The sad thing is that at the very moment where we often have more access to the full primary sources. Even twitter is a mixed blessing - being able to quickly give links to full articles on subjects is good.
Here the problem was (I think) caused by the internet article where they easily could have quoted the full sentence. On twitter, they would have had to paraphrase the second half of the sentence - which they could have done. Yet, the article does have the actual broadcast which did have the full sentence, but not the full interview. I am glad the State Department seems to have made the decision to post transcripts. Knowing they are likely there, I will make an effort to look there when these things blow up.
What bothers me is that here there is a very delicate, possibly impossible foreign policy problem. I wonder if the US media, with their pretend or real inability to report the Obama foreign policy actually could hurt the effort. I don't know if other countries can use this - though it seemed given the Russian trolls and rt, directed at an English speaking population, that Russia put money behind that possibility.
It clearly may contribute to people not supporting it and that alone has to have some impact on Obama. I really don't get that they do not see that the primary message - whether Iraq, Ukraine, or Egypt - has been for the country, not the US, to form an inclusive government as step one. In Latin America, the same goal is seen in the comments that the Monroe Doctrine is no longer policy. The sad thing is that many of the strongest opponents on the left have demanded just that for years.
Though Kerry has said hundreds of times that the US should not pick the winners, that has been precisely what they have been accused of - with no proof - in all of these countries. (Ignoring that neither the MB or Sisi would have been on the US short list of who they wanted to run Egypt!)
I suspect the permanent negativity of the far left might be a result of Obama/Kerry arguing for limited air strikes on Syria after 1000 people were killed by chemical weapons. Few of them are willing to give either Kerry or Obama credit for the removal of chemical weapons. (The right meanwhile simply blames them for not bombing the hell out of Syria - claiming that makes them responsible that the killing continues. This ignores that the bombing would have not ended the war.)
In addition, I wonder if the Snowden mess pushed most of this discontent on the left. It was very sad to see many lefties cheering on the problems Kerry faced - especially in Latin America because of the disclosures. To me, the sad thing was that Kerry had a unique history there which could have helped and he seemed to be saying the right things. (The timing of releases has been hurtful and I suspect that Greenwald (if not Snowden as well) prefer Obama to fail and hope to push the US to elect someone like Rand Paul, who would be awful for anyone not rich.)
That discontent may be why DU in the main forums almost looks for the most negative spin in any article on Kerry's meetings and interviews. As to the country as a whole, I think the reason the Iraq numbers are not positive is that there are a number of people who disagree with what Obama is doing on either side. Scroll down to the question of whether Obama should do more, less or what he is doing. http://pollingreport.com/iraq.htm There is likely NO policy that would get over 50%. It is actually not bad that only 41% agree, with 29% wanting him to do more and 22% less. The "do more" comes from 29% of Independents and 53% of Republicans. Do less is almost the same by political affiliation. Obama has 63% of Democrats saying this is the right amount. The next question shows that 67% of the respondents do not think the goals have been explained clearly -- and this is impacted by the media.
(It does seem like 2004, when the media covered Kerry so poorly that many had no idea that he spoke of the environment in every stump speech -- and they professed an inability to understand that Kerry voted for a version of the supplemental bill that rolled back future tax cuts to the 1% to pay for it and voted against the version that added it to the debt. Not complicated at all -- and he explained it many times - including when he cast the vote and minutes before his unfortunate summary when asked the question again minutes after answering it. You could say his politeness hurt - as just saying" that was just answered, next question" would have avoided the sound bite.)
= new reply since forum marked as read