoleezza Rice. What does this mean?

The good news: Rice is among Bush’s closest advisers, so foreign leaders will at least know that her words reflect the views of the president. Her appointment may also provide, at least in the short term, a morale boost among foreign service officers?a note of compensation for the departure of their cherished Powell that the State Department is now run by someone who has the president’s ear and trust.

The bad news: In her four years as national security adviser, Rice has displayed no imagination as a foreign-policy thinker. She was terrible?one of the worst national security advisers ever?as a coordinator of policy advice. And to the extent she found herself engaged in bureaucratic warfare, she was almost always outgunned by Vice President Dick Cheney or Rumsfeld. Last year, for instance, the White House issued a directive putting her in charge of policy on Iraqi reconstruction; the directive was ignored. If Rumsfeld and his E-Ring gang survive the Cabinet shake-up, Rice may wind up every bit as flummoxed as her predecessor.

Source:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109772/

I vote for Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin

In reply to Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

Yes Cheech, highly educated, logical and creative.

Known for his stoned antics on Cheech and Chong movies, “Cheech’ Marin is a very clever man. He actually doesn’t smoke dope and only smoked on occasion while making the chronic C&C films.

He won several rounds of Jeopardy and best of all, puts Don Johnson in his place on Nash Bridges.

One could only hope for such REAL talent in the government.

With Chong as vice prez…..

In reply to I vote for Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin

I can see it now…….;)

good question

In reply to Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

Thank you for posting a question and leading a discussion without using intentionally inflammatory language, either in your title or body of your post.

In answer to your question, I do question the qualifications of some of the people already in the cabinet. I think GWB likes having people he knows around him, even if they aren’t as qualified as subject matter experts he doesn’t already know and trust.

He’s my President now, duly elected (for the first time), and all I hope for is the new appointees at least have a lick of common sense between them and do something good for the country while they’re in power. Because in ’08, Dems will do better…

Condoleezza Rice – An Impressive Resume – And Life

In reply to Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

Born: November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama

Nationality: American

Awards:
Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1984.

National fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1985-86.

International affairs fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, 1986-87.

School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1993.

Honorary doctorate, University of Notre Dame, 1995.

John P. McGovern Medal, Sigma Xi.

Member: American Political Science Association, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Council on Foreign Relations (life member), Lincoln Club of Northern California, Phi Beta Kappa.

Born in the heart of a still-segregated Dixie, Condoleezza Rice was brought up to believe that the sky was the limit as far as her future was concerned. A professor of political science for more than two decades, her expertise on the political machinations of the former Soviet Bloc made her a much-sought-after consultant in both the public and private sectors. When George W. Bush took office in January of 2001, Rice became his National Security Advisor, the first woman of any color to occupy that position.

Rice credits her parents for instilling in her the notion that there were no real limits on what she could do with her life?if she could dream it, she could do it. Although she grew up in the segregated South, she and her siblings were taught that they could achieve anything if they believed in themselves. She told Ebony, “Our parents really did have us convinced that [even though I] couldn’t have a hamburger at Woolworth’s, [I] could be president of the United States.”

Rice’s parents, John and Angelena, both of whom were educators, made sure that Condoleezza received a well-rounded education to prepare her for whatever she chose to do in life. Her mother taught her to play the piano at an early age, she studied figure skating, and was encouraged to take the most challenging courses in school. As a girl, her first love was music, and?thanks to her mother’s lessons?she was playing Bach and Beethoven even before her feet could reach the piano’s pedals.

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a city torn apart by racial tensions in the 1960s, was an important lesson for Rice. Although her parents tried their best to insulate her from some of the more virulent hatred at large in that city, even their best efforts could not shut out reality completely. Among the victims of the 1963 bombing of a black church in the city was one of Rice’s kindergarten classmates. “My parents really provided a shield as much as they could against the horrors of Birmingham,” she told ABC News. “At the same time I can remember my parents taking me to watch the marchers?they wanted us to know the history and to know what was happening.”

Although her parents successfully shielded her from some of the uglier aspects of racism, she did not escape unscathed. She told Ebony of one eye-opening incident from her high school years. She was told by a guidance counselor that she wasn’t college material, despite her consistently high grades in college preparatory courses. “I had not done very well on the preliminary SAT exam. I remember thinking that the odd thing about it was that [the counselor] had not bothered to check my record. I was a straight-A student in all advanced courses. I was excelling in Latin. I was a figure skater and a piano student. That none of that occurred to her I think was a subtle form of racism. It was the problem of low expectations [for African Americans].”

