The interview portion of the cablecast were unevenly divided between Condi Rice and Carl Levin, Rice getting more time, which struck me as unfair, given that Rice was the lead interview as well on the other three hours of Sunday gasbaggery.

What is there left to say about Condi Rice?

I’ll give her this, she is more relaxed as Secretary of State than she was as Bush’s Security honcho, but then she’s getting much love from the SCLM. I am unable to view her without my awareness that she lies often, and without remorse. In a separate post during the week, I think I’ll give what I consider a typical but less often noted example; interestingly, it had to do with North Korea and the nuclear issue, which was notable by its absence anywhere on the agenda of this hour long analysis of what Chris Wallace noted, in his intro to the program, would be about international hotspots - which turned out to be Afghanistan, Iraq, and, of course, Iran - no mention of North Korea - no problem that they may be stockpilling nuclear weapons and looking for more technology to get themselves a fleet of missiles that can deliver nuclear weapons, not to mention the value of nuclear technology as trading chips for a country that is isolated, and continues to suffer from famine.

Afghanistan turned out to be a hot spot because of the issue of the man facing a capitol trial for changing religions, from Muslim to Christian.

The case had already been dismissed by this morning, but Wallace didn’t have nothin’ else to talk about for Afghanistan…so…One interesting Rice comment - she pointed to the new Afghani constitution’s pledge to embrace the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document not often given much credit by the rightwing, of which she is so clearly, now, a member in good standing, all dues paid up. Naturally, she didn’t mention the UN was where the Declaration was passed, at a time when America was one of its chief supporters, something which would never have happened under this administration.

Rice had nothing of interest to say about any of this, but she managed to exude the most astonishing smugness about the “progress” in Afghanistan, considering what is actually happening there, and how strong are the forces on the ground that could push it once again into the status of a failed state, if it isn’t just that already, for the vast majority of Afghanis.

Next up, Iraq. No unity government yet, Wallace noting that a group of them had met and not succeeded in forming a government because of disagreements about who would get what jobs. Tsk, Tsk, Condi replied, remember how hard is what we and they are trying to do, progress IS being made, General Casey has said that there will be likely significant drawdowns of troops over this here year, as Iraqi troops stand up, etc.: Wallace didn’t think to ask how it was that Casey and Condi weren’t thereby signally the insurgent they only need to hold on for a while. Needless for me to say it, no questions were asked about those permanent American bases we seem to be building in Iraq, OF COURSE!

Iran - you’ve heard it all before, and will hear it endless times again, although Condi emphasized that we are working in concert with the world community, and with a man like John Bolton at the UN…

As far as I could tell, (I will admit to having nodded off a few times), Wallace didn’t ask Secretary Rice anything about the stepped up attacks by the Bush administraion on the coverage of Iraq by the SCLM. Natch.

Whereas Rice got two segments, Carl Levin, just back from a trip to both Iraq and Afghanistan, got one segment.

Levin wasn’t at all bad on Iraq; no, what the administration is doing isn’t working, because by its endless reassurances that this country is offering an open-ended committment of American troops in Iraq, the administration is disincentivizing Iraqi politicans from coming together in a unity government, which is the only hope for Iraq. Instead, what Levin saw this week was “political gridlock.”

Levin acknowledged that there was some progress being made in training Iraqi Army troops, but made a distinction between that and the development of a police force that can establish civil security, both of whichm he noted, were sorely lacking. There were countries around the world that could have helped us help the Iraqis in this, but that seems unlikely now, given the horrifying lack of the most minimal freedom from constant violence, added to the Bush administration’s failure to welcome other countries not among the coalition of the willing, i.e, countries and politicans, unlike Britain’s Blair, who don’t feel they should agree to say only nice things about Bush.

