German Correspondents: Clueless in America

German correspondents in America are a special breed. With a few exceptions they are mostly victims of the "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDS), as defined by Charles Krauthammer:

Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.

BDS leeds - among other things - to a complete loss of reality. If the BDS victim is lucky, Doctor John R. Bolton is available to provide immediate medical treatment.

   

The Doctor is IN.

Such as in this New York Foreign Center briefing on March 9, 2006, for foreign correspondents on the topic of "THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION AND UN MANAGEMENT REFORM":

AMBASSADOR BOLTON: In the back there, in the very back. (sic!)

QUESTION: Juergen Schoenstein from the German news magazine, Focus. I just want to follow up on your explanation about the different assessment on Iraq and Iran. But in hindsight, doesn't that put the decision or the procedures taken, in the case of Iraq, in quite a different perspective when with Iran, you say we have to pursue the diplomatic option? And in 2003, a different path was chosen.

AMBASSADOR BOLTON: Well, we pursued the diplomatic course with respect to Iraq. From the time of the Security Council's adoption of Resolution 687, the Ceasefire Resolution in 1991, when -- as a condition of the ceasefire, that coalition forces allowed Iraq -- that Iraq undertook certain commitments, among which were establishing that they had declared and destroyed all of their weapons of mass destruction. And Iraq consistently, for 12 years, failed to comply with that obligation.

And so, it was not a question of how much additional diplomatic activity there would be in 2002 or 2003. It was a question of 12 years of Iraq ignoring Security Council resolutions. And you have to ask yourself, if the Security Council doesn't look after its own resolutions, who will? So in that respect, I think there's a substantial difference.

Needless to say, Schoenstein's article in German news magazine Focus on the Bolton briefing is filled with blatant slants and misrepresentations of the positions of Bolton and the U.S. government. Unfortunately, it is a well known fact that BDS treatment - while effective in the short run - cannot guarantee for lasting improvements.

If there should ever be a movie about German U.S. correspondents, "Clueless in America" might be an appropriate title...

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Comments

[Helian]

The editors of Focus are clueless in more ways than one. It took them ever so long to discover that 30 pieces of silver was waiting for them, too, at the end of the anti-American rainbow. Compare their articles and editorials on America from say, 1999 through 2001 to those in Spiegel. Anyone with a more sensitive nose for journalistic nuances than the Spiegel shills who show up here occasionally will notice that Focus was decidedly "pro-American" in those days, at least by German standards. All that changed in a hurry when it finally dawned on Focus' dense editors that there was big dough in flogging anti-American propaganda to Germany's many eager hate consumers. Now Focus looks like a horribly botched genetic engineering experiment, designed to combine DNA from Spiegel and the National Enquirer, with results more or less as depicted in the movie, "The Fly." Money talks!

[PacRim Jim]

Decades ago, Spiegel was fun to read. Because of its recent frenzy of anti-American hatred, though, I shall never buy another copy. It's Web news for me, now.

[Don]

Hmmm. BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) would seem to share some of the characteristics of Altzheimers - severe memory loss for example. How else to explain why Ambassador Bolton had to provide a quick recap of 14 years of diplomacy vis Hussein's Iraq?