A Team Player

Condi does her best. AP (12.05.07):

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, working to defend U.S. strategy on Iran, questioned the openness of the Iranian government on Wednesday after its president said a new U.S. intelligence review concluding his country has stopped developing nuclear weapons amounts to 'a final shot' against Tehran's critics.

Rice declined to respond to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remark, but told reporters in the Ethiopian capital that the public release of the National Intelligence Estimate showed the Bush administration was committed to transparent democracy, while Iran was not."

Rice Questions Iran Government Openness

So there. Take that.

"Rice said that the latest U.S. intelligence estimate did not mean that Washington no longer considered Tehran a threat and urged the international community not to back down at the U.N. Security Council on pressuring Iran to halt its activities that could produce the ingredients for an atomic weapon."

The international community's response was something along the lines of, "Yeah, sure. Whatever."

Condi was really trying hard though. "'People need the opportunity to absorb what they've heard,' she said. 'We have been completely transparent about what the intelligence assessment says. And people need a chance to read it. When they do that and when they read it in its detail and nuance, they will be able to see the points that I have made.'"

Really, really trying.