Madam Secretary Hillbillary off to a roaring start, and a farewell tribute to Secretary Rice

I do not know, and I never want to know, why Hillary cultists were amused by the public dig she took at her husband in her comments after her ceremonial swearing-in as Secretary of State.

There was nothing funny about the fact that the new chief diplomat for the world's sole hyperpower nation just couldn't resist reminding the world of her sick marital life. Her comment was a co-dependent tic mirrored in her husband's actions while he was President.

I detest Hillary Clinton; I detest the kind of person she stands for, who can be summed with the words, "You owe me." The only thing I've liked about Barack Obama so far is that he wasn't taken in by Mrs Clinton's 'Please kick me so you will owe me' routine.

To top if off, I harbor the belief that Mrs Clinton, as with her husband, is a Leftist Eurohead who would sell out America's national security in order to please Brussels. Her inane comments in January, after her first swearing-in as Secretary of State, shore my prejudice:

"There's a great exhalation of breath going on around the world as people express their appreciation for the new direction that's being set, and the team that's put together by the president to carry out our foreign policy goals," Clinton said after telephoning dozens of world leaders in her first five days on the job. "We have a lot of damage to repair."

That's something a politician, not a diplomat, says in public. But if one wants to be political, and strictly accurate, more than any other person who could be held accountable, President Clinton left this country wide open for the 9/11 attack. That President Bush had to make many enemies while cleaning up Bill Clinton's messes as Commander-in-Chief -- and the messes made by the West European governments Clinton pandered to -- is a fact that Mrs Clinton as Secretary of State would do well not to draw attention to in her public remarks.

Those are my prejudices against the person who is now filling the office of Secretary of State. This said, I will strive to be as objective as possible in my analyses of how she executes her orders from the White House, although the emphasis is on "strive."

I'm unwilling to end on such a grumpy note so I will look back for a moment. Condoleezza Rice drove me up a wall whenever she played Red Queen to deal with those who questioned her contradictory statements in the service of contradictory policy; e.g., beating up on Moscow for not being democratic enough while making only the mildest protests about Beijing's human rights abuses. But I liked her and I respected her.

I will remember Condoleezza Rice by a photograph taken of her while she was still National Security Advisor: loping alongside Bush in her long-legged, confident stride, wearing a baseball cap, jeans and T-shirt, as they made for the helicopter on the first stage of their secret Thanksgiving journey to Iraq.

God, that was a dangerous journey -- almost foolhardy, even with all the secrecy and security measures. The insurgents were shooting at any machine that could fly, and trying to blow up any military vehicle that moved, so the idea of special security for the U.S. President and his party was rather moot.

Yet she was grinning from ear to ear as she headed for the helicopter: off on an adventure.

I thought of the photograph in 2007, on the day I saw another photograph: that of a portly Baghdad matron toting an AK-47 as she prepared to do a routine patrol of her neighborhood. That's the ticket, sister. She'd come a long way from October 2003, when Baghdad matrons quizzed Paul Wolfowitz about how soon their streets would be safe from terrorists and thieves.

He'd replied, "That's up to you."

Everything about Condoleezza Rice's stint in government exuded the pluck that Iraq's women will need to muster, if they don't want to return to life under the rule of a demonic satrap. She was a great role model for women all over the world who aspire to more say in their society.