Home > CNN: Chile calls off Bush banquet after security dispute

CNN: Chile calls off Bush banquet after security dispute

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 21 November 2004
47 comments

Police - Repression Governments USA South/Latin America

Sunday, November 21, 2004 Posted: 12:57 PM EST (1757 GMT)

SANTIAGO, Chile (CNN) — Plans for a state dinner for President Bush at Chile’s presidential palace were scratched Sunday after the United States insisted on security measures that Chile called unacceptable.

The change came a day after Chilean security guards temporarily blocked one of Bush’s Secret Service agents from entering an official dinner.

For the Sunday event, the Secret Service insisted all guests — totaling more than 230 — pass through a metal detector, a top level Chilean Foreign Ministry official told CNN. U.S. officials did not dispute this account.

President Ricardo Lagos believed the measure was humiliating for guests, the Chilean official said.

Instead, Bush will attend a small dinner of about 20 people in Lagos’ private dining room.

Bush’s security at the 21-nation summit has been a big story in Chile, where many have complained the security measures are excessive. U.S. officials have said the measures are necessary to protect a U.S. president when traveling.

The Saturday incident was captured on camera and shown around the world.

Bush was posing for photos with first lady Laura Bush in the Estacion Mapocho Cultural Center when he heard a commotion and saw that one of his plainclothes security agents was being forcefully restrained from entering.

Bush reached into a small crowd, where people were arguing and pushing one another, and pulled the agent through the door of center. (Full story)

Bush then turned around, cocked his head proudly at his maneuver and began to greet his hosts.

The White House downplayed the incident as an unfortunate misunderstanding with Chilean security services.

U.S. officials insisted the change in Sunday’s dinner plans did not reflect any tension in U.S.-Chile relations.

CNN’s Lucia Newman and John King contributed to this report.

Forum posts

  • Why doesn’t bubble boy just stay home behind closed doors with his 500 bodygaurds and save himself and us the embarrassment of going aroung having tomatos and rotten eggs thrown at him?

    • He still can’t win, if he does what you say, he’s going to be accused of not working on international relations.

    • what would be your final straw? ok- so you still think bush is a good guy. can you think of anything that bush could do that would change your mind? is there anything at all that would make you lose your support for bush?

      just curious

      ps- what if he’s already done it, and the truth has just been hidden from you? when you find out, turn your anger to the lying media you’ve been believing.

    • Frankly, I don’t know what your objective is by having a lot of people hate Bush so much. What are you trying to achieve? I think you’re just a nut.

    • BETTER A NUT THAN A SHEEP

    • Well you got your preference. Be happy with it.

    • bush is a mass murderer, all i want is justice. if we want to end the hatred for America, we must stop killing for neocon greed and power. if we put bush and his cronies behind bars, that would be a good first step. then we can reclaim all of the money stolen by halliburton, bechtel and other war profiteers.

      what makes you different than the germans that supported hitler? just because you want believe the killing is for a good cause doesn’t make it true. 100,000 innocent Iraqis would be alive today if bush, cheney, powell, rice and the gang hadn’t lied.

      read over the conversation here- substance vs shallow, logical questions followed by abject denial

      thanks for proving that bush believers have no logic to their arguments, just blind faith— follow the leader. If the village idiot is your leader- how stupid does that make you? read Orwell’s Animal Farm, you are the sheep, most americans are horses, 99% of politicians are pigs.

      America is on the last page of that book- where we go from here is up to us.

    • learn how to spell!!! before you decide to criticize someone else

    • you envy the US so much because you can’t achieve what we have - so it’s understandable that you hate us. i take it as a compliment.

    • It’s not hate dude. Bush and supporters are war criminals.

      Are you a war criminal?

      Did you read the article in N.Y. Times about more Iraqi children are starving during you
      operation "freedom" then ever before.

      Poor Americans feel misunderstood nowadays! What about the 100.000 civilians, who
      were murdered by your Nazi troops!

      Think before you write!

    • Bush can’t spell either.

    • Yes America has achieved so much.

      12 Million Americans don’t no how to feed their families - according to an article in N. Y. times.
      The once so examplary education system ridicules itself. The science sector relys on immigrants
      now, who are no longer eager to join a country of religious extremists.
      The economy can no longer survive without the military/industrial complex. Consumer goods
      are produced in China and elsewhere.
      It’s hard to find able people for construction and maintainance.

