Karen Hughes Gets An Earful in Turkey

One of the problems with having a thoroughly incompetent administration running the country is that one can easily lose track of just how incompetent such an administration really is. This is especially true when one of the president's top congressional allies is indicted. Combine this with all the reporting on the Katrina Debacle, and some important stories just get buried, and sometimes it takes an event overseas to reorient us as to just how screwed up American policy is right now. From the Seattle Times:

A group of Turkish female activists confronted Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes yesterday with heated complaints about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, turning a session designed to highlight the empowerment of women into a raw display of anger at U.S. policy in the region.

"This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero," said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women's Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation.

Although it sounds like Karen Hughes has, for the most part, taken a lesson from Bush and has only appeared in front of friendly crowds on her "Isn't America Great?" World Tour, that whole strategy appears to have broken down yesterday:

Hughes, a longtime confidante of President Bush with the job of burnishing the U.S. image overseas, has generally met with polite audiences — many of whom received U.S. funding or consisted of former exchange students — during a tour of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey this week.

In this case the U.S. Embassy asked Kader, an umbrella group that supports female candidates, to assemble the guest list. None of the activists currently receives U.S. funds and the guests apparently had little desire to mince words. Six of the eight women who spoke at the session, held in Ankara, the capital, focused on the Iraq war.

Hughes looked "increasingly pained" as she was forced to defend her boss's idiotic decision to invade Iraq. Perhaps she was angry that there was no fake Secret Service people around to remove dissenters. Anyway, thank you Turkey for helping us keep our eye on the ball over here.


UPDATE: This is interesting. The above-cited Seattle Times piece was actually a Washington Post article first put on-line late last night. The Washington Post piece has since removed the "Hughes, looking increasingly pained" language and replaced it with "Hughes, who became increasingly subdued during the session . . ."

That's quite a difference. Do you think Karl Rove might have complained? Maybe he looked "increasingly pained" as he was reading the first version of the Post article?

UPDATE II: "Oh Yeah, THAT!"