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Today, In Some Parallel Universe

Addressing the Israeli Knesset today, President Bush apparently said some inflammatory things:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.” [AP, Liz Sidoti]

This statement set off an immediate reaction by touchy politicians who thought that Bush must have been talking about them, notably Condoleeza Rice, the leader of an autonomous, self-governing division of the Executive Branch over which Bush is the ceremonial head. Rice accused Bush of making a veiled reference to her intent to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and pursue full diplomatic relations with Kim Jong Il’s regime shortly after it was revealed that the North was building a secret nuclear reactor in Syria and despite its persistent refusal to fully declare and dismantle its nuclear weapons programs. Rice denounced Bush’s remarks as “partisan” and “unbecoming of a president’s legacy.”

4 Responses

  1. Later in the day Secretary Rice accused Bush of “ideological rigidity.” When asked about her previous statement as NSC Adviser to VOA, April 22, 2002, “truly evil regimes will never be reformed and…such regimes must be confronted, not coddled,” Rice replied that back then she was under the influence of the neocons and the Vice President. Moreover, she had not yet attained the level of sophistication in analyzing world affairs that she later came to embody as Secretary of State.

  2. Link please. The only people who it has been reported said anything about this being directed toward them was the democratics canidates.
    Nothing is being reported about this having to been towards Condi. she is after all under the presidents orders. If you feel she is not sophisticated as Secretary of State, then if you have a brain you would know that Bush was never sophisticated enough to be commander in chief.

  3. Listener, you have an underdeveloped sense of parody. Not everyone is sophisticated enough for that, of course.