In an article (HT Instapundit) decrying the alleged environmental waste in the United Arab Emirates, Associated Press writer Jim Krane gave voice to the environmental strain of Bush Derangement Syndrome when he claimed:
But the oil-rich Emirates is considered a developing country, and even as a signatory to the United Nations Kyoto protocol on global warming, is not required to cut emissions. The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.
Uh, no (from Instapundit's entry that links to Wiki; see third paratraph at this OpinionJournal.com link for additional support of its historical accuracy):
On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[40] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol.
Bush can't reject something that has only been "symbolically" signed, even if the "symbolic" signer is Mr. "Inconvenient Truth" himself. Bush can only reject it when the Senate gets it to him. That never happened, and the AP is dead wrong.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
