Here is a short story.
Everything in it is true and documented.
This has just happened.
I will use the world's leading news wire services as my sources.
AFP: Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert:
JERUSALEM (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.
"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.
Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.
The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.
"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.
"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.
"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."
So, from this version of the story, we learn that Condoleeza Rice was working on the text of a UN resolution calling on both sides of the Gaza conflict to cease their hostilities.
Then, after Olmert, Israeli PM, called bush on the phone, interrupting the American president's speech, bush immediately called Ms. Rice and told her to drop this resolution (which she herself has created) and abstain from voting - to not vote yes.
Reuters: U.S. makes U-turn on U.N. Gaza vote
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - In an apparent reversal of earlier promises to Arab states, the United States on Thursday abstained from voting on a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council.
Snip.
Western and Arab diplomats said they had expected Rice to vote for the resolution and cited a phone call she had with U.S. President George W. Bush immediately before the vote.
State Department officials did not immediately respond to e-mails and phone calls about why the United States ultimately decided not to back the resolution.
Before taking her seat in the Security Council chamber, Rice huddled with Arab ministers and told them of the U.S. decision to abstain.
"We sensed her sincerity as the secretary of state personally," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told Reuters.
Asked whether he thought Bush had ordered Rice to change the U.S. vote at the last minute, he said, "I don't know."
So, from this version we learn that there was agreement, that Ms. Rice was supposed to vote 'yes' on the resolution calling for peace and that at the last moment she told everyone that she would abstain from voting.
The Independent, UK: Bush ordered ceasefire retreat at UN
For the UN to do nothing in the face of the mounting civilian casualties was becoming increasingly untenable. But when three of the world's top diplomats – Ms Rice, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner – descended on New York on Tuesday to take action there was plenty of reason to believe that their efforts would end in tears.
Snip.
by Thursday morning, the US had had a surprising change of heart. It could back a resolution, if the British drafted one. Which Mr Miliband and his diplomatic crew duly did.
It fell to Mr Miliband, above all, to bring everyone on side before the council could hold a vote sometime Thursday evening. He, M. Kouchner and Ms Rice spent all day shuttling with knitted brows in and out of a conference room in the basement of the UN building where Arab foreign ministers were huddled. By dusk, it seemed at last that everyone was on board. Mr Miliband was smiling.
When finally every last hurdle was cleared and the members of the Security Council were headed to their chamber for the vote, there was a mood of celebration in the building. Ministers from Arab nations especially were slapping backs. It was only in the last minutes before the vote was due that word began suddenly to circulate. America was not going to vote in favour after all.
It was no secret that Ms Rice had been on the phone with Washington and with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert all day. This was no run-of-the-mill vote, after all. The call that changed everything apparently came just as ministers and ambassadors were taking their seats in the council chamber. It was President George Bush for Ms Rice. Don't veto the resolution, he said, but don't vote for it either.
As Mr Miliband left later for the airport and the flight home, he could take heart, perhaps, from what Ms Rice said in the chamber. America supported the text and its goals, she insisted. And yet, the US could not vote for it because of that other special relationship it has; with Israel.
The special relationship America has with Israel.
Indeed.
The New York Times: Olmert Says He Made Rice Change Vote :
WASHINGTON — In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.
“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”
Israel opposed the resolution, which called for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, because the government said it did not provide for Israel’s security. It passed 14 to 0, with the United States abstaining.
Mr. Olmert claimed that once he made his case to Mr. Bush, the president called Ms. Rice and told her to abstain. “She was left pretty embarrassed,” Mr. Olmert said, according to The A.P.
Another story from another newspaper reporting on what happened and how Olmert's phone call to bush, and then bush's phone call to Ms. Rice was crucial in changing America's position on the UN resolution.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Rice calls Olmert account ‘fiction’:
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Condoleezza Rice called "fiction" Ehud Olmert's claim that he persuaded President Bush to abstain from a U.N. Security Council call for a cease-fire and left the secretary of state "shamed."
"The prime minister was, I hope, quoted out of context, because the story that I read in the newspaper is fiction," Rice said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
"The president and I talked about the resolution, about the importance of allowing the council to send a signal even though the United States believed that the resolution was premature," she said. "And I had made it very clear that I thought the resolution was premature, and there were also concerns about a resolution that had Israel, a member-state of the United Nations, and Hamas, which is a terrorist organization -- you don’t ever want there to be any equating those two.
"And so we talked. We talked about abstention as a good option. And I was quite aware of the president’s call to Prime Minister Olmert. Of course, Prime Minister Olmert is not at all aware of what the president said to me. And I repeat, his rendering of this is fiction -- if, in fact, that was his rendering of it. And I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it’s not exactly what he said."
So, Ms. Rice denies Mr. Olmert's claims.
So what to make of all of this?
Lets use an analogy.
Lets imagine that there is a dutiful whore named America Rice, who is working very hard for her pimp Israel Olmert, selling her body and soul and even sending her (America's) sons to fight for the pimp in a far away city - lets call it Baghdad.
But one day, the bitch named America got too uppity, and started to talk with some guys the pimp hated - lets call them Arabs, the French and Mr. Brit - and the pimp, Israel, heard of it.
He called the bitch's uncle - lets call him bush - and told him: "You tell that bitch that she betta keep her mouth shut, she's talking shit to some guys I deeeeslike, and, if you know what's good for you and her, you betta straighten her out!".
"But I am busy drinking errr speaking to a crowd here," protested the very drunk uncle, rubbing his eyes with one hand.
"Nigga, shit, I don't care what the fuck you doing rite now, you stop that shit and talk to that hoe, you hear me, shitface?!," the pimp shouted into the phone and slammed it on the ground.
"S'right, I set her straight, I set her straight," mumbled the drunk, dialed the number, and after a few ring tones he heard a familiar voice.
"Bitch, listen, you know how it is with me and the pimp, we gots bidness together - he has people he can sic on me in newspapers and shit - so shut the fuck up, girl, and stop doing whatcha doing".
America Rice knew that she went too far, became too independent, and realized the error of her ways - she went against her pimp.
She returned to the table, "Sorry y'all, I gots to jet to my boss," and run out the door.
The next day, as everyone in town heard about the story (hell, the pimp, Mr. Israel bragged how he put his bitch down and how that bitch, America, does whatever the fuck he tells her to do), the bitch got upset.
She showed up in the most popular local bar, where she usually worked with the Arabs (and Mr. Brit and Mr. French, although Mr. Saudi was her favorite customer), and even though everybody was looking at her black eyes and her swelled, purple-black face with a belt mark on her cheek, told everybody the same thing.
"I am not a bitch! America is not Israel's bitch! Miss Rice is not anybody's bitch!".
No one believed her, with Mr. Brit smirking with Mr. French, and Mr. Saudi pulling a roll of money from his pocket and winking at America.
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