Educated, Intelligent and Smart

If ever a distinction needed to be made, it is that between the terms 'educated', 'intelligent' and 'smart'. They are often carelessly interchanged. This is dangerous.
To simplify, let's say 'educated' is just the measurement of the level of education you've successfully attained. Maybe just grade school or high school...or maybe a PhD in physics. In any case, I would suggest that we've all met people who were 'well educated', but whom we would not consider equally intelligent or smart.
Intelligent, as I understand it, is simply a measurement of the individual facility to learn and comprehend things--some of them inherently unintelligible, like calculus (OK, that's my bias speaking). It is popularly measured by "IQ" scores.
Finally, there is 'smart'--something entirely different from the first two. It is an immeasurable ability of people to understand how the world works. Who read between the lines. See ulterior motives. 'Read' people well. Become hard to fool. It is a trait the Three Guys often attribute to fellow Chicagoans.
Which leads to the discussion of comments made over the weekend by our country's Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. She of a doctorate at the University of Denver and similar honorary degrees from half a dozen others; an apparently successful stint as provost of Stanford; and seats on the board of both Chevron and Charles Schwab. Certainly it would be impossible to argue either her education or her intelligence.
But her latest comments over the weekend, asserting that the overthrow of Saddam was equal to the defeat of Hitler, stops the train of tributes dead in its tracks. This is hardly her only stumble; she has been misstating reality and failing her country for the last seven years. One can only presume that a person of her accomplishment is not deliberately lying. Surely that tendency would have been noticed by someone before she was appointed the top person advising the President of the United States on intelligence matters.
Which leaves only one possibility. The chasm between her education and intelligence, on one hand, and her absolute void of 'smarts' on the other, makes her verifiably the stupidest person on Earth.

diderot