Boy, the State Dept. sure seems to have a tough time not lashing out against Israel

Saturday evening, Richard Stengel - the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs - took to Twitter to discuss the murder of 298 civilians aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. Keep in mind, Stengel's entire job is to be the top public affairs strategist for the State Department. You'd think that if the term "public diplomacy" appeared in your job title, and you worked for an administration that seems to think hashtags are some kind of weapon, you'd be careful about which hashtags you were using.

Unfortunately, this happened: Yep. #UnitedForGaza. That's the hashtag used by people who think Israel is way out of line for defending itself against Hamas rocket attacks. Stengel faced immediate criticism, and the tweet was eventually deleted. About 12 hours later, this appeared:

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Earlier tweet with wrong hashtag was a mistake. My bad. Oh. "My Bad." That's just super. A State Department official - who is supposed to be handling "public diplomacy" throws our allies under the bus on social media and then apologizes with lingo most commonly used by 11-year-old girls. If that doesn't instill confidence in the administration's laser-like focus, I don't know what does. Stengel never explained how he managed to "mistakenly" type and tweet "#UnitedForGaza." Maybe it doesn't really matter, because - at almost that very moment - John Kerry was prepping for his Sunday morning appearance on Fox News. Kerry, who likes to tackle interviews "in a fashion reminiscent of Geghis Khan," was seated in front of a camera and wearing a microphone. Allegedly, he didn't know the mic was hot as he openly mocked Israel's "pinpoint" strikes, saying:

It's a hell of a pinpoint operation. It's a hell of a pinpoint operation. We've got to get over there. Thank you, John. I think, John, we ought to go tonight. I think it's crazy to be sitting around.

Fox News Sunday played the clip during its testy interview with Kerry, who acted like he was annoyed and weaseled his way around an explanation. Whether this was truly a "hot mic" moment is up for debate. That, however, is not the interesting thing. At least not to me. What's interesting is that - while the Obama regime's disdain for Israel has always been easy to see - the players here seem so discombobulated that they're voicing these things out in the open. There's little doubt that what they're "accidentally" saying is what they really believe, but it's bizarre to see an administration so badly broken that it can't even get its own messaging straight. A Freudian slip is one thing. This ...is something else. I'll be honest, some days I think the Obama administration is populated with Machiavellian geniuses bent on destroying the country, while other days I think they're just a bunch of radical left-wing rubes who bought into their own hype and got in way over their heads. These kinds of outbursts remind us that the truth is probably a mixture of both. UPDATE: The Blaze posted this Time Magazine cover from 2010. Back then, Richard Stengel was the managing editor. It seems that he has a long history with "my bad" where Israel is concerned.