Again in the Times

This Monday, The New York Times published a brief piece about an angry Condolezza Rice criticizing the major Latin American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil) for being unwilling to support the latest pipe dream of George Bush as far as Latin America is concerned.

Mr. Bush wants the Organization of American States to develop "a process to assess, as appropriate, situations that may affect the development of a member state's democratic political institutional process or the legitimate exercise of power."

Wisely enough, the ambassadors of the aforementioned countries plus Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, let Mrs. Rice know in advance that they were going to oppose the creation of such "process," signaling the death of this veiled intervention sponsored by the White House on the internal affairs of the countries of the region.

The piece published by the Times emphasizes the fact that Venezuela was the undisclosed destinatary of the so-called "process," while stressing also how hard it was for Mrs. Rice to digest this new defeat for the Bush administration and their aim to become the benchmark of democratic practices all over the world.

And of course, hehe, the irony of it all is that when one compares the U.S. democracy, its standards, its abuses, the gerrymandering with other democracies of the world, there is no way to think that mr. Bush could go around lecturing on (and, what is worse, sanctioning) democratic practices.