Tag: diplomacy

National Security, Anti-Americanism, The “War on Terror” and new methods in public diplomacy

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Iran: Top Ministers Implicated in Serious Abuses

While the world’s attention remains on the pathetic, yet not surprising remarks by Iranian President Ahmadinejad denouncing the Holocaust, Human Rights Watch has just released:

The briefing paper, Ministers of Murder: Iran?s New Security Cabinet, details credible allegations that Minister of Interior Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi and Minister of Information Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei were involved in extremely serious and systematic human rights violations over the past two decades.

The debunking-the-Holocaust thing is nothing new, and does not even deserve press. Perhaps Ahmadinejad keeps repeating this to overshadow today’s HRW release – just as all of the apparently bogus reports of Iran tampering with Iraqi elections could be fluff for Iran’s far nastier undertakings. Pundit Guy has documented ths history of Holocaust-doubters.

Ahmadinejad may be that bad but it looks like the real problems run much deeper in his cabinet.

The Human Rights Watch report, to be officially released tomorrow, calls for the immediate removal of Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi and Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei from the president’s cabinet:

Iran?s cabinet is now dominated by former security and intelligence officials, Human Rights Watch said, raising fears that President Ahmadinejad?s government will readily resort to violence to suppress dissidents and punish critics.

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Bastardized Bush Bombs

Nearly all news news outlets of record repeated Bush’s claim of 30,000 Iraqi’s killed as if it is no big deal.

“He was citing what he has read in media reports,” said spokesman Scott McClellan.

Another Iraqi Civilian Death The 30,000 figure isn’t inaccurate by any count — but isn’t it downright shocking? The media should elaborate instead of chuckling along with cute Georgie, perhaps providing figures from the Oxford Research Group’s thorough “A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005.” (.pdf here). Among other things, the report clarifies that:

Post-invasion, the number of civilians killed was almost twice as high in year two (11,351) as in year one (6,215).

David Sirota delivers a poignant post this morning, admonishing the shamefully distant reactions of the media and the public to Bush’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday.

Sirota writes:

His comments, the media’s reflexive complicity, and the audience’s laughter, is an incredible, if silent, commentary on just how callous our society has become to the real consequences of our government’s behavior.

Sirota is referring to this grotesquely absurd exchange during Bush’s Q & A yesterday:

QUESTION: Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I’d like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We’ve lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq. Yes.

QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you —

THE PRESIDENT: I’ll repeat the question. If I don’t like it, I’ll make it up. (Laughter and applause.)

Laughter??? Applause?!?!?

Well, chuckle on – no worries, because as an AFP wire story has it today, the White House is distancing itself from the 30,000-killed figure, “blaming terrorists for ‘a significant number’ of the dead and saying the figure is not official.”

If the terrorists are to blame for most of these deaths, how then did they increase during the so-called “last throes” of the insurgency?

And if the MSM can’t pick it up from here… perhaps Howard Fineman’s fingernails-to-the-blackboard portrayal of the real Bob Woodward last night (via Atrios) can serve as inspiration:

“He’s a great reporter, but he’s become a great reporter of official history.” Fineman, Newsweek’s chief political correspondent, concluded his uplifting lecture with this: “The news about news is really bad.” AP Photo

The Heretik spots, and outlines a new four-point narrative being revealed in Bush’s speeches leading up to Thursday’s elections in Iraq…. check it out.

After the jump, a word from our bold leaders, followed by a little story outrage regarding our fallen soldiers’ wooden box homecoming…
Continue reading “Bastardized Bush Bombs”

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Wolfowitless

Paul WolfowitzDana Milbank wrote: “Ex-neocon hawk Paul Wolfowitz now touts peace
World Bank chief tries to distance himself from Bush.”

Can you hear Chicken(hawk) Little cry: “the sky is falling?”

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Kevin Drum: Flight 924 and crisis PR

From Drum’s Political Animal blog @ Washington Monthly:

FLIGHT 924 UPDATE….Mark Schlueb of the Orlando Sentinel follows up today on the question I asked yesterday: what did Rigoberto Alpizar really say as he was running off Flight 924 on Wednesday?

A Miami-Dade police spokeswoman said Thursday that multiple witnesses reported that the 44-year-old was yelling that he had a bomb as he made his way down the aisle with a backpack slung across his chest. Later, the agency’s chief of investigations insisted that Alpizar was yelling about a bomb but declined to say whether he was on the plane at the time.

Seven passengers interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel ? seated in both the front and rear of the main passenger cabin ? said Alpizar was silent as he ran past them on his way to the exit. One thought he had taken the wrong flight. Another thought he was going to throw up.

“I can tell you, he never said a thing in that airplane. He never called out he had a bomb,” said Orlando architect Jorge A. Borrelli, who helped comfort Alpizar’s wife after the gunfire. “He never said a word from the point he passed me at Row 9….He did not say a word to anybody.”

Two teens seated in Row 26 agreed. So did Jorge Figueroa, a power-plant operator from Lakeland seated a few rows behind first class.

“He wasn’t saying anything; he was just running,” Figueroa said. “I said to myself, ‘It is probably a person who took the wrong plane.’ “

And Drum concludes:

To be clear: the air marshals who shot Alpizar may have reacted properly. Maybe he started yelling about a bomb after he got onto the jetway. But they don’t do their own case any good when they seemingly decline to tell us the straight truth about exactly what happened and why Alpizar was being pursued in the first place.

The first law of crisis PR is: talk to the press and tell the truth. If you don’t, people will concoct stories far worse than anything you can imagine. I think the Federal Air Marshal Service needs some lessons in this.