The most important parts of the overheard Sarkozy-Obama dialogue in which the French leader called Netanyahu a “liar” are Obama’s confessions about Netanyahu’s access to him and his distance from the Palestinians.
“You’re fed up with him, what about me? I have to deal with him every day,” Obama said.
And: “You [Sarkozy] have to pass the message along to the Palestinians that they must stop this [U.N. efforts] immediately.”
Let’s be clear: this is about the role of the Israel lobby in our politics, the president’s need to fawn to an Israeli leader, even a rightwing leader. It’s happened before, in 1999-2000. “[Bill] Clinton’s willingness to take every phone call from Prime Minister [Ehud] Barak–at times on an almost daily basis, the study group was told–devalued the president’s latent power and denied Clinton the critical distance that a president often must have when dealing with detailed and nuanced policy problems,” Dan Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky wrote in Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace (based on a study group that included Bill Quandt, Shibley Telhami and Stephen Spiegel). “[T]he power of the presidency was devalued.”
The power of Obama’s presidency has also been devalued. He came in indicating that he would listen to the Palestinian side of things. He referred openly to “occupation” in his Cairo speech of ’09. All that is over. He has to talk to Netanyahu every day because he must keep the lobby happy, for the 2012 election.
A very curious thing happened to that quote
“I have to deal with him every day”
On many news stories, including a Reuters story that was on Yahoo news, it was changed to something like ‘I have to deal with a lot’. Many of the commentors picked up on it and were wondering what was the reasoning behind it being changed.
“I have to deal with him every day” could open the door to talk about the oversized influence of the IL over the POTUS…and IMO that is why it was changed. chilling, really.
I’m assuming they were speaking in English? If so, there should be no ambiguity about exactly what he said.
If only people knew, what was really going on behind “the curtains”.
It looks like those “behind the curtains ” are also not quite happy-go-lucky dudes. There is a Big Dude above them, whom they are not too fond of.
Who is that Dude ,and why are they not too fond of him??
BTW, why are they afraid of him?? Is he the One, who calls the ultimate shots? The Utter Dude?
Are you kidding me?? Bachman and McCain already called for a public apology?? Maybe lady Michelle ma belle, can bake some cookies ,and offer them to “poor Bibi”. And Johnny McCain can help him to eat them.
What a bunch of sleazy snakes.
I am lucky to be able to speak several langauges and am exasperated hearing translations from professional translators.
They say constantly something different than the person speaking, so I do not wonder at the different translations from Obama/Sarkozy téte a téte.