Karen Hughes...diplomat?

George knows his conservative Texas women. Karen Hughes was practically his mother for years, and now he's got her in the middle east in charge of "public diplomacy", trying to convince the Muslim world (by means other than blowing them and their children into a pinkish mist) that Bush really only wants the best for them. She recently assured a group of Saudi women that someday, they too would drive cars.

A group of Turkish professional women essentially told her to can the crap, that as long as the U.S. occupies Iraq, nothing she could say would make any difference. Not even assuring them she's a working mom.

She condescendingly lectured some Egyptians who asked why Bush insists on talking about God almost every time he opens his mouth by explaining that the U.S. Constitution contains the phrase, "One nation, under God..." For those of you not up on the constitution, it doesn't.

Hughes trip was a disaster from all accounts, including this one in The Guardian by Sid Blumenthal, with the former TV reporter mouthing childish cliches over and over and over and over again, just like she taught George to do, hoping to impress people by mentioning she was a working mom, and saying at one point, "I love all kids. And I understand that is something I have in common with the Turkish people -- that they love children."

She repeated endlessly, including three times in one short interview with the Al-Jazeera network, that Bush was the first president to have called for a Palestinian state. Actually, Clinton was. But what's facts or reality to Karen? She's been lying for Bush for decades.