Watch President Bush's National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, repeatedly confuse Tibet with Nepal while appearing on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. He really doesn't know that Nepal and Tibet are two different places, does he?
I'm wondering why Stephanopoulos never corrected Hadley.
Here is Huffington Post's transcript (watch how he repeats it not once, but several times).
"If countries are really concerned about Nepal, we shouldn't have this sort of non-issue of opening ceremonies or not. They should do the hard work of quiet diplomacy to urge the Chinese government -- in their interest -- to take advantage of this opportunity to do something," Hadley said.
He went on, "The way to deal with the issue of Nepal is not by some -- a statement that you're not going to the opening ceremonies and say, therefore, I checked the Nepal box."
And it didn't end there. "What he's doing on Nepal is what we think the international community ought to be doing, which is approaching the Chinese privately through diplomatic channels and sending a very firm message of concern for human rights, a concern for what's happening in Nepal, urging the Chinese government to understand that it is in their interest to reach out to representatives of the Dalai Lama, and to show, while the whole world is watching China, that they are determined to treat their citizens with dignity and respect. There is an opportunity here."
The New York Times says:
In his ABC interview, Mr. Hadley referred at least a half-dozen times to Nepal when he seemed clearly to be speaking of Tibet. A White House spokesman later confirmed that Mr. Hadley had misspoken.
Seems like "misspoken" is the new word in American politics.
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