Unless this image is photoshopped, it apparently shows poor fact checking, or how little CNN knows about the region. It shows the US saying Zelaya is still the president of Guatemala. I bet that’s news to Álvaro Colom, President of Guatemala since January of last year!

Thanks to Rodrigo Lopez for twittering this.

In my last post, I hoped Washington would reverse its support of Zelaya. Here are some signs that it might come about. Richard Verma, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, in the US State Department issued a letter yesterday that was apparently leaked to the media. Here is an excerpt

“Our policy and strategy for engagement is not based on supporting any particular politician or individual. Rather, it is based on finding a resolution that best serves the Honduran people and their democratic aspirations,”

“We have rejected calls for crippling economic sanctions and made clear that all states should seek to facilitate a solution without calls for violence and with respect for the principle of nonintervention,” he said. The letter was dated Tuesday and obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

After the letter was made public, an spokesperson of senator Jim De Mint (Rep., S.C.) made the following statements:

“I’m glad to see the State Department is finally beginning to walk back its support for Manuel Zelaya and admit that his ‘provocative’ actions were responsible for his removal,”.

“These admissions are helpful, but what is necessary is for President Obama to end his support for Zelaya who broke the law and sought to become a Chavez-style dictator,”

Image by Marco Bardus, used with a Creative Commons license

Yesterday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran’s “elected leader”. The wording is almost exactly the same as Obama when he called Manuel Zelaya Honduras’s “elected leader”. But, Gibbs has now corrected his statement saying that he “misspoke”. Here are his words:

“He’s been inaugurated. That’s a fact. Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that, and we’ll let them decide about that.”

Should I harbor the hope that eventually Washington will reverse its support of Manuel Zelaya?

Image by Grufnik, used with a Creative Commons license