Wikileakspalooza Pt. II...

... and where we defend Hillary Clinton.

Seeking a frank evaluation of Argentina's president, the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires late last year to delve into her psyche.

"How is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner managing her nerves and anxiety?" asked a cable dated Dec. 31, 2009, and signed "CLINTON" in all capital letters.

The cable, sent at 2:55 p.m. on New Year's Eve, and originating in the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, asked a series of other probing questions as part of what it said was an attempt by her office to understand "leadership dynamics" between Kirchner and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner.

"How does stress affect her behavior toward advisors and/or her decision making?" the cable continued. "What steps does Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner or her advisers/handlers, take in helping her deal with stress? Is she taking any medications?"

Delving into the personalities of foreign counterparts may be integral to modern diplomatic give-and-take. But the bluntly worded cable asking about the Argentine leader's "nerves" and "emotions" may further test up-and-down relations between Washington and Buenos Aires. The cable suggests that Washington saw Kirchner and her husband as perhaps prone to emotional instability.

The cable was one of several related to Argentina released in the latest batch of U.S. diplomatic traffic made public this week by WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website that publishes sensitive government documents.

Uhh...what did we miss? What did Clinton do wrong? What is the purpose of a State Department and its embassies but for feeling the pulse of other nations and their respective leaders so that we can leverage this knowledge to achieve what is in our national best interests?

A fair reading of this article doesn't indicate that there was any secretive or clandestine operations that were requested to be put into motion to glean this information, rather a dialing up of well-placed sources in which to tap.

Of course, the ego-maniacal tool at the center of all this wants her to resign because of this alleged transgression. Oft times, you don't need to know a whole lot about an issue, rather who's taking what side.

During the Democratic primary in '08, we figured that domestically-speaking, Clinton and Obama were basically a wash as they would both be pursuing identical statist agendas. It was on foreign policy, however, we believed Clinton had a much more sober outlook and a firmer grasp of how things really operated globally than the pure naivete' promised and delivered by Obama.

Don't back down, Secretary Clinton, BwD has got your back!

Honduras: not going away any time soon

The situation in Honduras, or more precisely our country's meddling in Honduran political/constitutional matters, is becoming the Freddie Kruger of Latin American foreign policy: you just can't kill it.

With the election of a new president, a peaceful transfer of power and deposed Hugo Chavez puppet and former President, Mel Zelaya safely in exile it looked like this all was going to have a happy ending. If by happy ending one means the United States, in this case truly acting like an imperialist bully, pitching a temper tantrum by way of not restoring revoked visas and aid to Honduras and agitating for the return of Zelaya to Honduras without facing any legal repercussions, then, yes, it has had a happy ending.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady who has been doing yeoman's work in covering this for the Wall St. Journal is interviewed in clip below.




Disgraceful.

We will give the Obama administration and the State Department credit for consistency, though. The pattern of giving the hand to our friends (Great Britain and Israel) and getting rolled by our adversaries (Russia and Iran) had a decidedly Euro/Mid East slant to it. We can now claim without threat of contradiction that we are extending this ass-backwards policy to the Western Hemisphere.

It remains unfathomable to us that our country not only has turned its back on a struggling ally attempting to get into the 21st century democracies in good standing club but has worked openly to subvert that effort.

Hondurans are possibly wondering: that we would be subjected to mere snubs.

Previous posts on Honduras, here.

Honduras update (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for update. thanks)

With all this excitement going down stateside, we don't want to forget about a neighbor to the south. Previous posts on Honduras, here.

At what point do you think the State Department might have enough egg on its face to call it quits with respect to their embarrassingly political handling of Honduras? They’re calling for another carton.

Honduras will inaugurate president-elect Porfirio Lobo this week, two months after one of the world's most recently famous little countries held a successful democratic election. So we are left to wonder why the United States State Department is still trying to hammer anyone there who dared to participate last summer in the constitutional removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.

What’s truly amazing is that this fiasco looks to have a happy ending even after the bullying and meddling of super-powers like the U.S. and regional bad actors like Cuba and Venezuela. In a move that for this part of the globe looks damn-near Washingtonian, the interim President and member of the disgraced Zelaya’s own party, Roberto Micheletti, will step down from power so that Lobo can assume the office of president just as Micheletti promised when this whole thing blew up last June.

A smooth transfer of power should be something to be celebrated yet a spiteful State Dept. has refused to re-instate the visas of Micheletti, his cabinet and advisors and the entirety of the Honduran Supreme Court and, last week, the State Dept. continued its spite-fest by yanking even more visas from members of the interim government.

The bullying doesn’t end there as Lobo, under pressure from our government, has agreed to let Zelaya, despite the legal charges against him, go to the Dominican Republic where he will no doubt consort with the likes of Chavez and Brothers Castro to foment discontent towards and within Honduras.

What a tremendous example we have set for burgeoning and struggling deomcracies in the hemishere who will now think twice before turning to the great United States for assistance.


(UPDATE #1):Don’t think for a moment the citizens of Honduras have forgotten about this country’s attempts to interfere with that country’s ouster of Zelaya and the subsequent elections that saw a peaceful transfer of power in the executive branch to a different political party.

