Thursday, January 20, 2005

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW, Condi said about past U.S. administrations' support for brutal and repressive dictatorships.

The senator asked Rice why the Ronald Reagan administration had dispatched Donald H. Rumsfeld to try to build a relationship with Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraq was using chemical weapons.

Rice said that at that time, the U.S. government was more willing to do business with countries that did not embrace American values.

She said that in the Middle East, the United States had been "sometimes blind to the freedom deficit. ... We're not going to do that any more."
Oh, really? Is that why Paul Wolfowitz personally visited Indonesia to assure the Indonesian military that the U.S. would use the tsunami tragedy as an opportunity to reinstate military aid that Clinton cut off because of gross human rights violations? Even though Indonesia has not met the benchmarks it was supposed to meet to have military aid restored? And 5 or 10 years from now, will the U.S. media be showing pictures of Wolfowitz shaking the hands of the military leaders who have become our deadly enemies?

No comments: