Romney appoints Lebanese war criminal foreign policy adviser

[Watser?]

You'd think after Bush and Obama's disastrous Middle East policies, it would be pretty hard for any presidential candidate to (promise to) do worse. Now Mitt Romney has outpaced all competition and managed to find a way:

The Daily Beast has learned that the nation’s leading Muslim advocacy group sent a letter to the Romney campaign late Tuesday calling for the ouster of the candidate’s recently appointed foreign-policy adviser, Walid Phares. In the letter, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) refers to Phares as “an associate to war crimes” and a “conspiracy theorist,” citing ties to a violent anti-Muslim militia.

Mitt Romney’s New Adviser Sparks Islamic Uproar - The Daily Beast

I even have a thread on Walid Phares up in this bitch, where I was pissed off that IRA terrorist sympathiser Peter King invited him to testify at his anti-Muslimterrorist hearings. King relented after protests, but now Romney thought it would be a good idea to have a man as a foreign policy adviser who belonged to a militia that had as a motto “Kill a Palestinian and you Shall Enter Paradise” and put that motto into practice in Sabra and Shatila.

[LadyShea]

I am glad he is putting his stupids on display now, this will add more fun to the primaries.

[lpetrich]

Related to this, check out Mitt Romney and Latin America | Al Jazeera Blogs
Mitt Romney rolls out foreign policy - Reid J. Epstein - POLITICO.com
An American Century—A Strategy to Secure America’s Enduring Interests and Ideals | Mitt Romney for President

If Mitt Romney becomes president of the United States, he apparently has big plans for Latin America.

“Neither the Bush administration or the Obama administration really focused on Latin America,” a Romney aide apparently told a conference call of reporters late last week, according to this article in Politico.

But what sort of focus? Gabriel Elizondo of Al Jazeera has analyzed Mitt Romney's document.

In Romney’s white paper, he has a section titled “Latin America” - which consists of about four meaty paragraphs spreading over three pages and making up about 750 words.

As I read it, here is what I found:

Number references to ‘Venezuela,’ ‘Cuba.’ or ‘Cuban’: 3

Number of references to “Bolivarian”: 2

Number of references to “Hezbollah”: 2 (in the Latin America section only).

Number of references to Iran: 2 (in the Latin America section only).

Number of references to former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya: 2

Number of times the word ‘terrorist,’ terrorism,’ or ‘terrorists,’ was used: 8 (in the Latin America section only).

Number of times the words ‘drug,’ ‘traffickers,’ ‘violent,’ ‘death,’ ‘mayhem,’ ‘gangs,’ ‘criminal,’ ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘socialist,’ ‘crime,’ ‘decay,’ ‘cartels,’ ‘cartel,’ ‘narco,’ ‘illegal,’ ‘infiltration,’ were used in some form, based on my rough count: 26

The number of times the word “Brazil” was used: 0. Yes, as in, zero.

I know, Mexico has drug violence; Chavez gets a lot of media attention when he says something controversial, and Cuba is a hot-button political issue in America. Get it.

But Iran? Hezbollah? And no Brazil? In the Latin America section?

This seemed as weird to GE as discussing the Republican race without mentioning Mitt Romney. Brazil now has the world's 9th largest economy, GE notes, and it may grow to 4th or 5th by next decade.

GE quoted some people as saying that this document has an antiquated, cold-war, US-backyard, homogeneous view of Latin America.

What other flakiness does that document contain?

[Watser?]

Mother Jones (and the HuffPost) picked up on it: Top Romney Adviser Tied to Militia That Massacred | Mother Jones