Condi’s Really Bad Month (Revisited)

By Scott Horton

Several readers have asked me if I wrote my comments on Condi’s failure on the basis of having read David Samuels’s piece in the current Atlantic. The answer is “yes.” I’ve rarely read a piece which is so beautifully written and so completely wrong. I am a fan of Samuels’s work and this is a big disappointment. Of course, it helps build interest in the piece to suggest that Cheney is on the wane and the era of Condi is here. The problem is that it’s just not true. Would that it were.

On the other hand, this issue of Atlantic is far from a loss. Christopher Hitchens’s book review focusing on Gertrude Bell is an excellent little pastry, for instance.