Democracy Promotion Personified

I caught briefly that Secretary of State Rice gave a rebuke and a warning to Iran yesterday. Naturally the cable channels didn't mention that when she gave the remarks she was standing next to the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. He's one of the worst dictators on the globe in a country with the poorest citizens. Here's a greatest hits reel, from Rice's State Department:

-- In September [2005] [Amnesty International] reported that torture was widespread in the country's places of detention and during the course of trials.

-- In 2004 senior government officials told foreign diplomats that human rights did not apply to criminals and that torture of known criminals was not a human rights abuse.

-- Unlike [2004], there were no reports that prisoners died from torture; however, there were reports that officials tortured political opposition activists and other persons during the year.

-- An independent or privately owned press was nearly nonexistent ... Foreign celebrity and sports publications were available for sale at foreign-owned grocery stores, but no newspapers; there were no bookstores or newsstands in the country.

-- The law authorizes government censorship of all publications. During the year the Ministry of Information sometimes required publishers to submit a copy for approval prior to publication.

-- The president's son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, owned the only private radio station, Radio Asonga.

Did I mention that Equatorial Guinea struck oil in 1996?

This kind of hypocrisy is not harmless. As Liberal Oasis notes, the rhetoric of "spreading democracy and freedom" loses its bite when you're standing next to an unelected dictator while you're doing it. I guess because he's an unaligned old-school African despot and not an Islamofascist, that makes it OK.

This Iran business is very scary, but its even scarier when dealing with an Administration this unaware of their own hypocrisy.