Cain fumbles Uzbekistan’s name: ‘Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan’ 
 
 By Kase Wickman 
 
 Monday, October 10, 2011 10:34 EDT 
 
 Republican presidential hopeful and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain made clear his opinion of certain foreign affairs in an interview with a religious broadcaster. 
 
 Cain sat down for an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, where interviewer David Brody asked him whether he was ready for the mainstream media’s “gotcha questions.” His example of such a question was, “Who is the president of Uzbekistan?” 
 
 Cain responded not only by revealing that he can’t name Uzbekistan’s president (Islam Karimov, for the curious), but by bobbling the country’s name, seemingly in jest. 
 
 “I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come,” Cain said. “And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?” 
 
 Uzbekistan is not as irrelevant as Cain appeared to think. President Barack Obama just weeks ago spoke with Karimov about using the country’s territory as a supply route to move inventory to troops in Afghanistan, moving from the current route through Pakistan. 
 
 Watch the video of Cain’s interview with CBN below, captured by ThinkProgress and embedded via YouTube. 
 
 (h/t: ThinkProgress) ||||| Whatever questions come flying at Herman Cain at Tuesday’s night Republican debate in Las Vegas, there is one big one he has to answer: Are you serious? 
 
 It is a measure of Cain’s success that anyone would care to ask. For much of this year Cain seemed to be enjoying his role as political novelty act — an entertaining sideshow at debates, and even an occasional presence on the early-state campaign trail — when he wasn’t otherwise occupied with speeches, television appearances and book-tour publicity. 
 
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 reset VandeHei on Cain’s credibility Cain imagines pizza - 1991 POLITICO 44 
 
 But now that Cain, buoyed by bulging poll numbers, is demanding to be viewed as a credible contender for the GOP nomination, Cain’s greatest peril is that primary rivals, journalists and the political world broadly will grant that wish. 
 
 Very little in recent days suggests Cain is adequately prepared for the coming test on his understanding of foreign policy, on his advisers and the origin of his most provocative ideas and, not to put too fine a point on it, on whether he has a factual command of issues equal to what would be expected of the typical congressional candidate. 
 
 NBC News anchor David Gregory seemed perplexed, then astonished, on “Meet the Press” Sunday when Cain responded quizzically to questions about whether he is a foreign policy neoconservative before stating that he is “not familiar with the neoconservative movement” — never mind a decade of roiling debate among Republicans about the neocon agenda to remake the world. 
 
 Cain said he subscribes to the foreign policy wisdom of Henry Kissinger and John Bolton — never mind, again, that these two men have diametrically opposed views of the world. 
 
 As for Cain’s suggestion at a campaign rally Saturday in Tennessee that he would fight illegal immigration by building an electric fence along the Mexican border, he told Gregory that the remark was “a joke.” 
 
 Evidently aware that Cain’s presidential bid is entering a new phase — a test which could either make him the main alternative to Romney or return him to novelty status — campaign manager Mark Block told POLITICO his operation is rapidly adding policy advisers. 
 
 He said the recruitment and hiring of new advisers is being handled by Rich Lowrie, the Ohio accountant who is Cain’s chief economic adviser. “I’m not trying to dance around the question,” Block said. “I quite frankly don’t know who they are.” 
 
 Lowrie said he can’t reveal the identities of the advisers because he’s unsure of the campaign’s policy on doing so. 
 
 “I don’t know what the policy is for releasing their names,” he said. “There are some who said, ‘We like you guys; we’ll help you as much as we can, but don’t use my name.’ … There are people who want to stay neutral, and if they said, ‘Don’t use my name,’ we’re going to respect that. I don’t think that’s unusual.”
– Herman Cain might just be a wee bit misinformed about China. In a quick exchange from his PBS News Hour interview last night, spotted by Raw Story, Cain was asked if China was a military threat. “Yes, they’re a military threat,” he replied. "They’ve indicated that they're trying to develop nuclear capability … So yes, we have to consider them a military threat." There’s just one little inaccuracy there: China has had nuclear weapons since 1964. Cain has never claimed to be a foreign policy guru—he once boasted that he didn’t know who the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan" was, a remark that greatly amused Hillary Clinton. In last night’s interview, he also said he wouldn’t send troops into Syria, saying the situation was “sad” but that the US couldn’t get involved. “I want to first make sure that we stop giving money to our enemies,” he said. The US does not send aid to Syria, but Cain may have been making a more general point.