Rupert Cornwell (Extracted from "Rice cooks up some southern hospitality for Straw", The Independent, 22 October 2005)

"Usually they meet in the gilded halls of the Foreign Office or on the elegant seventh floor of the State Department in Washington. But for three days this weekend, Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw are mulling over the problems of the world in the Deep South state where the US Secretary of State was born."

[Ed: This is fascinating and may possibly prove to be significant. President Bush's closest and most adoring friend is spending three days with Straw, one of the shrewdest political minds in the world who was originally against the invasion of Iraq. Now that Bush is on the back foot with steeply declining public support, and Vice-president Cheney is almost in the cross-hairs of Fitzgerald the US Prosecutor, Condi must find some way of getting her hapless friend out of the mire. Will Jack Straw be able to do so? Perhaps he will advise her that she and Bush must now side with those deeply troubled Republican Senators who are now saying that Cheney and Rumsfeld must be retired as soon as possible and a new raft of policies installed if Republicans are to have any chance in the 2006 mid-term elections.]