Beautiful dreamer?

For the record, I don't think she's beautiful, but I know people who do.

Secretary of State Rice gave an interview to that beacon of the intellectual press, The New York Post. In it she attempted to rebut Bill Clinton's allegations that the Bush administration did little or nothing during it's first eight months in power to deal with the al Qaeda threat. Whether or not she did so is not what I wish to discuss now (although it sounds as if she got as pissed off as Clinton did - I wonder if Faux news will describe it as "Rice gets crazed").

What I would like to discuss is how she exposed the side of her that just likes to dream. Some choice quotes from the interview:

On Iraq: "You're never going to have a just Sunni-Shia reconciliation if you don't have a political system in which the interests of all can be represented - and that's what Iraq represents."

On Pakistan: "The future of Pakistan, as [President Pervez] Musharraf and his people fully understand, is to de-radicalize elements of the population."

On the Middle East conflict: "It would help to have a moderate force in the Palestinian territories and to have the beginnings of rapprochement with Israel and the rest of its neighbors."

On the Far East: "I would like to see an improvement in Japanese-China relations."

In general: she said that U.S. forces must finish the job in Iraq and the wider Middle East to wipe out the "root cause" of violent extremism.

I like a woman with a broad ranging imagination.