Rice Unveiled

This interview is wrong for so many reasons... What's our relationship with North Korea? We are working very hard within a six-party framework to bring about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The North Koreans have begun to fulfill obligations from the Feb. 13, 2007, agreement, having invited the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] there. It's my hope that the shutdown of the reactor is the next step. So, this is how we deal with the WMD threat everywhere EXCEPT Iraq? Diplomacy? Has anti-Americanism around the world abated? Has it hurt our business interests? (softball...) Whatever people think of certain policies that we had to undertake in difficult circumstances after September 11, there's great admiration for America... Sometimes we overstate the degree to which America is not popular, even if sometimes our policies are not. People from other countries like America, just not our foreign policy? "Whatever people think of certain policies"? I assume the "certain policies" she is talking about are extraordinary rendition and torture? What do people from other countries know about America EXCEPT our foreign policies? Would you consider a position in business or on Wall Street? I don't know what I'll do long-term. I'm a terrible long-term planner. I was supposed to be a music major and concert pianist, and here I sit. Oh, dear God... The Secretary of State is a self-admitted "terrible long-term planner"?? ...One thing I've tried to do is to institutionalize the public-private partnership. The government can't do it all. When you talk about winning hearts and minds around the world, we are but a small part of what most of the world encounters about America. Winning Hearts and Minds? This is a not-even-veiled reference to the Vietnam era pro-America propaganda effort that, in retrospect, ultimately failed to convince the populace in Vietnam. The popular interpretation of the term is as a "reference for disingenuous and misguided attempts to use a military to make a subjugated population behave more like its conquerors. " Make a subjugated population behave more like it's conquerors ... hmmm. So, it would be like invading another country, deposing it's government, and trying to force the country to become a democracy by using our military? If I look back, though, what I'm most glad we did is to put the promotion of democracy at the center of American foreign policy.... (Unless the result is something we don't want, like when Hamas won a democratic election ...) Hearts and minds, indeed.