Remember when Pickles got heckled out of a Mosque on her Mideast vacation? What an embarrassment

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/21/politics/main697019_page2.shtml

Protesters Greet First Lady

Laura Bush Visits Holy Sites In Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, May 23, 2005


(AP) "As you can tell from our day here, this is a place of emotions everywhere we went, from the Dome of the Rock to the Western Wall" she told reporters at the palace ruins.

As for the peace process, Mrs. Bush said the U.S. would do whatever it could, but that both sides share responsibility in helping achieve peace. snip

Anti-American sentiment is running high in the Mideast because of a variety of factors, including a now-retracted report in Newsweek that Pentagon investigators had found evidence interrogators at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in washrooms to unsettle suspects and flushed a Quran down a toilet.

"We in principle don't reject anyone's visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque (compound), but we see in the visit of Mrs. Bush an attempt to whitewash the face of the United States, after the crimes that the American interrogators had committed when they desecrated the Quran," the militant Islamic Hamas group said in a statement on its Web site.

Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic Trust that administers the mosque compound, said Mrs. Bush tried to play down the heckling, saying it could have happened anywhere.

[malaise]

1. Why did she go there?

They are shameless.

[0007]

3. Here is some information about the visit....

Laura Bush, the US first lady, was heckled as she visited a flashpoint shrine in Jerusalem which is holy to both Muslims and Jews and is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A small crowd of about two dozen people surrounded Mrs Bush as she entered the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem's walled Old City.

A Palestinian worshipper cried out at her: "You are not welcome here. Why are you hassling our Muslims? How dare you come in here?"

Mrs Bush, who later made an appeal for peace, did not respond then or an old woman inside the mosque shouted "Koran, Koran" at her in Arabic.

Police linked arms around Mrs Bush as she left the mosque.

Mrs Bush began a Middle East trip on Friday acknowledging that the US image in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by a prisoner abuse scandal and a magazine report, since retracted, that US interrogators desecrated the Koran.

Shortly before visiting the mosque, Mrs Bush appeared at the adjacent ancient Western Wall and was confronted by dozens of nationalist Jews demanding Washington free convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. They shouted and waved placards.

The disturbances during her trip to the Jerusalem holy site showed "what an emotional place this is as we go from each one of these very, very holy spots to the next," Mrs Bush said later during a stop in the West Bank oasis town of Jericho.

"We're reminded again of what we all want, what every one of us prays for...what we all want is peace," said Mrs Bush, who in Jericho heard complaints from Palestinian women about Israeli occupation policies such as roadblocks.

She said the chance of achieving peace "right now ... is as close as we've been in a really long time. It will take a lot of baby steps and I'm sure (there) will be a few steps backward on the way".

The shrine compound she visited is known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif ("Noble Sanctuary") and Jews as Temple Mount and has been a frequent venue of violence rooted in conflicting Israeli and Palestinian claims to sovereignty over the site.

It is the most sacred site for Jews, the spot where biblical King Solomon built a temple and where a second temple was razed by the Romans, except for its Western Wall. It is Islam's third holiest site, home to the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/22/ubush.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/05/22/ixportaltop.html

[malaise]

4. I remember the visit

There were several threads but still why did she go given her husband's crusade in the Middle East? Did she seriously expect to be greeted as a liberator? Shameless.

[0007]

5. I certainly agree that it was shameless .. .. ..

[Wilms]

2. "...Mrs. Bush tried to play down the heckling, saying it could have happened anywhere. "

LOL!

"could have"? How 'bout it does happen everywhere.

That's what she gets for marrying a mass murderer.