NPR's Morning Edition featured an interview by the host, Steve Inskeep, with a WaPo reporter, Glenn Kessler. He is traveling with Secretary Rice on her trip through the Middle East.
Kessler described how Condie has been actively pressing for Egyptian democratization, while being careful to praise their efforts to help us in the war on terror. He reported that she was able to restore some communication between the Israelis and the PA to coordinate their efforts in the upcoming Gaza withdrawal. In an interesting twist, the Israelis are planning to demolish the homes they are leaving behind, but will not clean up the rubble because they would be isolated and vulnerable targets for months of cleanup. They will pay the Palestinians to do the clean up, instead. No mention was made of addressing the ongoing terror committed by various Palestinian groups but that is to be expected.
There were two particular moments in the discussion that stood out, one quite serious, the other comic and unintentionally revealing.
First, Inskeep asked Keller about Rice's general reception on the trip; how did the Arab audiences react to her? Keller replied (the transcript is not available but you can listen to the whole interview here) that she has been coolly received. At her speech pushing for Democratization in Egypt, she received no applause at all. However, during the question period, an audience member asked her "isn't it time someone apologized for the desecration of the Koran?" The question was met with loud applause. Thus does the evil that Newsweek sewed live on past their retraction that no one in the Muslim Middle East believes.
The second memorable moment came when Inskeep described the question. As an aside, he commented, presumably for any radio audience members who have recently come out of a two month coma, that the question referred to "prisoners guarding the detainees at Guantanamo who had mistreated the Koran in various ways." I assume he meant that the guards mistreated the Koran since the sentence is structured that way, which would make the error, of using prisoner instead of guard, a type of "Freudian Slip".
In a Freudian slip, a person makes an error which reveals how they actually feel without the armor of their unconscious defenses obscuring their meaning. In this case, it would suggest that the reporter is aware that the abuses at Guantanamo were perpetrated primarily by the prisoners but that the abuse meme being propagated by the MSM (and the Democrats) is the preferred POV. The truth snuck out past his vigilant internal filters.
It is always amusing to see people inadvertently speak the truth.
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