Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek is not a bad reporter. But, as his latest works shows, he is definitely not a good reporter either. Or perhaps the folks that do the fact checking were out that week. Maybe he THOUGHT he had the facts and they didn't bear repeating.
Or perhaps Newsweeks doesn't know how to use Google?
Anyway, I was skimming through this article What Bush Got right and stumbled upon this little gem:
In order to recover the aircraft and crew, Washington had to negotiate with Beijing and—despite much conservative grumbling—Bush agreed to send the Chinese a "letter of two sorries," in which the United States offered some carefully worded expressions of regret about the incident and death of the Chinese pilot.
Nicely worded except it omits a few things - just like the "apology" to China. More about it below the fold...
Let set the wayback machine to April of 2001. A U.S. reconnaissance aircraft collides with a Chinese fighter aircraft. The U.S. crew is forced to make an emergency landing and is captured by the Chinese. China is irate: why had the U.S. violated Chinese airspace to perform surveillance? Washington, in the typical "Whaaa?" of the time, complains that it isn't Chinese airspace, it is International airspace ("Hey, I'm not the idiot... YOU'RE the idiot").
Zakaria is absolutely correct that there were two "sorries". The first expressed sorrow that the pilot dies, but the second... well, that one is a little weird. Here is the text we sent to Beijing at the time:
Dear Mr. Minister:
On behalf of the United States government, I now outline steps to resolve this issue.
Both President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have expressed their sincere regret over your missing pilot and aircraft. Please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss.
Although the full picture of what transpired is still unclear, according to our information, our severely crippled aircraft made an emergency landing after following international emergency procedures. We are very sorry the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance, but very pleased the crew landed safely. We appreciate China's efforts to see to the well-being of our crew.
In view of the tragic incident and based on my discussions with your representative, we have agreed to the following actions:
Both sides agree to hold a meeting to discuss the incident. My government understands and expects that our aircrew will be permitted to depart China as soon as possible.
The meeting would start April 18, 2001.
The meeting agenda would include discussion of the causes of the incident, possible recommendations whereby such collisions could be avoided in the future, development of a plan for prompt return of the EP-3 aircraft, and other related issues. We acknowledge your government's intention to raise U.S. reconnaissance missions near China in the meeting.
Sincerely,
Joseph W. Prueher
The Chinese allowed the U.S. to save face by arguing that they got their apology for violating Chinese airspace. But, in fact, we only apologized for making an emergency landing on Chinese soil.
Just in case the American people were confused by this, Bush even said that the collision wasn't our fault:
In order to win the crew's release, President Bush said he was "very sorry" for the loss of the Chinese pilot and for the US plane's landing in China without verbal permission - but he did not accept US responsibility for the collision."
The only reason the Chinese scrambled a jet to that location was they identified a plane in (you guessed it) their airspace. And it was us!
In case many think I'm picking at nits, this is what then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said at the time:
"There is no 'very sorry' linked to the incident. There is no 'very sorry' linked to our reconnaissance flights." BBC
So Zakaria is patting Dubya on the back for the Chinese being gracious to accept a bullshit "apology" and then argue that it wasn't an apology. Worse, rather than tell the readers what really happened, he argues that we apologized for the incident when in fact we only apologized for making a forced landing.
Oh, and for killing someone (don't you know that grated for Dubya - he so loves killing people).
Whitewash by omission is just as bad as flat out lies. Frankly, it makes the rest of Zakaria's text just a little hard to believe. What else is he conveniently omitting?
After that, I stopped reading his article.