I guess Abbas forgot that he described the meeting almost exactly the same way 2 years ago as I mentioned in my previous post. Luckilly for him, the media is too lazy and stupid to actually call him on this.

what are you talking about?
the story served an obvious and particular purpose: it functioned as a gesture of solidarity on the part of cowboy george with the evangelical base that was alienated by the meier nomination.
when the damage from it got too intense, the denial was dutifully issued.
and there we are: nothing to it from the beginning but reproduced in the press for an appropriate amount of time, then denied: classic karl rove.
we are in the second term of this foul administration and you still havent figured out how the media strategy works?
where have you been?
under some rock?
or worse----a conservative who actually believes this nonsense?
you act as though veracity was an issue with reference to the press: maybe at one point you could have counted on the papers, tv etc to indulge the luxury of independent fact verification--but now, this rarely happens--too expensive, you see---so instead, you have media outlets reproducing what various institutional outlets--the federal govt first of all--- tell them and checking later. if at all. if you could rely on independent fact checking in the press itself, you would not have anything lilke a second bush term, you would not have anything like a karlrove pattern of manipulating the press.

fit this in particular with the general conservative strategy of the past decade or so to deal with critique by undermining the quality of information (check for yourself, the documentation is abundant and easily available to anyone who looks--think about the corporate strategy of hiring pet "scientists" to produce experimental results favroable to corporate interests and go from there) and the function of a story like this should be clear.

the issue is not that the press was chumped.
if you did not see an obvious tactical function to this story from the outset, the chump is you.

Are you talking to me roachboy? Maybe I am a chump, but I think it's more likely you're misunderstanding what happened here.

This meeting occurred 2 years ago. Abbas made his comment immediately afterward. Now, 2 years later, another minister who was at the meeting made similar comments while filming an interview for a BBC documentary.
The story was mainly floating in the European newspapers, but was then asked during a White House Press Briefing where it was denied.
Then, a few days later, Abbas issues a denial, presumably to protect the White House from embarassment.
The story never really made it very far into the major news outlets.

So what you're saying is that 2 years ago, Rove hatched a plan with the Palestinians to help the President. It didn't gain any steam when they first tried it with Abbas and Ha'aretz, so they tried it again 2 years later by having another minister and the BBC. This time, it got a bit of play in Europe and the liberal blogosphere, but not anywhere else.
If that's what you're alleging, either Rove is an incompetent idiot or you're dead wrong.

that's not what i am saying, max.
read what i did say above and tell me where you get that interpretation from.
i think you simply made it up.
think about the timing of the story's re-emergence.

Perhaps you could clarify what you meant.
Whatever the details, you do seem to be saying that Rove played some role in getting this story fed to the press and that it served some tactical function in deflecting conservative criticism over the Miers nomination.
I don't see how that could be true. It served no such function.

If this was meant to take the heat off of his nominating Meirs it didn't work very well.

it seems not unreasonable to see the nomination, the series of statements that amount to "her religion is important"--she is a far right evangellical protestant---and this story as linked.

The other possibility is that the god thing was totally unplanned, and the "heat" regarding Miers from other Republicans is mostly faked.

I think she's a complete, unwavering ideologue, and I think just about everybody on the right knows it.

raven: i bit the article below for your amusement.

I think it would be appropriate to quote George Orwell during the confirmation hearings.