Falling on His Sword

A senior US diplomat, one Alberto Ferndandez, who happens to be fluent in Arabic, made a statement on Al Jazeera television that US foreign policy in Iraq displayed "arrogance" and "stupidity".

Now he's had to take it all back and apologize. Looks like his overlords at the State Department made him feel the sting of the lash, and he had to trot out a quasi-apology.

Fernandez says now that he "seriously misspoke" when he used the phrase containing the "a" word and the "s" word.

That kind of reminds me of the good ole Nixon days, when he trotted his press secretary, Ron Ziegler, out to say that a previous statement was "inoperative"...

I can just imagine the outrage at State when they learned that one of their own spoke his own mind and told the truth. And Fernandez undoubtedly still wants to keep his career, which is why he had to fall on his sword.

But that apology isn't really fooling anyone, is it?