In the meantime, various NGOs, sometimes working with hostile senate staff, will be parsing the public record to find some utterance by the nominee – context is often irrelevant – that suggests bad judgment or values. When I was nominated to be US Ambassador in Iraq, a newspaper article was dug up to insinuate that I had compared North Korea’s human-rights record favorably to that of the US – clear proof that I must be a North Korean sympathizer or a lunatic.
与此同时，许多非政府组织——有时他们是敌意参议员的同伙——会去挖掘公开记录，寻找被提名人的某些判断失准或价值观不正确的言论（丝毫不顾这些话是在什么情况下说的）。当我被提名为美国驻伊拉克大使时，有人翻出一篇报纸文章暗示我将朝鲜的人权纪录和美国的相提并论，作为我显然是朝鲜同情者或脑子有问题的明证。（事实上，我是在一次招待会上对记者说这句话的，我说的是所有国家都需要改善其人权纪录，“即便是美国也不例外，但朝鲜大概是世界最差。”