Wanted; speech writers for State Department

The US State Department speech writers have really run short of ideas. Here is a classic example. Delivering her testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittees on May 13, 2009, Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s Ambassador at large for global women’s issues said “Let me preface my remarks by saying that violence against women as a tool of armed groups is in no way limited to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, or just to Africa. We’ve seen this in Bosnia, Burma, Sri Lanka and elsewhere”.
Sounds familiar? Five months later the line was picked up by her outspoken department head, Hillary Clinton, this time adding the word ‘rape’ to that “We've seen rape used as a tactic of war before in Bosnia, Burma and Sri Lanka and elsewhere."
The irony of the story is, it was Verveer in her capacity as Ambassador at large for Global Women’s issues that came forward to make a clarification after Sri Lanka lodged a protest against Clinton’s remarks. In the letter addressed to Sri Lanka’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Verveer wrote…."in the most recent phase of the conflict, from 2006 to 2009 ... we have not received reports that rape and sexual abuse were used as tools of war, as they clearly have in other conflict area around the world”. After all she herself never mentioned the word ‘rape’ in her testimony speech which was made just five days before the end of Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. It was Hillary who borrowed the catchy phrase ‘…Bosnia, Burma and Sri Lanka and elsewhere’.
Now who has played the copycat and bungled it? The speech writer, unless of course the former first lady plays Lincoln and prepares her own speeches. Verveer it is learnt had also been the Chief of Staff of Hillary Clinton during the Clinton days. It could also be that the two ladies have been memorizing these alliterative lines ‘Boznia, Burma…’ since those good old days.
While Sri Lanka is unlikely to play Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister who snubbed Hillary Clinton last month by refusing to answer a call from her on the grounds that it was wrong protocol, the Clinton episode has gone to teach at least two lessons to everyone.
First, a country has to really fight for its right to get justice from the US.
Second, one will never get an apology from Hillary Clinton. You get only clarifications.