{"id":90,"date":"2004-09-21T11:49:56","date_gmt":"2004-09-21T15:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/?p=90"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"who-would-al-qaeda-prefer-as-president-ask-our-allies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Who would Al Qaeda prefer as president?  Ask our allies&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uselections2004\/story\/0,13918,1309154,00.html\">UK <u>Guardian<\/u><\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><i>The Foreign Office was thrown into turmoil yesterday after the British ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts, described President George Bush as &#8220;the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>His comment, made at a closed conference of about 100 British and Italian diplomats, politicians and journalists in Tuscany, was leaked to an Italian newspaper, provoking embarrassment in London. <\/p>\n<p>According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been taking part in a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they had a vote in the US election. The ambassador said they would vote for Mr Kerry but some people would want Mr Bush, not least al-Qaida.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it&#8217;s al-Qaida. Whereas it is clear that the Palestinians hope that a Kerry victory will unblock the situation,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>The Foreign Office, which warned before the war that Iraq could become a breeding ground for al-Qaida, did not deny yesterday that Sir Ivor made the remarks. &#8220;We are not making any comment other than the fact they do not represent government policy,&#8221; a spokesman said.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThe Foreign Office is taking a soft line because Sir Ivor had not intended his comments to be made public and there was a breach of Chatham House rules, meaning the conference had been held on condition that all comments should be kept off the record.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the UK Guardian: The Foreign Office was thrown into turmoil yesterday after the British ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts, described President George Bush as &#8220;the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida&#8221;. His comment, made at a closed conference of about 100 British and Italian diplomats, politicians and journalists in Tuscany, was leaked to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}