Kenya - State Department Equivocates

The U.S. State Department just can't seem to figure out that there is ethnic violence going on in Kenya.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, visiting the African Union summit in Addis Ababa after visiting Kenya, reportedly told journalists: "There was ethnic cleansing in Kenya. I listened to the victims."

However, spokesman Sean McCormack said at the department’s daily press briefing that he would "let her [Frazer's] statement stand on its own."

"Jendayi Frazer... was reflecting back to the press corps her first hand view of the situation in the Rift Valley based on her travel there," he added. McCormack reported that a State Department office is collecting information on the violence in the Rift Valley, and the office would report its findings sometime in the future.

"Very often, the case with these kind of circumstances is that you don't have a full understanding, a complete picture of what happened, until the situation is over and things have calmed down," he said.

Good to know that the State Department is taking this thing seriously...sort of how they did in Rwanda...