About Afghanistan, Levin was more hopeful than he is on Iraq, and naturally Wallace didn’t ask the kind of questions that would have brought out the idiocy that we are spending all this money in Iraq and ignoring much of Afghanistan’s needs. Oh well, Wallace had something more important to discuss - Finegold’s censure resolution, which Wallace introduced by running a clip of the Vice-President trying to make hay out of the NSA issue, while he made fun of Democrats for thinking they could run on the issue of incompetence.

Levin didn’t seem the least bit troubled by anything Cheney had to say, and he fully embraced the issue of comptence as one the Democrats would and should run on.

In reference to Finegold, Levin was less good, keeping his distance from the censure resolution, but at least Levin did make clear that the entire NSA issue is a genuine one which involves possible law-breaking on the part of the administration and which requires investigation on the part of both the Intelligence and the Justice committees.

Levin is part of a sub-comittee which is being given briefings on the progarm; Levin declined to say how they’re going, pointing out that he was sworn not to talk about it, something Wallace didn’t seem able to understand when quizzing Senator Durbin last week. Once again, Wallace pointed to a single sentence by Senator Feinstien, seeming to embrace the program. A quick personal note here - I called the Senator’s office last week and was told by one of her aides that Feinstein hasn’t taken a definitive position yet, she was only saying that naturally, being able to listen to phone calls by persons there are reasonable reasons to believe might be terrorists is a good idea, but like all such programs, it needs to be legal, and involve some kind of supervision from the courts and congress.

Now to the roundtable, which included regulars Mara Liasson, Juan Williams, William Kristol, with the addtiion of Paul Gigot.

First topic was IMMIGRATION! Bla bla bla about the split in the Republican Party, between the antideluvian rightwing, Tom Tancredo et al, who want to build walls, literally, on the border, and Bush’s compassionate conservative desire not to alienate the fastest growing ethnic majority in this country. What struck me was the total cynicism of it all, although both Gigot and Kristol tried to wrap it in the higher idealism of something or other. They’re against a wall, and criminalizing both being an illegal alien and helping same. It was hard not to read what they were saying as fear about further declines in the Republican base. Both Kristol and Gigot thought, what with that giant among men, John McCain, being for the more liberal version of immigration reform, plus the liberals being for it, there was a chance for comprehensive reform. But does that mean the Republicans won’t be shooting at Democrats on this issue? Yeah, right.

Interesting, but not surprising, there was no discussion at all about the Bush administration’s renewed attacks on the SCLM’s coverage of what is happening in Iraq, surely one of the chief political stories of the week.

Kristol came alive talking about Afghanistan; Karzai is a real leader, and which country, Afrghanistan or Saudia Arabia, looks the more likely one to develop genuine democratic values? Gosh, Bill, are those the only choices? Apparently, Kristol focused on Saudia Arabia because it is a favorite of all those “realist” foreign policy wonks.

Wallace then wondered aloud if some of the concern about what was happening in Afghanistan this week wasn’t a form of “we told you so,” aimed at the administration, and he cited an op ed which Madline Albright had written for the LA Times.

Well, that was all Kristol and Gigot needed; Albright was a fine one to talk - her Afghanistan was the one run by the Taliban, a decade of doing nothing, I think I heard the word, “feckless” somewhere in there…but you know what they said, you’ve heard all those lies before. In fact, the Taliban were in control in Afghanistan by the time Clinton came into office, and if anyone brought the Taliban to the Afghan people, it was Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, both of whom supported the Muhajadeen, which included many of the same people we are now fighting, and it was those Republican administrations that left Afghanistan in total chaos, a truly failed state, and it was Bush Sr.’s administration, in partaicular, who ignored Afghanistan, and what was developing there, once the Soviets had left.

I don’t remember a single thing that Mara Liasson said.

Juan Williams made a halfway decent point about Afghanistan, pointing out that Karzai’s intervention in the religious case this week had its down side in that once again America was seen as holding the puppet strings. Juan was assidously ignored, and his point wasn’t so good as to make up for all the nonsense he spews on NPR.