Can you think up a better way to sum up, in polite company, Bush s entire approach to governance?

No…we agree on this point.

I did read your comment and the story which is why I recognize that I owed JD another option: “exaggerating cheerleader” per your description. So Hughes isn’t an idiot or a liar but an exaggerating cheerleader. Which is perfect. Exaggeration and cheerleading. Can you think up a better way to sum up, in polite company, Bush’s entire approach to governance?

In truth, the notion of a Palestinian State has been US policy since before AWOL George; of course, the devil’s in the details–the real issue has never been about Palestinian sovreignty but whether that sovreignty would include the right to return. Essentially, declaring support for a Palestinian state is a pretty empty gesture unless one defines the disposition of Jerusalem and the right to return.

Yes, she made a mistake about Bush s bold stand on the question of Palestine.

No, it was not a mistake. It was not official US policy to support a separate Palestinian state until the Bush administration. The exaggeration is in ignoring the unofficial support that developed under Clinton in the final days of his administration. The article Oliver linked to even states this (at the end).

Although I know nothing of Karen Hughes grooming habits, I have seen Wolfowitz mouthing spittle onto his comb then brushing it through his hair.

I don’t know about JD, but I find this rather unclean and possibly even ‘filthy’.

When, recently, Oliver criticised wingnut commentator Capt. Ed for using the loaded term “articulate” in reference to a black conservative, right-wingers dredged out this “filthy” business to accuse Oliver of hypocrisy.

Of course I’m sure Oliver did not refer to Wolfowitz’s judaism (if in fact he is Jewish – I have no idea) in the context, whereas Ed was making a deliberate point about Steele’s blackness. Still, from the warped perspective of an axe-handle reactionary hypocrite it’s all the same, and they’ve been pasting the charge all over Oliver’s comment board ever since. Maybe someday they’ll grow up.

Like you I have no idea whether Karen Hughes is Jewish or not, so there can be no anti-semitism involved when I agree that she is a “filthy liar”.

http://www.cultureshocktv.com/internews/2002/oct7200201659.shtml

Many of you may already have read this, however, those of you on the left should look long and hard in the mirror and those of us on the right should take it as a cautionary tale. Oliver and you other parrots on this site will, I’m sure, hurl enourmous scorn upon this poster. However you will merely help me make my point. Sooner or later the adults will win out.

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland, agrees that Bush formally made creating a Palestinian state the goal of U.S. policy…

“Everyone assumed [the Clinton peace negotiations] would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state,” Telhami said. “The U.S., in effect, was working on what would be a Palestinian state, but the articulated policy was less than a Palestinian state.”

When did Clinton start proposing a Palestinian state as a viable option? Was it just a few weeks before he left office? If so, then Hughes is not a liar or an idiot so much as an exaggerating cheerleader. Clearly the work of Clinton was important in the formation of current policy. But the Bush administration does deserve credit for formally making a Palestinian state official US policy.

“Is stupidity and/or dissembling the best way to win hearts and minds in the Arab world”

Of course not. Hughes could be criticized extensively. But her mistake/fabrication is more one of internal rather than international political interest. I didn’t mean hearts and minds of the Arab world, but those of the American political scene – of, say, undecideds. We keep talking about “brand Democrat’, the Democratic image and a Democratic slogan on this site – as if we (or you) want to convince average Americans that the Democrats are a good, reasonable option. Nice guys, with better ideas. I don’t know about you, but that kind of harsh invective, ‘filthy liar’, would warn me away moreso than Hughes error.

Dugger

Um, ya, because the rest of the world doesn’t care if the president’s personal representative is either a) stupid or b) a liar.

Well, I guess that that’s the cold hard truth, why is it so hard for you to believe that the seeds of 9/11 were planeted during the first attack of the WTC in 1994 … during… wait… who was President then?