      Yes the rest of the world is envying you.

      har har

    • Bush behavior is coming close to German evil doing during the period 1936-45. Moreover the
      American military/industrial complex is run by it’s own rules. Also the German behavior during
      that period was strictly economic. By steeling property, land etc. they where able to survive
      for such a long time.

      America/Britain have fallen back into the old times of imperialism. It makes me laugh, if I
      hear American critizism about the outcome of the faked eliction in Ukraine.

      Nobody hates the people in America - it’s the system which creates mixed feelings.

    • Basically you sound like an anarchist. No government will make you happy, so I don’t think any of your complaints are legitimate and you are fooling yourself when you say you want justice, you just want to complain. People hated America before 9/11 and they will continue to hate America for whatever weird reason that they have. And if you sincerely believe that america is like nazi germany, then I am surprised that you are even able to say what you are saying without anyone coming after you. Clearly you are wrong. As for the 100,000 dead, it has already been questioned and it was based on some weird extrapolation. All of the things you say are shallow and based on emotion not any kind of logic.

    • The sanctions were sanctioned by the UN to punish Saddam. The food for oil program was sactioned by the UN and perverted by Saddam with the help of the UN and France. You do have hate, dude, just admit it. You are one of the many haters out there who hate Bush but protect Saddam. And that 100,000 figure has been found questionable. Your hate for Bush is so profound that you would rather see Iraq go down in flames than let Bush do anything good for Iraq. You should really question yourself and your motives.

    • it appears that you are the lone bush supporter on this board. you keep commenting thinking you are talking to the same person, but it is different people. i was one of the above posters, but not all.

      you say anti-bush arguments are based on emotion but not logic- get real. fact: all of those people wouldn’t be dead if bush hadn’t invaded- that is undeniable fact, not ’shallow emotion’

      the US has flattened fallujah, women and children are dead- these people never attacked the us. tell me how jesus would approve- how can you think that?

      if jesus were alive today, what would he do- vote for bush?

    • So what if I am the lone bush supporter? And I address my comments to the specific post at hand unless it’s to comment about the article. Your anti-bush argument is based on shallow emotion. How do you know it was the US military that was responsible for the death of "those people", how do you know "those people" aren’t insurgents? If Bush han’t invaded, how do you know Saddam might not have killed if not these people, other people entirely for some other reason, he has a history. You guys are shallow emotional thinkers.

    • AND HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY WERENT KILLED BY THE MILITARY?BY THE WAY,SADDAM IS GONE NOW,SO WHY ARE THE U.S.A. STILL THERE.

      USA = USE,SLAUGHTER,AQUIRE

    • You being the lone Bush NUT makes me wanna vomit. Are you one of the 59 million morons who voted for him based on morals and values?? are you one of those sorry ass ignorants who still think Saddam and Osama are connected to 911?? what’s so moral about the Shrub anyway? lying to the American people, stealing the elections in 2000 and again in 2004?? pro-death penalty?? give me a freakin’ break and WAKE THE HELL UP!!! Because of the so called leadership of the Shrub, NY’s Twin Towers are gone!! why do you think NY voted for Kerry?? ’cause we didn’t fall for this fear factor crap!! I feel pity for you and the rest of the Shrub lunatics.

    • You make me laugh...and laugh...and laugh. It’s funny how you are so pissed off and you can’t do anything about it.

    • You must be one ot the most blind people in the US, how could you think that these dead Iraqi citizens were killed by any other than the US military? Look at the destruction of their cities, their houses are completely flattened with people under the rubble. We have photos of the destruction on all independent media around the world. Just because FOX news didn’t show you these horrific photos doesn’t mean they do not exist. We have cluster bombed (against international war treaties) people’s homes and cities. If you do not believe that the US military is doing this, then ask some of your military buddies, or just go to the BBC (England is over there too, no reason to falsify reports). What makes you want to deny reality. When you find out it is true that the US has murdered 100,000 and more of the Iraqis, and you finally accept that, what will you say then? Will you say they deserved it? And if so how do you explain that. Will you say we went there to make them free and we had to kill everyone of them to do that? At least come up with a plausible explaination other than someone else must have done it.

