Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quickly had a good laugh about it with none other than Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan. Yep, pretty funny when a conservative politician intentionally mispronounced Uzbekistan, eh?
But what about Barack Obama's expertise on foreign affairs? In a press conference last night, Obama had no teleprompter. In a remarkably ignorant statement, he called condemned the recent storming of the British Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Problem is, he called it "the English Embassy."
For those of you who, like Obama, are as ignorant about foreign affairs as the average 3rd grader, the correct term is "British Emabassy," not "English Embassy."
What Obama did, in effect, was to refer to a foreign embassy that technically does not exist. There is no such thing as an "English Embassy" anywhere on Earth. Gardiner also wrote that "One can only imagine the kind of howls of derision that would greet any presidential contender if that kind of basic error were made..."
Great Britain has no embassies, just England does not. England is part of Great Britain, which in turn is part of the United Kingdom.
Will Hillary Clinton yuk it up with any world leaders about Barack Obama incorrectly calling the British Embassy in Tehran the "English Embassy?" No, I don't think so either, and the Mainstream Media won't play it up either.
In the press conference, Obama said the following: "All of us, I think, are deeply disturbed by [pause] the [pause] aaahhh [pause, brain fart] crashing of, uh, the English Embassy. Ah, thuh, the embassy of the United Kingdom in Iran." He got it wrong not once, but twice. It is not the "embassy of the United Kingdom." It is the embassy of Great Britain, or "British Embassy."
The President of the United States should certainly know this. But we'll give him this much: He's on a par with some of the lesser educated citizens of the UK for not knowing the basic political makeup of the British Isles.
Talking Points Memo reports that, "According to a tweet from NBC News’ Jamie Novogrod, Bachmann responded to the recent raiding of the British embassy in Iran, by saying that if she was President, she would close down the U.S. embassy there." What's especially disturbing about Bachmann's statement is the fact that she is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
Must Read from Al Jazeera. They're not happy with Obama: "Emperor Obama vs the Arab people" - Excerpt: "The problem with US policy in the Arab world is not only its insistence on broadcasting credulous US propaganda - easily fed to Americans, yet with few takers elsewhere in the world - but also that it continues to show a complete lack of familiarity with Arab political culture and insists on insulting the intelligence of most Arabs, whom it claims to address directly with speeches such as Mr Obama's." 