Rice shrugs off UK visit protests (BBC)

[Canuckistanian]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4867824.stm

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said she is not troubled by noisy protests against her current UK visit.

"I find them an exercise in democracy, I find them not in any way off-putting or disconcerting," she said, on a visit to the north-west town of Blackburn.

~snip

Remarks 'misconstrued'

Ms Rice said comments she made on Friday, in which she said the US had made "thousands" of tactical errors in Iraq, had been misunderstood.

She said she had been speaking "figuratively, not literally. I was not sitting around counting".

Asked when the US was planning to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, the secretary of state said the camp would not remain open "any longer than is needed".

But she said: "We have to recognise Guantanamo is there for a reason, because we captured people on battlefields... who were either plotting or planning or actively engaged in terrorist activities."

[TomInTib]

1. "because we captured people on battlefields"

and in taxis, houses, fields and on and on.

Give it a break, witch.

[mr blur]

2. "I find them an exercise in democracy"?

Interesting. Does this mean protest is "an exercise in democracy" that's new to her?