    • What’s so funny about soldiers dying in Iraq for no freakin reason, what’s so funny about people losing their jobs and not able to bring food to their families, what’s so funny about a moronic president and cabinet lying to go to war??? Tell me, what the f*ck is so funny about that? Yeah, you bet I’m angry as well as 49 million Americans are. You, and the rest of the 51 million sorry ass ignorant red necks, make me sick!!

    • I don’t think republicans find funny that people don’t have jobs or that soldiers die. They may be gloating because the democrats lost.

    • You have been so brainwashed by the lefty media that you are beyond hope. You have photos of the destruction. How do you know some of that is not from an insurgent’s over-the-shoulder missile launcher? Are you an expert? And I question your cluster bomb claim. The US military does precision bombing in cities. The BBC is hardly an objective source. During the Iraqi war they were believing Baghdad Bob’s bullcrap instead of the actual event. As for that 100,000 dead, if that is true, I bet the majority are insurgents and terrorists and all I can say about that is HOORAAAY!

    • You are obviously a professional Bush defender, he could drop a nuclear (NUKULAR) bomb on you and your family and you would go down in flames saying it was Castro or Putin or mother teresa, you ABB people are too predictable anyone is guilty but Bush.

    • What you said was an easy way not to address my questions. But I guess making fun of other people’s way of talking is about the only way that you libs can address anything.

    • So our justification for civilian casualties in Iraq boils down to "If we hadn’t killed them, Saddam would have; or maybe not them, but some other people like them only less guilty, but probably more than we’ve killed." That’s a very sad commentary, and sadly typical of many of the other arguments for this war. The most tragic thing is that even if you accept the increasingly scanty rationales for this war (moral obligation to remove Saddam is the last one left standing), you have to admit that the whole affair has been horribly botched and criminally mishandled. As an exercise in nation-building it is practically a textbook example of what NOT to do.

    • If you think nation building is that easy why aren’t more people doing it? The rationale for taking out Saddam was that he was a danger. Saddam didn’t make it transparent regarding what weapons he had. Now that the US has taken Saddam out, it would be irresponsible to just leave. We were accused of leaving and letting the Taliban take over in Afghanistan after we supported them in their fight against the Soviet Union, why would we make the same mistake now with Iraq.

  • I’m glad that Bush’s secret service agents insisted on his security measures. Judging from all the hate Bush posters on this website there’s so much more out there who would like a chance to assasinate him. It’s amazing that the Chilean security guards wouldn’t want the guests to go through the metal detector.

    • Its true, Bush is deeply hated around the earth. In the Netherlands there is a web site where people can send in dontaions to have Bush assassinated. The government there has shut down the site a couple of times but it keeps reappearing and the government doesn’t really do anything about it. Bush has the most body guards of any presidnet in history, it is necessary to completely screen everyone and search everyone who comes close to him. I guess the rest of the world isn’t willing to just go along with mass murder on the part of this man. This is the man who says God wanted him to be the president, and is guiding him in his war. Just goes to show how incompetent and week God is he can’t get anything right he is just another bumbling idiot.

    • When did Bush say God wanted him to be president? Bush won the presidency and he said that he had a mandate from the people but that’s not the same. And it is disappointing to hear that there is a european website that europeans can contribute money to have him assasinated. It is evident that Europeans want to destroy our government. I guess we will be future enemies.

    • Go to:

      www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/view/

      This Frontline documentary shows Bush telling people that God wanted him to be the president (he hears voices in his head) and that God is guiding him in his presidency. Poor God he must be so embarrassed to be somehow connected to Bush. Hitler probably said the same thing.
      The whole documentary can be viewed on line.

    • Thanks for the link, it was very interesting. He said that he believes that God wanted him to be president to a group of friends. Why is that a bad thing? It’s his religion, he can express it in any way he wants to.

    • You must be psyco too to think its okay to go around using God to validate commiting murder and stealing or anything you want....God would never approve of this evil monster....where in Christian beliefs do they support governments that make war on innocent people? Are Christians making up a new religion that rewrites Jesus’s teachings? There is nothing Christian about the new Christians, they are just bloodthirsty thugs using God’s name to hide their greed and thirst for blood.

