This morning on ABC’s This Week, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley repeatedly confused Tibet and Nepal while discussing President Bush’s decision to attend the Olympics. At least 8 different times, Hadley said “Nepal” when talking about the human rights abuses that have taken place in Tibet. A portion of the interview:

HADLEY: The president is going to the Olympics. The president is going to — thinks that the way to deal with the issue of Nepal is not by a statement that you’re not going to the opening ceremonies and say therefore, I’ve checked the Nepal box…

STEPHANOPOULOS: So he may not go to the opening ceremonies. You just don’t want to say it.

HADLEY: No, the president is going to the Olympics. What he’s doing on Nepal is what we think the international community ought to be doing, which is approaching the Chinese privately, through diplomatic channels, and sending a very firm message of concern for human rights, concern for what’s happening in Nepal, urging the Chinese government to understand that it is in their interest to reach out to representatives of the Dalai Lama, and to show, while the whole world is watching China, that they are determined to treat their citizens with dignity and respect. There is an opportunity here. And if countries are really concerned about Nepal, we shouldn’t have this sort of non-issue of opening ceremonies or not.

Watch it:

Nepal is not Tibet. Nepal is an independent country that is holding elections this week, while Tibet is a land occupied by the Chinese. They are separate geographical regions — see map below:

On Thursday, the New York Times’s Elizabeth Bumiller and Larry Rother reported that “the so-called pragmatists” of the conservative foreign policy establishment are “expressing concern” that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is “coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.”

According to the Times, one of the concerned pragmatists is former Secretary of State Colin Powell:

The worry about Mr. McCain is centered among a group of foreign policy realists who have long been close to him and who lost out to the hawks in the intense ideological battles of the first term of the current White House. The group includes former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush.

On the Chris Matthews Show this morning, Bumiller expanded on Powell’s relationship with McCain, saying that they have not spoken to each other in months and implying that the lack of communication is indicative of Powell’s concerns. Watch it:

Though Powell donated $2,300 to McCain’s campaign in August 2007, he has refused to endorse the senator. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America last week, at the same time Powell said he is “looking at all three candidates,” he endorsed a position on Iraq that clashes with McCain’s preference for an open-ended commitment.

“The United States Armed Forces are very, very stretched,” said Powell, adding that the next president “will have to continue to draw down at some pace.”