Outsmarting Versus Plain Smarting

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Painful as is it, it’s time for a Condi update, and also a caption tune-up.

This shot appears in yesterday’s NYT photo gallery.  The caption read:

At a news conference after a closed-door meeting between Russian leaders and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, left, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia would be forced to take steps to neutralize the threat posed by a proposed United States anti-missile shield if the system is deployed in Central Europe.

What it probably should have read, however, is the following:

Following a vicious (but for some reason, unexpected) tongue-lashing by Vladimir Putin (which only occurred after being kept waiting out in the hall for half-an-hour), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, left, nurse their wounds besides Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.  “Maybe a ballistic missile defense system could be installed on the moon,” Putin was reported as saying, “but any United States anti-missile shield installed in Central Europe is destined to be annihilated.”  Rice then left for the Middle East where a major U.S.-sponsored summit is scheduled in a month, even though opposing parties are just barely going through the motions.



(image: : Yuri Kadobnov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.  Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow.  Oct. 12, 2007.  nytimes.com)