In her early teens, the family moved to Denver. A brilliant student, Rice began taking college courses while still in high school and formally entered the University of Denver at the age of 15 to study piano performance. However, before long, she had to acknowledge that she didn’t possess the right combination of talents to succeed as a pianist, so she went in search of another major. The answer came in a classroom presided over by Josef Korbel, the father of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. A lecture by Korbel on Josef Stalin mesmerized Rice. Fascinated by the intrigues and complexities of Soviet politics, she decided on the spot to major in political science. At the age of 19 she graduated from college magna cum laude.

At the University of Notre Dame, Rice earned her master’s degree in political science, after which she returned to Denver to pursue her doctorate in international affairs. After completing her doctoral program in 1981, Rice headed to the West Coast and a job teaching political science at Stanford University. She quickly distinguished herself at Stanford, winning the coveted Water J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1984 and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. She continued to learn more about the Byzantine politics of the Soviet Bloc, a region that she found particularly fascinating. During the 1985-86 academic year, she was a fellow at the Hoover Institute, a well-known think tank based at Stanford. During this period she published two books that helped to bolster her growing reputation as an expert on Soviet Bloc affairs. Released in 1985 was Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army: 1948-1983. Published the following year was The Gorbachev Era, which she co-edited with Alexander Dallin. More recently, Rice and Philip Zelikow co-wrote Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft, released in 1995.

In 1986 her expertise on the Soviet Union earned her an advisory position with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A Council on Foreign Relations fellowship brought her to Washington to provide advice on nuclear strategic planning, during which assignment she worked directly under Admiral William Crowe. Looking back on that experience, she later told ABC News, “There were four of us in one little office, and it was great. I gained so much respect for military officers and what they do, and I think I really got an experience that few civilians have.” In 1988 Rice traveled to Bulgaria at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union to speak to Soviet diplomats and officials on arms control policy.

Acting on the recommendation of Brent Scowcroft, his adviser on national security affairs, President George H. W. Bush in 1989 named Rice director of Soviet and East European affairs on the National Security Council. Her duties involved interpreting for Bush the international significance of events occurring within the Soviet Bloc. She briefed Bush to help him prepare for his summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta, Washington, D.C., Paris, and Helsinki. Rice was later promoted to senior director of Soviet and East European Affairs and named a special assistant to the president for national security affairs.

In 1991 Rice returned to her teaching position at Stanford, although she continued to serve as a consultant on the former Soviet Bloc for numerous clients in both the public and private sectors. Late that year, California Governor Pete Wilson appointed her to a bipartisan committee that had been formed to draw new state legislative and congressional districts in the state. Serving with Rice?the youngest member of the panel?were a number of retired state judges, including a former justice of the state supreme court. In announcing the makeup of the committee, Gov. Wilson said of its members in the Los Angeles Times, as quoted by Contemporary Black Biography: “All [members] have certain attributes in common. All are distinguished scholars. All are leaders in their fields, known for impartiality and devoted to the truth.”

In 1993, Stanford President Gerhard Casper named Rice provost at the university, a position that for the first time presented her with the challenge of managing a budget, in this case one that exceeded $1 billion. Never one to shrink from a challenge, Rice quickly boned up on the do’s and don’ts of financial management. Before long she was questioning some of the basic assumptions about budgeting and, more importantly, getting Stanford’s financial house in order. Coit Blacker, deputy director of Stanford’s Institute for International Studies and a longtime colleague, said of Rice’s handling of the budget on Stanford University’s website: “There was a sort of conventional wisdom that said it couldn’t be done . . . that [the deficit] was structural, that we just had to live with it. She said, ‘No, we’re going to balance the budget in two years.’ It involved painful decisions, but it worked and communicated to funders that Stanford could balance its own books and had the effect of generating additional sources of income for the university. . . . It was courageous.”

In addition to her responsibilities at Stanford and her continuing work as a consultant on matters of Russian and Eastern European political affairs, Rice has served as a director on a number of corporate boards, including Chevron, Transamerica Corporation, and Charles Schwab Corporation. She also sits on the board of the University of Notre Dame, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan, and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. Carla Hills, former special trade representative, has served with Rice on the board of Chevron, and she’s clearly an admirer who feels that Rice’s experience at Stanford should serve her well in the future. “I think her experience as provost in Stanford has given her an interesting window on budgeting and management that is really quite extensive,” Hills told ABC News. Of Rice’s management style, Hills said, “I would say she is firm, which is maybe a nicer word for tough, and that is because she does her homework and knows her position.”

