Knives, rifles and a whip.

Are Bush's gift-givers trying to say something?

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 17, 2006
The Guardian


A braided leather whip, a sniper rifle, six jars of fertiliser and a copy of the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook were among the presents foreign leaders have given George Bush. They are clearly trying to tell him something.
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The president received a startling array of weapons, including assorted daggers and a machete from Gabon. He got the braided whip with a wooden handle from the Hungarian prime minister. The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, a gift from the Sultan of Brunei, has some tips on how to use some of these implements in a tight spot.
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The king also gave President Bush six jars of "various fertilisers" on a rotating wooden stand. It sounds like the sort of present likely to cause offence when coming from a mother-in-law or sibling. But according to the Jordanian embassy, the jars contained neither manure nor the sort of chemicals that can be turned into homemade bombs, but rather an array of fertile volcanic soils found around the country .

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President Bush was reminded of his problems with language by a vocabulary-expanding game called Forgotten English, from Brunei. Meanwhile, it is hard to imagine no-nonsense Donald Rumsfeld summoning much enthusiasm for the gold bracelet he got from the Egyptian minister of defence, or the aromatherapy gift set from those cheeky Jordanians. There will, however, be no calming scents wafting around the Pentagon in the near future as the gift was passed on to the general services administration, a government department that disposes of unwanted presents.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1799812,00.html