Peance and Freeance! Part I:
Q I guess I might ask if you’d please take it — last night, CBS “60 Minutes” had a horrific feature on the persecution of Christians and I guess other minorities in Iraq and it appears to be getting much worse. Is there anything that our administration — your administration can do to try to prevent this?
MS. PERINO: Well, this is something that the President has raised with Prime Minister Maliki and our Ambassador is certainly aware of it. The President also spoke about it with the Pope in both of his meetings this year. So it is something that the President gets regularly updated on. He’s concerned about it and he thinks that everybody should be allowed to worship freely. And he believes that Prime Minister Maliki agrees with him in that regard — whether you’re Sunni, Shia, Christian, Jew or otherwise — that everybody should be allowed to worship freely and be free from persecution.
Peance and Freeance! Part II:
Q U.S. forces in Iraq reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during a raid last Friday on a villa belonging to the Prime Minister’s sister, and the villa is in Karbala province, which is supposedly under full Iraqi control. And Iraqi officials said they were not informed about the raid in advance. Was that raid a mistake, and will you issue an apology?
MS. PERINO: I think you’ll need to call MNFI. I don’t have any information on that.
Les’ Unrequited Love For Apartheid
Q Yes, on this. Thank you, Dana. Two questions. Does the White House believe that apartheid South Africa ever killed and tortured as many blacks as Mugabe’s Zimbabwe?
MS. PERINO: It would be impossible for me to quantify. I don’t know, Les.
Q Does the White House believe that in the United States there have ever been as many demonstrations against Zimbabwe and against Amin’s Uganda by black organizations like the NAACP than the 5,000 who picketed the apartheid South African embassy?
MS. PERINO: Well, I think that any time anyone — any time there is suffering or people aren’t allowed to live free as everybody is guaranteed the right to under God, as the President has said, that that should be condemned. I’m not going to comment as to how many protests there are against a regime.
Q Well, do you think it was more — don’t you think it was more protests against —
MS. PERINO: I’m going to move on, Les.
Q You don’t want to —
MS. PERINO: I’m going to move on. Olivier.
Q You don’t want to —
MS. PERINO: I’m going to move on. Olivier.
The President also spoke about it with the Pope in both of his meetings this year.
because the Pope really matters when it comes to the domestic policy decisions of Iraq… I mean they really pay so much attention to what the Pope says… and besides, just talking TO someone ABOUT something isn’t actually DOING anything.
oh, and happy birthday yesterday, Holden. I posted trifecta birthday wishes for you and RIL an RMJ. Happy returns.
Somehow I have the feeling that the Pope brought it up and voiced his objection. Shrub was physically there. That constitutes discussion.
Why, really, does Les have a chair at these things? He seems singularly unqualified to do anything more intellectually challenging than sweeping floors.
Not sure about this particular Pope, but I seem to recall that the last Pope thought that GWB might be the antichrist. And that Pope made a big point that the war in Iraq was in no way a “just war” under Catholic teaching.
And GWB paid a lot of attention to him then, didn’t he?
Did you catch Budya’s location presser today?
They blurred the background focus. He was speaking at a warehouse and to keep people from seeing the outsourced product brands behind him they kept the camera focus settings blurred for the background.
Straight outta Pravda.