Bush Shakes Hands With Islam

Wow, conservatives must really have cared when the President shook hands with Islam.

President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House in April 2002. Karimov was elected to a second term in January 2000 against token opposition with 92.5 percent of the vote under conditions that were neither free nor fair. Dare we say near Dictatorship?

"Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights".

Here is a line from the State Department regarding Uzbekistan in 2000:

"The Government's human rights record remained very poor, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses. Citizens cannot exercise the right to change their government peacefully; the Government does not permit the existence of opposition parties."

Venezuela, just to give context, is a democratic country.

The Nexis database found no references on Fox News in 2002 to Bush's handshake with Karimov.

No one cares who shakes hands with people. Not then, not now. It's a character assassination plot by Fox geared towards xenophobic diplomacy weaklings who see every handshake as a "Charlie Daniels Band-shake-hands-with-the-Devil" transference of power only determined by the winner of a fiddle jamming contest.

Source: MediaMatters