The dialog was ridiculed far and wide in the blogosphere, showing how inept Bush regime toadies were. Bush regime national security adviser Stephen Hadley "mixed up" Nepal and Tibet during an interview with George Stephanopolous on Sunday.
But was it a mistake?
Media Matters has a good reference:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (host): Let's talk about the Olympics. President Carter came out against a boycott, but President Bush has been under tremendous pressure to stay away from the opening ceremonies. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain won't go. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany won't go. The president has said his plans have not changed. Does that mean he'll attend the opening ceremonies, or not?
HADLEY: What the president said is that he will go to the Olympics. He wants to support our Olympic athletes -- the wonderful men and women who are going to participate.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So that means he'll go see events but he won't go to the opening ceremonies?
HADLEY: The president has said he is going to the Olympics. I think this whole issue --
STEPHANOPOULOS: How come you can't -- how come you don't want to answer the question?
HADLEY: This whole issue of opening ceremonies is a nonissue. I think it is a way of dodging what really needs to happen if you're concerned about Nepal.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So does that mean the president will be going to them?
HADLEY: The president is going to the Olympics. The president is going to -- thinks that 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've checked the Nepal box."
STEPHANOPOULOS: But he may not go to the opening ceremonies, you just don't want to say it.
HADLEY: No, the president is going to the Olympics. 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, of 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.
Nepal? That's not Tibet, right?
Right.
Just like Iran is not Iraq...
Did ya know this?
Nepal's Maoists, poised to win national elections by a large margin, have called on King Gyanendra to abdicate "gracefully" rather than be removed.
Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists' second-in-command, on Wednesday said: "The best thing for the king would be to bow out gracefully to pave the way for a democratic republic."
The statement came as the Maoists continued to further their lead in Thursday's elections to the 601-seat Constituent Assembly...
In an effort to establish a communist republic, the Maoist fight to take down the monarchy left at least 13,000 people dead.
The king took power in 2001 after eight members of the royal family were killed by Crown Prince Dipendra, who also shot himself.
Gyanendra then took absolute power in 2005 to fight the Maoists.
Some politicians have said Nepal should keep a monarch as a national symbol of neutrality between China and India.
Not many in the West know about this, but this is fodder for conspiracy theories amongst Indians and others who hail from this region.
Was Hadley's Nepal/Tibet mixup an attempt to indirectly blame China for the bad karma floating around in Nepal? Are they to blame? Are we by installing Gyanendra?
My interpretation is: I don't really know the answers to those questions, but I think Hadley was deliberately phallus-waving towards China in that region of the world, and certainly that is how China would have taken it.
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