Lemme think about this. NBC's tiny-but-feisty Andrea Mitchell is traipsing around with Condi Rice and, in Sudan, has a very bad time.
She knows, for example, that the Sudanese security folk are being more selective in their admission policies than the guys on the ropes at a New York City club but she forges forward nonetheless.
Once she's inside she manages to badger the Sudanese President unbearably and gets her tiny-but-feisty booty thrown out. And then has the temerity to complain that there's no freedom of speech in Sudan!
Who the hell does she think she is? Dan Rather?
Link: NBC's Mitchell Angry After Sudan Incident.
After getting no reply from el-Bashir, she asked, "Why should Americans believe your promises?" It was then that she was forcibly removed. "It is our job to ask," she said later. "They can always say `no comment' ... but to drag a reporter out just for asking is inexcusable behavior."
Link: MSNBC.com.
Things were not going well from the minute that Secretary Condoleezza Rice arrived in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Her motorcade got separated and her personal advisor, Jim Wilkinson, got slammed against a wall while he tried to bull his way into the meeting. They blocked all the other State Department officials from even attending this meeting between Rice and the president of Sudan. In fact, for the first six or seven minutes of this meeting, Rice and President el-Bashir couldn't talk because the Arabic translator was prevented from getting in. None of the other top officials ever got into the meeting, including U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios.
I'm not disagreeing with you, necessarily. It's just that if they don't want questions from a notoriously free press, they shouldn't hold press conferences. And, when the going gets tough, they shouldn't throw them out. They are the ones who allowed or fashioned the genocide, who else should be accountable? It's the old "stay out of the kitchen" thing.
But then again, I'm hot for Andrea Mitchell.
;-)
Posted by: Dave Morris | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 08:48
I have been asking the questions, and for a lot longer than the past year. The biggest question os all, though, is why the UN has yet to do a damned thing about the killings and displacement in Darfur.
They are still taking meetings and writing strong letters, that's why.
My point was that Andrea Mitchell could have been presumed to be a little smarter than she appeared in this incident, during which she could have blown Ms. Rice's oportunity to have any kind of meaningful discourse with the Sudanese government.
Posted by: Mike Anderson | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 04:35
Sudan apologized, obviously realizing it's mistake.
Isn't Sudan the place where "genocide" was taking place within the past year? Humanitarian crises galore? Killing their own, starvation, disease?
I figure somebody should ask those questions. Mike, you don't seem the PC type, I would have guessed YOU would ask those questions, given the chance.
Posted by: Dave Morris | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 00:43