Yes it does matter. Where you are playing with diplomacy you HAVE to make a difference between official and non-official statements...I mean, that's the base of diplomacy.

Rumsfeld is the Defense Secretary in the current USA governement, therefor everything he will say publicly will be official and will be treated as such.

'Cause one is non-official while the other is, it makes a huge difference.
Now maybe one of these Canadian statesmen is in the current Canada Government. I don't know much about Canada Govt beside that the prime minister has a french sounding name ;)

[ 03-26-2003, 09:48 AM: Message edited by: Masklinn ]

I find it weird that we argue over whether these term are acceptable or not, while it seems to be accepted that the US official saying the US was "disappointed" was somehow wrong. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

So Masklinn, I'll just disagree with you because you appear to be arbitrarily deciding what is ok and what isn't ok. You also seem to deciding what is official and what isn't. No matter how you try to justify or excuse their statements, they were wrong and should be easily seen by everyone as unacceptable. :(

The "bastard" and "failed statesmen" both come from Canadian government officials. Their governmental titles are clearly listed in the article, and I've quoted them earlier in this thread.

Ah Ronn, don't make me lie. I'm not trying to find excuse or say that it's acceptable.

"Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish" - I m sorry I don't know what MP stands for :(

"Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal" - Ok I haven't seen that, this guy is indeed part of the governement. Though I don't know if words from Natural Ressources Minister can be taken as being official in a foreign business...

But ok, seeing that and the fact that the word "betrayed" didnt appear in the official message, I can agree with you, US govt has the right to state that ""there is a lot of disappointment in Washington".

But keep in mind that this is an official message sent from a govt to another through an ambassador (can't find something more official) about a difference of opinion. It weights way more than the words of two clowns that can't keep their mouth shut.

To sum up : I was NOT trying to find excuses, I was not saying it's "ok" but I was just trying to show you that you can't compare since these statements and ambassador words do not have ,at all, the same weight on the official diplomacy between the two countries.

Maybe he could just give California to Canada and consider the debt cleared? [img]smile.gif[/img]

Bloody foreigners! ;)

MP = Member of Parliament.

Thanks Donut. I looked at a dozen articles and not one of them mentioned it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Don't you think 'Failed Statesmen' describes him pretty well?

Virtually every nation on Earth was behind the United States after Sept. 11th. Everyone sympathetic and willing to contribute to the war on terrorism. In a short year and a half Bush's policies have divided the world. He turned worldwide well-being and a willingness to work with the United States into contempt. If that isn't bad statesmanship then someone please explain to me exactly what it takes to become a failed statesmen.

Regardless of that however.. I apologize to the USA in particular for the booing of the National Anthem at the hockey game in Montreal. I will tell you that Jean Beliveau, a legendary Habs player, had a message at the next game to the fans and the US Anthem was greatly cheered.

As far as Dhaliwal and whats-her-name.. the response from Celluci was warranted imo. Those two should have kept their mouths shut.

No I don't. I believe he and the administration tried quite diligently to convince the other nations of the need to disarm Iraq, but it didn't work. Quite a few nations were convinced though.

Even if you believe that he is a failed statesman, references like that in diplomatic circles are not considered friendly and are counter productive. I honestly don't care what the guy said, but I think it's silly to ignore those statements and pretend that there was something malicious about US official's statement regarding the Canadian position being "disappointing" to the US.

[ 03-26-2003, 12:29 PM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]

Sounds like failure to me.. ;)

but your right about pretending their was something malicious about the us officials statement. And as i said in the post above. I don't think what Celluci said was malicious. It was totally warranted. [img]smile.gif[/img]