Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Unattended delivery

Another epistle from Karl Rove surrogate Peter Wehner in the Wall Street Journal today, with a couple of things to note. First the subheading:

Birth pangs of freedom in the Middle East

thus repeating Condi Rice's disastrous usage from 4 weeks ago that has gone down like a lead balloon in that same Middle East. Second, the repeated capitalisation of the phrase "Freedom Agenda". And third, in an article supposedly about how that FA is tackling the scourge of "Bin Ladenism", zero mentions of Bin Laden's native country, and that of 15 of the 9/11 hijackers.

UPDATE: Here's more on the "birth pangs" reaction: Ms. Rice’s carefully scripted talking points have sometimes fallen flat. Her comment that the Israel-Lebanon war represented the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”— coming at a time when television stations were showing images of dead Lebanese children — sparked ridicule and even racist cartoons. A Palestinian newspaper, Al Qud, depicted Ms. Rice as pregnant with an armed monkey, and a caption that read, “Rice speaks about the birth of a new Middle East.”