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.”