"Hughes Misreports Iraqi History: Envoy Vastly Overstates Fact in Justifying War to Indonesian Students"

Read the full article in the Washington Post.

"Bush administration envoy Karen Hughes visited Indonesia on Friday as part of her campaign to repair U.S. standing with the world's Muslims and defended the invasion of Iraq by telling skeptical students that deposed president Saddam Hussein had gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people."

She is quoted as having said in reference to the number of people killed by poison gas:

"It's something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past. It's information that was used very widely after his attack on the Kurds. I believe it was close to 300,000."

Adding:

"That's something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That's information that we talked about a great deal in America."

The article also states:

"State Department officials later acknowledged that Hughes, tapped by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to set the record straight on U.S. policies in the Muslim world, had misreported history.

"Although at least 300,000 Iraqis are reported to have died during Hussein's 24 years in office, his government's use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds cost the lives of only a small proportion, most notoriously an estimated 5,000 people who died in a 1988 military campaign in the northern town of Halabja.

"Hughes, who is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, made her remarks at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, south of Jakarta.......Hours later, Hughes was asked twice for the basis for her numbers during a meeting with journalists from foreign news organizations.......

"Though a longtime political adviser and confidante of Bush, Hughes is a relative newcomer to international affairs. She was appointed this year to energize the State Department's public affairs efforts and burnish the U.S. image, which has been badly tarnished in the Muslim world by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians."

How can the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, on a trip to brief people in Muslim countries, not have fully mastered the information on the decisions she seeks to defend?