In mid-1999, Rice stepped down as provost at Stanford, and took up a position as senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. Before long, however, she found much of her time occupied as an adviser to Texas Governor George W. Bush, who was then mounting a campaign for the presidency. Although she’d worked for his father, she was not all that well acquainted with the Texas governor until she and his father joined him for lunch during his first legislative session. They quickly discovered that they shared a love for sports, Rice told ABC News. “We got along well right away.” During a stay at the Kennebunkport, Maine, vacation home of the senior Bush in the summer of 1998, she and the governor had a lengthy discussion about foreign policy. Rice has great praise for Bush’s foreign policy instincts, telling ABC News, “He is quick in a good way; he has got a very sharp intellect that goes right to the core of something. Particularly when you are dealing with areas you may not know very well, the ability to get to the essence of the problem is critical.”

During the presidential race of 2000, Rice served not only as one of Bush’s team of foreign policy advisers but also as a member of Bush’s campaign response team. She stepped forward to defend Bush after Vice President Al Gore attacked the Texas governor’s lack of expertise on foreign policy. “Where was he [Gore] when it was time to stand up and be counted in Seattle?” she asked ABC News, referring to the violent protests surrounding the December of 1999 meetings of the World Trade Organization in that city.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Rice shot into the spotlight. Since then, Rice has been featured prominently as a government official, dealing with the “war on terrorism.”

Serving now as Bush’s National Security Advisor, Rice has attained a lofty position of influence, one that has never before been occupied by a woman. But this is a woman who was raised to believe the sky’s the limit, so it’s likely we haven’t heard the last of Condoleezza Rice.

Source of the (cut and pasted) biography:

http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/rice_c.htm

Condi gets promoted after abysmal 911 failure

In reply to Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

Oh well, no surprise here then.

How someone can screw up, let the 911 terrorism acts happen when she was the National Security Advisor….and get promoted (maybe its because of her oil links … after all she did have an oil tanker named after her).

How stupid, foolish and blind can you get!!!

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” Condoleeza Rice May 16, 2002

But the 911 commision report (http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/911hearing1pt1.pdf) contradicts this, saying:

Eleanor Hill from the Joint Intelligence Committee concludes, “There was considerable historical evidence that international terrorists had planned and were, in fact, capable of conducting major terrorist strikes within the United States.”

“The Hart-Rudman Commission released on
February 2001 also predicted a terrorist attack of
great magnitude and loss of life on our own soil.
This report both identified the increasing threat
of terrorism and was also a blueprint for the
development of homeland security, which, if
implemented, could have prevented September 11th.
However, their recommendations to address these
threats were never implemented. The report sat on
a shelf”

Ouch!!!

Huge Difference

In reply to Condi gets promoted after abysmal 911 failure

Between knowing that a major attack may come, in a huge country with hundreds of potential targets, and knowing that a specific city or target will be attacked.

Realistically, what more could have been done? There are not enough police, FBI, Air Force etc to be able to cover every potential target. Guess wrong and it could be worse than doing nothing.

And the specific quote referred to (in context of the whole)was that although the intelligence community was aware of an increased threat level(which by the way has happened in the past without an actual incident occuring), they had not forseen this new kind of event.

James

The problem was

In reply to Huge Difference

Well, of course, but isn’t that their job, to gather meaningful intelligence, that would protect your national security.

“There are not enough police, FBI, Air Force etc to be able to cover every potential target”

Well, of course not, that is why you need “Intelligence”. To promote someone who so utterly failed is not intelligent … its stupid!!

As for your last comment .. no sh*t … shouldn’t they have focused more on those real threats.

If you ask me, they were too blinded with their chase for non-existent weapons of mass distraction in Iraq.

Forgive me if I’m wrong…

In reply to The problem was

but didn’t the “chase for non-existent weapons of mass distraction in Iraq” come AFTER 9/11? How could they have been “blinded” before the tragedy happened by something that came after?

I’m a Liberal-Democrat and not a huge fan of the current administration, but attacking Dr. Rice for not being able to predict that terrorists on a suicide mission would use planes as missiles aimed at the World Trade Center just isn’t fair. There was intelligence that said SOMETHING was going to happen… but the intelligence they had did not specify the targets or the methods. And yes, she has a tanker named after her… big whoop… that doesn’t mean she’s making big money in the oil industry.

I will agree that SOMETHING more could have been done to prevent/protect our citizenry prior to 9/11. I don’t know what that is… but I also don’t know that the blame should be laid at Condoleeza Rice’s feet.

