Leaked Cables: What America Thinks Of World Leaders
Does anyone recall how Richard Nixon would respond when asked about world leaders. He would have wonderful short summations of each one mentioned. I thought of that today when reading from the treasure trove of insights from the leaked State Department cables. Nixon would be fuming about the leaked cables, but he would be reading every tidbit just like the rest of us. He would have (grudgingly) loved the newspapers today.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy: ‘has a thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style’ and is an ‘emperor with no clothes’
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: ‘feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern European leader’. He is a ‘physically and politically weak’ leader whose ‘frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest’
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: ‘plays Robin to Putin’s Batman’ and is ‘pale and hesitant’
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: an ‘alpha dog’
Chancellor Angela Merkel: ‘avoids risks and is rarely creative’
Iranian President Mahmoud Amhadinejad: like ‘Hitler’ (It should be noted the Daily Mail got this one wrong…this was not from an American source, but instead from a Middle East leader in the U.A.E.)
Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi: is ‘strange’ and ‘accompanied by voluptuous blonde Ukranian “nurse”’
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: governs with ‘a cabal of incompetent advisors’
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il: ‘flabby old chap’ who suffers from ‘physical and psychological trauma’
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai: ‘driven by paranoia’ and ‘an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him’
Zimbabwean tyrant, Robert Mugabe: ‘the crazy old man’
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is said to ‘float along on paranoia’ and is dismissed as ‘an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him’.
Kim Jong-il, the ailing dictator of North Korea is described as a ‘flabby old chap’ who had suffered ‘physical and psychological trauma’.
