WHIG of the Week -- Karen Hughes, our brand new Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

Click here for the Buzzflash article:"Karen Hughes, Queen of the Spin-Doctors and Captain of the White House Smear Campaign", which has a short summary (with references) of her involvement in fulfilling the goals of the Downing Street Memo by helping to sell fixed Iraq intelligence and attacking war critics Richard Clarke and Joe Wilson.

But this week I guess we should wish her well in her new job. While fellow WHIGs Rove and Card and Libby and Hadley were getting raises this week, she was getting a new title:

Only two senators were in the room when Karen Hughes testified at her confirmation hearings. When it came time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote on her nomination yesterday, she was easily approved. And thus with no discussion and no debate, Hughes takes over the least noticed, least respected and possibly most important job in the State Department. Her formal title is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. In plain English, her job is to fight anti-Americanism, promote American culture and above all to do intellectual battle with the ideology of radical Islam, a set of beliefs so powerful that they can persuade middle-class, second-generation British Muslims to blow themselves up on buses and trains.
Presumably, President Bush selected Hughes for this task because she was very good at running his election campaigns. And indeed, in the testimony she gave last week to a nearly empty room, she sounded like she was still running an election campaign. ... (Anne Applebaum / Washington Post / 27 July 2005)

".... with no discussion and no debate ...." Thanks again Congress, for proving once more that it's not only the mainstream media that's at fault when it comes to sweeping the truth of our current crisis under the rug ...

crossposted at Whiggate Update

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