Pants on Fire

By Sniffles

Seems that TIME has taken the Secretary of State's side in the Great Condoleezza Rice v. Jimmy Carter Debate. The magazine's May 5 issue states that on his recent Middle East trip, President Carter met with Hamas, the Palestinian group legally elected to govern in the Gaza Strip, "after the Bush Administration warned him not to." President Carter has said he received no such instruction from the State Department.

TIME's blithe characterization of these alleged facts amazes us cats. First, President Carter has a rock-solid reputation for telling the truth. In fact, we're certain that it helped cost him his re-election in 1980. Secretary Rice, on the other hand, had a starring role in the giant fib-fest that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Say, who's more believable — Mr. "I'll Never Lie to You" or Little Miss Mushroom Cloud?)

But we also have confidence in the former President because we recently attended the annual Presidential briefing at The Carter Center. It was the first time that cats were allowed — and although we almost got stepped on during one of the coffee breaks, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

President Carter reminded us that with the help of Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Soliman, both the U.S. and Israel have been secretly negotiating with Hamas for some time now. Both nations insist on publicly denying this relationship. But now that — dare we say it? — the cat is out of the bag, we're puzzled as to why Secretary Rice would continue the charade. "I just don't want there to be any confusion," she said. "The United States is not going to deal with Hamas."

"The problem is not that we met [with Hamas] but that the U.S. and Israeli governments refuse to... making peace harder if not impossible to achieve," President Carter said. The American and Israeli criticism of Carter's meeting with Syrian President Bashar al Assad is equally counterproductive, he said. "Our talks in Syria have led us to conclude that peace with Israel could be within reach, with Syria being the next country to recognize Israel."

We don't know why the Bush Administration and the Israeli government continue to shoot themselves in the foot. But we agreed with Jimmy Carter when he told us, "The people of Israel want peace. But there's no indication of that in the current negotiations. And that's a crying shame."

Cats don't cry, but we sure can HISS. We send a big nasty one to Condoleezza Rice, the other lying liars at the State Department, and to TIME magazine for buying their story lock, stock and barrel.