President Bush, Sudan and Paul Salopeck
By Douglas Farah
President Bush made the unusual, and breathtakingly unwise, offer to meet with Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan's bloody dictator, "on the side" in New York during the general's UN visit later in September. This, after al-Bashir, responsible for the genocide in Darfur, the blocking of peacekeeping forces despite agreeing to let them in, deliberately and throughly humiliated Bush's personal envoy to Sudan, as described in painful detail in The Washington Post.
How can this be? The regime sponsors the janjaweed, maintains terrorist connections with Islamist groups, leaves an envoy cooling her heels for three days (because the president was "busy") and imprisons Paul Salopek, one of the best and most respected foreign correspondents in the business, on bogus charges of espionage. (If you want to read about who my friend Paul Salopek really is, see this great piece in the Seattle Time).
The price for all this? An offer of a private visit with the president in New York. My full blog is here.