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October 23, 2006
Arrogance and stupidity
Senior US state department official Alberto Fernandez remarked during an interview with Al-Jazeera (in Arabic, of which language he is a speaker) that the US had acted with "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq. An amazing admission, and one which is so obviously true that the shock of hearing that a senior official has admitted it is very great.
The story now emerging, however, seems to be that Fernandez has been "got at" and has announced that he "seriously misspoke". Simultaneously, the state department says that Fernandez was "misquoted", although the Beeb's Monitoring Service say that the initial report (tallying with Fernandez's account) is accurate.
It's fascinating to watch the Bush propaganda machine rolling backwards and forwards over one of its mistakes, trying to squash it back into the ground. They have presumably calculated that the risk back home (where speakers of Arabic are var from numerous and hence where the lie can be controlled during the elections) is so small that it's worth going all out for the Pinnochio Cup yet again. Let's hope the mainstream US media don't shy away from this.
Posted by daen at October 23, 2006 10:48 AM
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