{"id":1683,"date":"2003-09-03T04:42:56","date_gmt":"2003-09-03T18:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/09\/03\/diplomacy-based-on-petulance\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T08:28:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T16:28:02","slug":"diplomacy-based-on-petulance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/09\/03\/diplomacy-based-on-petulance\/","title":{"rendered":"Diplomacy based on petulance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Bush Administration continues to amaze me &#8212; they have an amazing ability to firmly put both feet in their mouth with their head up their ass.<\/p>\n<p>From a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/r\/pa\/prs\/dpb\/2003\/23671.htm\" title=\"Press Briefing for Sept. 2\">press conference with Richard Boucher<\/a> (I have no clue who he is, though):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, do you have anything on the proposal for the creation of a European Union military headquarters in Brussels independent of NATO &#8212; something that have angered the United States, according to reports?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  MR. BOUCHER: I&#8217;m not quite sure what proposal that is. You mean the one from the four countries that got together and had a little, bitty summit?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  QUESTION: That&#8217;s exactly it &#8212; and Belgium insisting to this &#8212;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, the chocolate makers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  (Laughter.)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What a wonderful little piece of diplomacy that is &#8212; deriding Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg as &#8220;chocolate makers&#8221; and mocking their &#8220;little, bitty summit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Dean has issued a statement condemning the administration&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.deanforamerica.com\/archives\/001335.html\" title=\"Dean Criticizes 'Foreign Policy Based On Petulance'\">foreign policy based on petulance<\/a>&#8220;, a wonderful choice of words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bush Administration continues to amaze me &#8212; they have an amazing ability to firmly put both feet in their mouth with their head up their ass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2042],"tags":[14,1259],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}