Geography 101

Someone had better remind the folks over at The New American of their 4th grade geography. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read this short piece, reprinted here in all its fact-challenged glory:

President Bush Showers Mongolian Reds With Praise, Aid
by William F. Jasper
December 3, 2005

President George Bush stopped in Mongolia on November 21 during his China trip to praise Mongolia's "democracy" and to drop off $11 million in U.S. aid, the first installment of a larger package still to come.

“You are an example of success for the region and for the world,” Bush said in a speech to Mongolia’s President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, military leaders, and legislators in the capital of Ulan Batur. “As you build a free society in the heart of Central Asia, the American people stand with you.” Referring to the 160 troops Mongolia has contributed to the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq, Bush declared, “Mongolia and the United States are standing together as brothers in the cause of freedom.”

President Enkhbayar is a “former” communist and head of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, which is the renamed and (supposedly) reformed Communist Party of Mongolia. Red China pretended to grant Mongolia full autonomy in 1990 — and the United Nations and the U.S. government (along with the rest of the world’s nations) pretend that Mongolia is now truly independent of Beijing’s communist control. Over the past five decades, Red China has carried out a systematic program of repression of the Mongols, including the forced transfer of Mongols from their ancestral lands, to be replaced by ethnic Chinese. As a result, ethnic Chinese now outnumber Mongolians in Mongolia by a ratio of five to one. Thousands of the nomadic Mongols who live off their herds of sheep and goats continue to be driven from their lands by the central authorities, who cite environmental excuses, such as the need to protect the grasslands from overgrazing.

Good one, huh?

(Okay, for those of you who are scratching your heads, Mr. Jasper confused Mongolia, the independent country, with Inner Mongolia, an "autonomous region" in northern China, and attributed many characteristics of the latter to the former.)

Update: Guido's got his hackles up, too, as has Mongolian Artist (rightmost column).