Shockwaves from Bush speech ripple around world

The amateurish, jingoistic, arrogant and ludicrous State of the Union speech has sent shockwaves reverberating around the world.

The position of the British Foreign Office, regarding the speech, was made clear by a spokesperson, who declared that “we do not believe about everything (the US says)”. He added that “We believe that in a long term, we can overcome disagreement by talking to each other”.

“President Bush’s comments about Iran do not change British policy, which remains to engage with the Iranian government and to improve relations with a view to building a better understanding between our countries”, he continued.

Another Foreign Office spokesperson declared to the Iranian news agency, IRNA, that “Britain certainly has no wish to engage in any kind of confrontation”.

These comments come in the wake of the “axis of evil” speech in which George W. Bush appears to have got his geography wrong, naming Baghdad (predictably), Pyongyang (of course) and Teheran as the three countries which supposedly had their weapons of mass destruction pointing at the USA.

Exactly why George Bush was allowed to include Teheran in his speech, after all the co-operation that the government of Iran has given to the USA in recent months, is the cause of a huge question mark among practically all the governments, and population, of the European Union.

Iran’s president Sayed Mohammad Khatami denounced Bush’s outburst as “intervening, warmongering, insulting, a repetition of his past propagation, and worse than all, truly insulting towards the Iranian nation”.

He continued: “What is of top importance is that adopting such aggressive moods merely leads to further unity and solidarity among the Iranian nation in their confrontation with those governments whose appetite will never be saturated and are always intending to intervene in others’ affairs”.

Furthermore, he declared that “Iran is both a victim of terrorism and a victim of chemical weapons, which were generously donated to our enemies by those who intended to uproot the Islamic Revolution…Today, America insists on supporting the racist Zionist regime that resorts to all sorts of crimes against the Palestinians that are the most oppressed, most innocent nation in the world”.

Praising the USA as a “great nation”, the Iranian President declared that this country has an important role as a peace broker, while only too often its policies bring tyranny and injustice, cloaked in a disguise of freedom and individual liberty.

The State of the Union speech was a monumental blunder, a gross miscalculation and a massive display of arrogance, which basically served to take away any degree of sympathy, to counter all feelings of commiseration and at a stroke, annul the outrage felt by the international community for the United States in the aftermath of September 11th.

One wonders whether the President of the United States of America had been eating pretzels again…they pack a mighty punch, after all.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru