CERTAINLY EXPLAINS THE KISSINGER APPOINTMENT

After the London Observer/Guardian broke the story of a leaked email document revealing a dirty tricks operation by the US on the undecided members of the UN Security Council pertaining to the Iraq vote.

Ahh, the lovely Bush-Nixon parallels have reached critical mass!

Obviously, conservatives realized (realised?) they have some ass covering to do.

STRATEGY #1: "Half the diplomatic corps of the authoritarian states in the UN are spies" (as said by conservative blogger Mark Harden in the comments at Eschaton) . . . But America, and Bush (haha), are supposed to be better than authoritarian states, and not resort to such things. If we're spying on other countries' delegates, doesn't that hamper Bush's "moral clarity" a bit?

STRATEGY #2: "The spelling of the email, as printed in the British paper, uses the Queen's English (i.e. "organised" instead of "organize"), would an American spell words like that?" (as argued by Drudge) . . . My suspicion when this complaint was first raised was that the Observer had altered the written text to have English-style spelling, making this a non-issue . . . And gee golly, I was right!

--- CLARIFICATION from MARTIN BRIGHT, The Observer

"There seems to be some confusion over the Anglicised (or Anglicized) spelling in our reproduction of the email online and on the front of the newspaper. This was done for editorial reasons to standardise (standardize) spelling throughout the newspaper. Following the many queries from the United States we would like to make it cleart that the original document had American spelling and this will be corrected on the online version of the email".

Face it, conservatives: this is what the Bush people do. If we had a real president, then I should have been surprised by this story.