Aljazeera.com, which is not the TV station’s website, has this mystifying headline to an even more mystifying article:
Washington testing in the dark plans of Israel’s new man
I read the article. Several times. It appears to be some sort of analysis that says Washington is “testing” Olmert to see how if he will allow the U.S. to have “clout.” (Really, that paragraph is a hoot).
It quotes DEBKA.
It is practically unreadable.
So one simply has to wonder: What, exactly, is the point of having this website in English if no one can understand what the hell they’re trying to say?
Sometimes, the Arab press is hilarious. I mean, really. Look at that headline. Oooooooh. Scary.
Sometimes, one simply must roll one’s eyes, shrug, and move on.
Unreadable it may be, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and that photo of Condi Rice that they dug up is EVIL!
I infer from the article that the claim is that, through Secretary Rice’s query to Olmert, the State Department is trying to insert itself back into the loop. Part of the difficulty is that the article speaks of Ambassador Kurtzer as the successor of Ambassador Jones, which is backwards; Jones replaced Kurtzer and is the present ambassador. But even without that error, I agree that the article is very hard to follow.
But I think the point is that Kurtzer was ineffective, which allowed Sharon to circumvent Foggy Bottom and communicate with the White House and the Pentagon through his aides, and that Rice wants to channel Israel’s contacts with Washington through Jones.
I think it’s BS, because in this administration there is no sharp divide between the White House and State with respect to Middle East policy–to the extent that there was a divide in Bush’s first term, it ended when Bush moved Rice over to Foggy Bottom.
Personally, I think that the US invites circumvention of the embassador by posting him many miles away from Israel’s capital. Imagine if the Chinese located their embassy in Baltimore and then wondered why he was out of the loop?
Oh gosh! I have done that one two, but KalamazooKid nixed it… For crying out loud!