    • Whoa, there is a big leap from believing that God wants you to be president to using God to validate committing murder. George Bush didn’t make that leap — you did. Your hatred for bush and probably christianity makes you see things that are not there. Get some therapy, it might help.

    • Big leap....get real, the schizphrenic lying bastard has invented a new God...the new Christians ran out and voted for Bush in droves and they totally approve of the mass murder going on in the war "being guided by God" as Bush also claims....you forgot that part...Bush claims God is guiding him, and look what he is doing he is murdering innocent people with cluster bombs so he can steal their resources. The new Christians now don’t just approve of murder (a reality I’m sorry but its true) they also approve of stealing. I guess you are one of these new Christians.

    • Unfortunately for you, new christians do vote and you can’t deny them that because of their religion. So get over it. You are the one who twisted it as mass murder. I see it as an attack against terrorism and freedom for the Iraqis. Bush won, your guy lost. HA, HA, HA!

    • You will go to hell and I will be watching you from heaven with God while you will be down there with Bush and the other devil worshipers.

    • God sure is doing a shitty job...according to the latest opinions the US will have to stay in Iraq for many years. God just can’t get it up any more.

    • You’re very funny.

    • I love how the Muslims are all outraged when one of their filthy people fighting from a mosque gets killed. He deserved to be killed for fighting from a mosque, and those Muslims don’t care about human life anyway. At least we didn’t torture the guy like his old government would have. Thank God for Goerge w. Bush. And as for you Liberal election losers, too bad so sad, you lost.

    • If you’re so PRO WAR why don’t you go with your buddies and cluster bomb some women and children ? Or are you avoiding that like Bush and Cheney did because of your haemerroids ? Never mind you could always go to Iraq for Haliburton, and we could all cheer as your head is cut off.

    • HOW DARE U CALL MUSLIMS FILTHY, YOU ARE THE DEPRAVED NATION WHO INVADED A MUSLIM COUNTRY ILLEGALLY AND WHEN THE BRAVE MUSLIM PEOPLE (total underdogs) FOUGHT BACK YOU PUT THEM IN PRISON AND SEXUALLY ABUSED THEM. YOU ABUSED MEN WOMEN and CHILDREN. DO YOU THINK IT IS RIGHT FOR MEN WHO HAVEN’T BEEN CHARGED TO HAVE OIL LAMPS STUCK UP THERE ANUS’s ( you yanks probably would enjoy that). DO YOU THINK 12 YEAR OLD GIRLS AND BOYS TO BE RAPED IN THE NAME OF LIBERATION. ALL I CAN SAY IS YOUR ARGUMENT PROVES YOUR LACK OF KNOWLEDGE and PREJUDICeS. ISLAM GAVE WOMEN RIGHTS ( when they were deemed useless), SLAVES RIGHTS ( when they were nothing but dirt on the shoe) ALL YOU HAVE GIVENM US IS WEAPONS DEATH & BURGERS. YOU ARE DUSGUSTING AND YOUR MUM SUCKS ELEPHANT COCKS.( and enjoys it)
      Terry Butcher BS4 crew

    • To all Muslim people: Please believe that we Christians feel the same way you do...we are all God’s children. The posters or poster here is a deviant, their are many out there, they seem to support Bush in large numbers, but please know they are not the majority of us in the United States. Remember that almost 75% of the people in the US did not support Bush, including half of the eligible voters who did not vote and who did vote. And many of the people who voted for Bush probably do not feel the hatred for Muslims that a few posters or the one poster here does. We should celebrate our differences and feel love for one another like Jesus taught us to. The world would be a boring place if we were all alike and we all believed the same things. Killing one another is wrong in all religions and only the perverts approve of what is going on in Iraq.

    • 51% to 49% is NOT a mandate!!!

    • Yeah, the new IDIOT christians vote and for the wrong reasons. For instance, it’s a priority for these groups to eliminate homosexuality rather than creating new jobs in this country. I am catholic by the way, but I don’t support the shrub at all. He’s a freakin’ war criminal just like everybody else in his government and shamelessly using God’s name to start a war. I dont know how much it will take for rednecks, homophobics and idiot christians like you to realize what a lunatic the shrub is. All of Bush supporters are despicable and make me sick!!!