Posted on 10/22/2006 7:40:03 PM PDT by LibWhacker
BAGHDAD, Oct 22 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. diplomat who said the United States has shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq said he "seriously misspoke" in an interview aired on Sunday after U.S. President George W. Bush said he was flexible on tactics, if not strategy.
In an attack that highlights the problems Washington faces in recruiting and training Iraqi security forces, 13 police recruits were killed and 25 wounded in an ambush on a convoy of buses near the town of Baquba on Sunday.
U.S. military deaths in Iraq in October have reached 83, making it the most deadly month for Americans this year and adding to pressure on Bush before Congressional elections next month in which Republicans could lose majorities in both houses.
"We tried to do our best (in Iraq) but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," U.S. State Department official Alberto Fernandez told Al Jazeera television, according to a Reuters reporter who heard the interview, which was in Arabic.
Fernandez, the State Department's director of public diplomacy in the bureau of Near Eastern affairs, said that he had misspoken during the interview.
"Upon reading the transcript of my appearance on Al-Jazeera, I realized that I seriously misspoke by using the phrase 'there has been arrogance and stupidity' by the U.S. in Iraq. This represents neither my views nor those of the State Department. I apologize," Fernandez said in a statement.
The State Department had said that the English translation of the comments posted on Al Jazeera's English-language Web site had misquoted Fernandez.
As violence rages, the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been meeting Shi'ite clerics this week to enlist their support in calming militia infighting in southern Iraq as well as sectarian strife between Shi'ites and Sunnis.
Disarming militias such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to powerful young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is seen as crucial by the United States but has proved difficult for Maliki who relies on the support of the political groups linked to the militias.
"GOAL UNCHANGED"
On Saturday Bush held a videoconference with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, top White House officials and U.S. military officials in Iraq, who have admitted that a two-month plan to secure Baghdad has failed to rein in violence and that the strategy is under review.
In his radio address on Saturday, Bush said: "We will continue to be flexible, and make every necessary change to prevail in this struggle."
He added: "Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging."
The White House has drawn a distinction between flexibility on tactics and a big overhaul of the strategy in Iraq, and officials have suggested such a broad revamp was not imminent.
Longtime Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker is leading a panel that is preparing recommendations for alternative strategies in Iraq.
But the Iraq Study Group's report will not be issued until after the Nov. 7 elections, when some polls suggest Republicans could lose control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democrats and some Republicans say it is time to reassess U.S. policy in Iraq three years after the invasion.
Some have suggested the administration might use the bipartisan group's findings as cover for an exit strategy.
Key Senate Democrats urged the White House on Sunday not to wait until after the elections to give the Iraqi government a timetable to assume a larger role in securing the country.
The top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, said the strategy blueprint being drafted should include a schedule for pulling out U.S. forces.
Sunday's ambush in Baquba highlighted a key problem -- how to establish security when police officers are often accused of sectarian or tribal loyalties, and police and army recruits are reviled by some for collaborating with U.S. occupiers.
A local official said a bomb blast hit the convoy and then gunmen ambushed the buses. The attackers left the bodies of the dead lined up on the highway, booby-trapped with explosives.
The U.S. military death toll in October rose to 83 on Sunday. On Saturday, a Marine was killed in western Anbar province and a soldier was killed in Salaheddin province. On Sunday in Baghdad, a soldier was killed by a roadside bomb and two other soldiers were killed by small arms fire.
The U.S. military also came under attack in Ramadi, in the western Anbar province. Witnesses reported heavy clashes and a military spokeswoman said the U.S. base there had suffered "multiple attacks" but there were no U.S. casualties.
There needs to be a pink slip in that little boy's pay envelope...
I have a feeling he did.
This jerk "misspoke" before and no one stopped him.
No mulligans.
People DIE because of this kind of propgandist BS encouraging the evil ones.
I think it's written in the US Diplomat Handbook, don't talk to Al-Jazeera.
This loser needs to be fired. This whole "misspeak" thing is BS and he knows it. A diplomat's job (esp. one as qualified as this jerk, see previous postings.) is to speak the right words at the right time. He didn't misspeak, he knew exactly what he was doing when he dissed the administration.
It is also written to never to tell the truth, when the news is bad.
If he said this at the New York Club he should get a pink slip. Saying it on Al Jezzerra should get him a bullet. I wonder how many of our young men and women will die as a result of this emboldening statement that will be played over and over again?
"U.S. State Department official Alberto Fernandez told Al Jazeera television..."
What the heck is anyone in our government doing on the TV channel which touts our enemies (even more than CNN!)???
Fernandez needs to be sent somewhere else, like the dark side of the Moon.
Some diplomat! What is he ... channeling Bin Ladin?
...self defeating, seed sowing, fine piece of work.
i have to ask how did one get such a nicely titled job?
ps....when they use arrogance, they REALLY mean I am envious of your accomplishments. I wish our system could deliver the same social benefits of technology, education, jobs and quality of life.
From Michelle Malkin:
[It was only last October, you see, when Alberto Fernandez, newly minted by Secretary Condoleezza Rice as director for public diplomacy at State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, made one of his obligatory "live dialogue" appearances on Islamonline.net. After cooing about the new Iraqi constitution, taking pains to stress that it expressly "recognizes the role of Islam" (thanks in no small part to State's labors), Fernandez proceeded straight to the required gushing over Qaradawi.
But wait a second. Hasn't Qaradawi has been banned from the U.S. for promoting terrorism? Surely the State Department can mount a full-throated defense of that, right? After all, isn't our moral compass supposed to be the Bush Doctrine — the one that says "you're either with us or with the terrorists"? Is it really that hard for State to say Qaradawi is a disgusting character promoting a noxious agenda, rather than a model of moderation?
Apparently. Such a choice, our chic-sensitive public-diplomacy pirector opined, was "for the Muslim Umma to decide." As for the rest of us, Fernandez would brook no denying that it is "important to listen to intelligent and thoughtful voices from the region like Sheikh Qaradawi, ... an important figure that deserves our attention."
You can still see Fernandez's endorsement of Qaradawi right here.
You want to know how Fernandez responded to criticism of his reckless jihadi suck-up remarks? He sniffed that they were "minor" comments, which he made just to be "polite," and were much ado about nothing. Look:
He's still surprised how minor comments get amplified when he does grant a rare English interview. Take the way right-wing pundits singled out one response from a 50-question live forum he did on the English-language Web site Islam Online. Fernandez referred to revivalist Sunni Muslim scholar Yusuf al Qaradawi—the founder of Islam Online—as "a respected scholar and religious leader worthy of the deepest respect." The National Review denounced Fernandez for being a "chic-sensitive" apologist "gushing over Qaradawi," who is banned from U.S. soil for his alleged links to terrorist groups. "It was just some BS answer, just to be polite, and they picked up on that one thing," says Fernandez If this is "the face of the United States in the Middle East," we need to withdraw all State Department bureaucrats from the region, find out what else Fernandez and his Arabic-speaking colleagues have been telling the Arab media, and boot them off the airwaves. Permanently. If showing "politeness" towards suicide bomb-embracing jihadi clerics and showing contempt for our country on enemy airwaves is how we plan to win "hearts and minds," we're screwed.]
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