[johnchristopher]

I'd be very worried if international diplomacy fell down to a cabinet member who happened to be well versed in Islamic eschatology or worse, that cabinet members would rely on dictionaries or Wikipedia to understand words or cultural references they don't know.

Calling an expert was the right call.

> France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts?

Seems pretty obvious to me that they wouldn't have experts on every subjects, especially on things like that.

> I'm not saying Bush didn't say that because I don't know, I can believe it. [..] Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.

There's healthy skepticism and there's something else.