This Week’s Nero's Fiddle Award goes to - Condoleezza Rice.

New York, August 26, 2008. The coveted Nero's Fiddle Award this week goes to Condi "Missed Opportunity" Rice for her tireless incompetence as 43's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

Rice laid the foundation for this award 7 years ago, in June, July, and August, 2001, by ignoring Richard Clarke on Osama bin Laden and Al Queda, and with he deafening silence in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Last week she chastized Putin and Medvyedev "you can't just invade another country" she said. "Do you think this is 1968?" she asked, referring to the Russian invasion of Chechoslovakia, or, perhaps, to the War in Viet Nam.

The Nero's Fiddle Award Committee sent me to ‘Virtual Moscow’ for an imaginary interview with Vladimir Putin and his puppet Medvyedev. (We don't have money for air fare and I'm not about to go to Russia.) Here's the transcript of my virtual interview: "Condoleezza Rice said you must get out of Georia. She said 'you can't just invade another country.' How do you answer?"

"Vy not?" Putin said, when he stopped laughing. "You did. Ven you get out of Afganistan, vich you lost ven you vent into Iraq, which, by the vay, your own Alan Greenspan said vas a vor for oil, ven you get out of Iraq, ven you get your missiles out of Poland, ven you close your prision and get out of Cuba, den ve might listen to you. Until then, you are a lame duck, your eagle has a broken wing, and the bear is growing stronger."

Medvyedev smiled, looked at a map, turned to Putin, and said "Da. Let's figure out where we go next. Vat do you think of Armenia? Azerbijan?"

That was last week. Rice, dimly realizing that Putin had a royal straight flush, Medvyedev had four aces, and she and Georgie were holding a pair of duces, a three, a five, and a seven, and they didn't have time to stack the deck, quickly turned her attention to that old standby, the Arab-Israeli conflict. She acknowledged that Bush's dream of a Palestinian state might not be realized by the end of his term. "Where were you," I'd like to ask, for the last seven and a half years. Clinton was wrong about Arafat, he was not genuinely interested in peace. But Dr. Rice, where have you been? Don't you think that you might have accomplished something if you started working on it 8 years ago?"

She looked at me with her big brown eyes, smiled her 37.2 watt smile, gave me that deer in the headlight stare the Bushes made famous, and said "you read the papers, you know where we've been, Afganistan, Iraq, failing up."

"Right," I said, "we've had Bin Laden on the run for 7 years. We've been liberating Iraq from Saddam, we've been protecting America from Saddam's non-existant weapons of mass destruction, and bringing Al Queda to Iraq to break the links between Iraq and Al Queda. Heck of a job, Condi."

"You write well," she smiled again, like the Xenia Onatopp, Famke Janssen’s character in Goilden Eye, "but you think too much," Rice said to me. "You should go to Cuba to investigate conditions in Guantanamo Bay. And stay there."

"Thanks but no thanks, Condi," I said. "I'm not a real journalist. I'll leave Guantanamo to the people who write for Fox News, Weekend Update, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report. They’re not really journalists either, but they have expense accounts."

What should we do about Russia?

• Ignore them, they will just go away.
• Urge Europe to buy natural gas from Russia, with more money the Russians will be nice.
• Install more "Defensive Missiles" in Ukraine, Finland, Turkey, Kazakstan to tell the Ruskies we mean business.
• Buy land in Siberia, where we will go sunbathing when the Jersey shore is under water.
• Pray

Copyright, C, 2008. L. J. Furman, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of satire. Any resemblance to the facts is purely tragic.