Posted on 3/25/2009, 2:34:07 PM by La Lydia
Christopher Hill, the president's nominee for ambassador to Iraq, is a disconcerting choice to head America's largest embassy, located in the most dangerous region in the world. Hill is a neophyte in dealing with the complexities of Middle East politics and Islamic terrorism...Hill also has a troubling hotdog tendency to play by his own rules, to the detriment of U.S. diplomacy...Hill's go-it-alone approach was illustrated in July 2005 when he violated U.S. policy and express orders from superiors by meeting with North Korean Vice Minister Kim Kye-gwan in Berlin to revive the Six Party talks. Pyongyang crowed over the bilateral meeting, a concession it had been demanding for years...
Hill's brand of cowboy diplomacy might be justified if it produced favorable results, but his record in dealing with North Korea is dismal. Hill, as portrayed in David Sanger's book The Inheritance, gripes about the Bush administration to friends, saying "these [expletives] don't know how to negotiate." He said that hard-line demarches favored by "neocons" were worse than the terms offered at Appomattox. His said his approach, on the other hand, would be familiar to "anyone who has haggled for some vegetables in a Korean market." But the inescapable fact is that North Korea had no nuclear weapons when Hill violated U.S. policy to get the Six Party talks going again in 2005, and in 2006 Pyongyang tested its first atom bomb. Hill's crowning achievement....was having North Korea taken off the list of terrorist states. Hill's failed record, we are deeply concerned about the possible role he will play in the impending U.S. diplomatic opening to Iran...If anyone wants Iran to have the same nuclear capability as North Korea, Hill is your man.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
But the inescapable fact is that North Korea had no nuclear weapons when Hill violated U.S. policy to get the Six Party talks going again in 2005, and in 2006 Pyongyang tested its first atom bomb.
Probably one of Obama's easier choices, then.
Hill will make Iraq hate us in the end. Absolutely the wrong choice. In fact its a mitigated disaster given the condition of Iraq now. Iraq is pretty much at peace now and making huge progress politically, militarily, culturally, financially and economically. It’s becoming a more stable country with every passing day it seems and that is good news for us and them but Hill I fear will singlehandedly destroy all that progress.
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