PoliticalWarfare.org

Clueless in Jakarta

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes flubbed big time on her Indonesia trip, earning scorn from her host who said she wasted a valuable opportunity.

Here's how she tried to impress a group of handpicked students at the State Islamic University in Jakarta:  "My state of Texas is very big," she told the students. "So you can imagine my surprise to learn that your country, Indonesia, is three times bigger than my big state of Texas."

Covering the event, the Financial Times reports that Hughes downplayed the students' deep concerns about US foreign and military policy.

"Azyumardi Azra, the State Islamic university's rector and a leading Indonesian intellectual, said Mrs Hughes was wrong to be dismissive of the students' views. 'I think the opinion and questions of the students in one way or another reflects the attitude of mainstream Muslims in Indonesia,' he said in an interview afterwards. 'All of the questions posed by students are burning issues among Muslims in general.'

"Mr Azra, who sat quietly alongside Mrs Hughes throughout the event, also questioned her effectiveness as an ambassador.

"Her style had created hostility in the students, he said, and she had wasted a valuable opportunity to engage the students more candidly. 'She could have been more successful if she was more diplomatic and not presenting herself just as a mouthpiece - a spokesman - for President Bush,' he said."

Hughes 'vastly overstated' facts on Iraq to Indonesians

Visiting Indonesia where she made an impassioned case for the war in Iraq, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes "vastly overstated" the number of people whom Saddam Hussein gassed to death. She made the mis-statement three times over several hours before someone in her entourage tried to clarify her comments to incredulous Indonesians.

"'The consensus of the world intelligence community was that Saddam was a very dangerous threat,' she said. 'After all, he used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas.'

"Hours later, Hughes was asked twice for the basis for her numbers during a meeting with journalists from foreign news organizations.

"'It's something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past. It's information that was used very widely after his attack on the Kurds. I believe it was close to 300,000,' Hughes said when questioned the first time. She added, 'That's something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That's information that we talked about a great deal in America.'

"When asked again several minutes later," the Washington Post reports from Jakarta, "she said, 'I think it was almost 300,000. It's my recollection. They were put in mass graves.'"

"By late in the day, Hughes's aide, Gordon D. Johndroe, offered a correction.

"She was referring to Saddam Hussein having killed hundreds of thousands of people. The gassing part of that was a fraction," said Johndroe, director of strategic communications and planning in the State Department's public affairs bureau. "She was combining two numbers and two situations. She wasn't trying to rewrite the story or make a new claim."