In my personal opinion, of all the people GWB COULD appoint to the cabinet, I sincerely hope that Dr. Rice is one of them. She’s intelligent, well-educated, politically savvy… I just hope she learns to stand up to Cheney.

Hind sight is 2020

In reply to Condi gets promoted after abysmal 911 failure

She is one person and can only do the best that she can. Do you honestly think that if there was anything that she could have been done she would have? Let?s take into consideration that she hadn?t been at the job that long and there?s a lot of information to take in everyday. Do you have any idea of the size of the intelligence apparat in the Federal government?
The 9/11 report should best be used as a guide by which we can make ourselves stronger, smarter and more able to deal with future threats as they come.
Dr. Rice is intelligent and very capable of doing the job.

Rice admits the administration made ‘Bad Decisions’ on Iraq

In reply to Who will replace Powell and three others to leave the cabinet

According to Yahoo! News, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, in a rare acknowledgment of mistakes, said on Wednesday the Bush administration had made some bad decisions in Iraq and was unprepared for stabilizing the country.

The admission came during her confirmation hearing at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations committee where she was approved by a 16-to-2 vote as the first black woman to become the top U.S. diplomat despite Democrats’ criticism over the Iraq war.

Republicans had hoped to have swift confirmation of Rice in the full Senate with little or no discussion shortly after President Bush is sworn in for a second four-year term on Thursday.

But Democrats balked, saying they hoped to have nine hours of debate on the Senate floor that is likely to include sharp criticism of the administration on Iraq. This debate will push the vote into next week.

Democrats on the committee complained the Bush administration was unwilling to learn from its mistakes to change policies in Iraq, be candid about the cost of continued deployment and develop a better exit strategy.

“We have made a lot of decisions in this period of time. Some of them have been good, some of them have not been good, some of them have been bad decisions, I am sure,” Rice told the committee.

The 50-year-old former Stanford University provost did not specify what the bad decisions were but said in at least one case, “We didn’t have the right skills, the right capacity, to deal with a reconstruction effort of this kind.”

Bush’s national security adviser for the last four years, Rice also acknowledged the State Department’s intelligence arm dissented before the war over some information about Iraq’s weapons capability and needed to be listened to more.

The administration argued Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to make the case for war, but none have been found.

CLOSE CONFIDANT

Bush chose one of his closest confidantes to replace Colin Powell, who was popular at home and abroad but often appeared out-of-step with Bush by stressing diplomatic solutions to a White House criticized for a go-it-alone approach to crises.

A spokesman for Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, said he and others believe “the Senate’s advice and consent Constitutional responsibilities are not a rubber-stamp” and wanted time to consider Rice’s testimony before voting.

Rice’s acknowledgment of mistakes followed complaints her testimony belied the reality on the ground, where an insurgency rages and where U.S. efforts to train Iraqi security forces to take over from U.S. troops have been beset by delays.

The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, lambasted her for citing administration figures that 120,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained as part of an exit strategy for eventually replacing the 150,000 U.S. troops.

Anthony Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said the vast majority of Iraqis the Bush administration has trained are incapable of fighting effectively and Bush and Rice have acknowledged problems of desertion and absenteeism among them.

“You all don’t do anything except parrot ‘We’ve trained 120,000 forces,”‘ Biden said. “So I go home and people ask me … ‘Why are we still there? — 120,000 trained Iraqis? — Why are we still there?”‘

“… For God’s sake, don’t listen to (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld. He doesn’t know what in the hell he’s talking about on this.”

California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer joined Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the former Democratic presidential nominee who failed to unseat Bush last year, in voting against Rice and urged her to change policy where necessary.

“It seems to me there is a rigidness here, a lack of flexibility,” Boxer said.

Source:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20050119/pl_nm/bush_rice_dc

Finally!

In reply to Rice admits the administration made ‘Bad Decisions’ on Iraq

Someone from the administration acknowledged that big mistakes were made. It is a step in the right direction for her.

Condi Rice is an incredible woman, but she needs to establish her own identity in the administration. Right now, she is too close to George Bush. Though she said she does disagree with the President, she was not willing to give examples. I hope if Colin Powell was her mentor, she will become a more diplomatic Condi Rice. She needs to be less pitbullish. I think she can do it, but she has to soften her approach.

I am impressed with the democratic response from Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, and Joe Biden. They are finally standing up and doing the things that the other 49% of America that didn’t vote for Bush want to see. I think they are correct to further the debate with Condi Rice. I think they are looking for a line of honest communication from the Bush administration and this is their test for her.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

[Author]

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