In fact, the dinner date between Kerry and his wife and Assad and his wife took place in Damascus in February 2009, when Kerry was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Different time, different roles, different circumstances. Yet the story clucks: “The images ... come in stark contrast to comments Mr. Kerry recently made about the Syrian president, describing him as a ‘thug’ and drawing comparisons between Mr. Assad and Adolf Hitler over their use of chemical weapons.”
This cheap shot isn’t unique.
When the U.S. began to distance itself from Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak, also in 2011, ABC News reported that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- in 2009! -- had volunteered in an interview that “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.”
Clinton probably shouldn’t have been so gushing, especially in an interview in which she acknowledged that the State Department had issued a report faulting Egypt for its human rights record. But diplomacy inevitably involves engagement, and sometimes socializing, with more or less unsavory foreign leaders.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opini...,3210206.story