"Hughesey", Bobsey? That's smarmy.

According to Democratic insider Donna Brazil, speaking in the roundtable discussion on ABC's This Week not long ago, our public diplomacy issues will magically disappear the day her candidate, Clinton, takes the oath of office.

Admittedly her husband has been and continues to be a formidable goodwill ambassador for America, but the disaffected Muslim world seems a far tougher nut to crack than a mere goodwill initiative can remedy.

I recall riding to our target suburb with other Greenpeace fund raisers and hearing the report of the first World Trade Center bombing during the first Clinton administration and I don't suppose his subsequent air strike on the Afghanistani Al Qaida training camps endeared us to many of his faith.

As a conservative I know pointed out this evening, even Reagan's term included the Beirut barracks bombing, despite his administration's playing footsie with Teheran in Iran-Contra.

Much as I despise the Bushs, our public diplomacy problems run far deeper than even the doo-doo they have gotten us into.

oh dear...... I always had a lot of respect for your comments but in this item on US image abroad there was some surprise expressed that the actions of the US in the fight against AIDs did not stack up on the positive side. Surely you must know that the Bush administration has rolled back efforts drastically by insisting that any measures to stave off sexually transmitted AIDS is linked to the impossible goal of abstinence.
I listen and thoroughly enjoy your podcast every week and will continue to do so but maybe we could have a little more realism in this kind of reporting.

thanks

Barry

Am so glad to see yet another Bushie cohort depart. To think we could have resolved our image problems by sending out Ms. Hughes is completely ridiculous. It will take the USA many years to recover from the mistakes of the current administration.