On This Date in Bush History 12/5: Angering Allies

2005: Secretary of State Rice visits Europe today to “highlight ... U.S. efforts to partner with Europe”. Achieving such cooperation is not helped when Bush policies result in mistakes that put allies in difficult positions and undermine universal values. Such a stituation would crop up in this visit, resulting in German Chancellor Merkel extracting an acknowledgement of U.S. error from Rice.

The error was the CIA’s kidnapping of an innocent car salesman, a German citizen, on his way to vacation. Worse, when the U.S. realized, in March 2004, that they had an innocent man they kept him imprisoned anyway, delaying his release until late May while deciding how to handle things, according to NBC News. Former CIA counsel Jeffrey Smith told NBC: “It’s wrong morally, it’s wrong legally, and it violates the basic principles of the United States”.

Andrew Tyrie, working for the UK’s parliament said, “The U.S. cannot go around kidnapping people ... not expect there to be consequences”.

Bush actions such as this certainly don’t help promote Rice’s goal “to partner with Europe”. European police work has foiled numerous anti-U.S. terror plots and resulted in many legitimate arrests; the last thing America needs is to antagonize a very valuable partner in the war on terror.

“...transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” The Declaration of Independence, listing how King George has abused his powers in the Colonies, 1776

Also on this date, in 2002, a White House spokesperson says “The President [and Rumsfeld] ... would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it”. Read more at the 2008 Calendar/Day Planner/Stocking Stuffer: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm

“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” Franklin D. Roosevelt