Hello Dalai

The Dems have been trying to tick off our Turkish allies, and today the Congress, along with President Bush, works to tick off our ideological enemies:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and the Dalai Lama will meet today with a ceremony planned for tomorrow to award the spiritual leader the Congressional Gold Medal. China is warning that the events are bad for U.S.-Chinese ties.

The Dalai Lama is the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet's Buddhists. While the Dalai Lama is lauded in much of the world as a figure of moral authority, Beijing reviles the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and claims he seeks to destroy China's sovereignty by pushing for independence for Tibet, where the Dalai Lama is considered a god-king.

The Dalai Lama's special envoy, Lodi Gyari, said images of the U.S. president standing beside the Dalai Lama at the congressional ceremony will send a clear message that "people do care about Tibet. We have not been forgotten."

"I have no doubt this will give tremendous encouragement and hope to the Tibetan people," he told reporters ahead of the visit. It also "sends a powerful message to China that the Dalai Lama is not going to go away." ...

Chinese diplomats have worked doggedly since the U.S. award was voted on last year to get the ceremony and meeting with Bush scrapped and to "correct this mistake," said Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
"We are certainly very much displeasured and regret the fact that the U.S. side would totally ignore the repeated positions of the Chinese side and go ahead with its erroneous decision," Wang said in an interview. "Such moves on the U.S. side are not a good thing for the bilateral relationship."

The latest ploy from the Chinese is to suggest that the Dalai Lama contains an excessive amount of lead and should be recalled.

(Of course, if he returns to his homeland while the ChiComs are still in command, he will have a lead problem.)