Mr. Zelaya's ouster, widely condemned as a coup, plunged Latin America into a diplomatic crisis. No country recognized the new government, the Organization of American States suspended Honduras, and governments and international financial institutions canceled aid. But neither sanctions nor intense diplomatic negotiations were enough to return Mr. Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chávez, to power.

The crowd attending Mr. Lobo's inaugural booed mentions of the OAS, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens, and Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, all of whom tried to arrange for Mr. Zelaya's return to power.

The Honduran crisis also created tensions between the U.S. and Brazil, Latin America's emerging heavyweight. Brazil strongly criticized what it said was U.S. reluctance to apply tougher sanctions against Honduras, which depends on U.S. trade and remittances from Hondurans living in the U.S.

(italics, ours)

Terrific. At the end of the day we wind up pissing off everybody.

The more we think about this, the more we cannot believe that with the deck stacked against Honduras as it was, this potential meltdown is going to have a happy ending. Props to the interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who stayed the course by not giving into overwhelming and near-unanimous pressure from without to re-instate Zelaya and who kept his word by holding elections and stepping down when Lobo won the election. That Washingtonian moment of holding a nation together and graciously and lawfully stepping down when the time came will represent Honduras’ finest hour.

God bless the people and country of Honduras for showing courage and a commitment to the ideals of sovereignty and democracy.

Exit thought: Iran got all the ink with respect to the administration’s handling of the two international crisis but this was far worse as the response to Iran was a sin of omission rather than the sin of commission that was Honduras.

Exit question: For the lefties that write history and love to paint America as the meddling and imperialist bad guy, how will they write the Honduras chapter? Democratic president aligning with the hemisphere’s socialist goons in order to keep another socialist goon in power and ultimately losing out when Honduras elects a conservative to the office of president. That ought to be good read.

Not leaving ill enough alone

The administration continues its amateurish, petty and overall deplorable handling of the situation in Honduras. Even as interim president, Roberto Micheletti has made a generous offer to restore order to his country which entails ousted President Manuel Zelaya a return to the country on the condition that he renounce claims to the presidency, the administration is moving towards cutting off aid to the country.

U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a "military coup," a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.

The ultimate decision will reside with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

This is on top of the restriction of visa for Hondurans to visit the U.S. and the $18 million that has already been suspended after the June 28th ouster of Zelaya as well as the balance of grant funding from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation ($139 million) that is also in jeopardy depending on Clinton’s decision.

This administration has had every opportunity to get on the right side of this situation but has instead used every opportunity to get in line behind the likes Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega in meddling in the affairs of a foreign country and refusing to acknowledge the rule of law in that country.

Wild card alert! Wild card alert!

Lanny Davis, a prominent Washington attorney who represents the Honduran Latin American Business Council, said the new proposal "shows Mr. Micheletti is not concerned about power -- he is offering to resign entirely from public life. ... The question is, does Mr. Zelaya acknowledge that no one, even the president, is above the law?"

Article completely drops the ball in neglecting to acknowlege that Lanny Davis is a Clintonista that served in the Clinton White House as special counsel and actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. This might get interesting.

P.S. For you college hoops junkies out there, Davis is the father of Seth Davis, CBS' studio analyst for NCAA basketball.

You don't want this woman to be your Secret Santa (UPDATED and UPDATED again)

The crack translation team at the State Department working in conjunction with the State Department gift squad outdid themselves Friday as Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift meant to symbolize the new administration’s desire for a fresh start.

It didn’t quite work out as she planned.

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift—a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word “peregruzka” printed on top.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said, to Clinton’s clear surprise. Instead of "reset," he said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”

Maybe were stuck in some sort of Dr. Strangelove time warp but how does giving the Russians a red button make it off the gift squad drawing board? Oh, that’s right… the gift squad was the same people that pulled off this overwhelmingly gracious act of friendship and loyalty.

And we suppose now that hopeandchangy is going international, it means taking indirect swipes at the previous administration.

Madam Secretary, may we be so bold as to suggest that before you go about trashing your predecessors, you drop the cheesy white elephant gifts and at the very least, figure out the host country’s language.

Yep, we're in good hands.

P.S. We truly do pity the staffer or whoever it was that screwed up that translation. In the annals of "career enhancing actions", this would not be one of them but please see instead, "cause for ass-chewing of a life-time."

UPDATE #1: Please stop by KT's place when you get a chance. In the spirit of unity and togetherness, he's soliciting ideas for diplomatic gifts to foreign countries since this administration seems to be getting off to a rough start in this particular area. We suggested that perhaps the First Lady could whip up some tasty Armenian treats like babakanoosh and eggplant dolma for the President's visit to Turkey.

UPDATE #2: On the President's first trip to the Czech Republic, we thought it would be good idea for the First Lady to pick up a couple of plastic replicas of Russian T-55 tanks for the hosts. And when the Dalai Lama comes to visit the White House everyone can call for Chinese take-out. We're really enjoying this call for unity.

Adherents to a quasi-religious pseudo-science say the darndest things

Warning: High irony content ahead.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience Friday "never waste a good crisis," and highlighted the opportunity of rebuilding economies in a greener, less energy-intensive way.

Highlighting Europe's unease the day after Russia warned that gas flows via Ukraine might be halted, she also condemned the use of energy as a political lever.

(italics ours)

At least there's consistency. The Obama administration's peddling of fear has extended overseas via the State Department all as a way to push their agenda.