WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The provenance of the famous quote is in dispute but the thinking behind it is alive and well in U.S. dealings with dictators: “He may be a son of a bitch but he is OUR son of a bitch.”

A policeman kicks a detained supporter of Benazir Bhutto during a protest against her detention in Karachi November 14, 2007. REUTERS/Athar Hussain

Ascribed most frequently to the late president Franklin D. Roosevelt, the remark referred to a corrupt dictator, Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, who enjoyed U.S. backing because he served Washington’s interests during the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union.

The Cold War is long over but the United States again distinguishes between leaders it considers dictators who are acceptable and those who are not.

Despite ringing rhetoric about freedom and democracy, superpower politics tend to be driven by practical considerations of self-interest rather than by ideals.

Washington’s present list of acceptable dictators include General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who took power in a military coup in 1999, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

The most dangerous of the unacceptable dictators, to hear U.S. officials tell it, is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Also high up on the bad dictators list: Hugo Chavez, the left-wing (and elected) president of Venezuela, who is using democratic ballots to tighten his hold on his country’s institutions, a process U.S. officials have likened to Adolf Hitler’s rise to absolute power in the 1930s.

A leader who goes out of his way to insult the U.S. president (“the devil” and “a donkey”) can hardly expect gentle treatment from the Bush administration but its different reaction to similar events in Pakistan and Venezuela has been striking.

When the Chavez government forced the most popular (and anti-government) TV network off air by refusing to renew its license, Washington was so concerned that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised it at an Organization of American States meeting.

She demanded an OAS investigation into the closure. “Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of the government,” she said. “Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic...”

Three cheers for Rice. Nice words. Freedom, freedom, freedom. Who could disagree?

Rice and her boss, President George W. Bush, did not wax as eloquently five months later when General Musharraf declared a state of emergency and shut down not one but all private television channels, as well as the BBC and CNN.

Musharraf’s stick-wielding security forces rounded up thousands of opposition activists, judges and journalists.

Bush telephoned him to urge elections but issued no explicit condemnation of the crackdown, which was much harsher than anything in Venezuela.

HANDS OFF AID TO PAKISTAN

The number two in the State Department, John Negroponte, told lawmakers that the Pakistani leader is “indispensable in the global war on terror.”

Translation: Don’t even think of cutting off aid to Pakistan, which has received close to $11 billion since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

The rousing speech Bush gave when he was sworn in for his second term in 2005 seemed to specifically address people like those bundled off to Pakistani jails.

“When you stand for liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for what you are -- the future leaders of a free country.”

Bush is not the first and will not be the last U.S. president whose words on lofty ideals have little to do with his actions on the ground. Support for democracy against dictatorship has been a key theme of U.S. foreign policy since the country rose to big power status at the turn of the 20th century.

That did not keep the U.S. from overthrowing or helping to remove leaders it did not like (Chile’s Salvador Allende, Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz, Congo’s Patrice Lumumba) and propping up dictators it did (the Shah of Iran, Congo’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines).

The list is long. It also includes Spain’s iron-fisted Francisco Franco, a succession of Brazilian military leaders and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito.

FREEDOM AGENDA: OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLE

The “freedom agenda” Bush declared for his second term is merely a variation on an old theme. Then and now, a gap between word and deed exists.

During the Cold War, siding with the United States against the Soviet Union was usually enough to win “acceptable” status for leaders with questionable democratic credentials.

Since the September 11 attacks, cooperation with the U.S. in the “war against terror” tends to divide the good from the bad. Take the example of Kazakhstan’s Nursulatan Nazarbayev, who was an honored guest at the White House last year.

The U.S. State Department’s Human Rights report notes that in Kazakhstan, there are “severe limits on citizens’ rights to change their government” and “increased restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and association.”

On the other hand, Kazakhstan occupies a strategic location, sandwiched between Russia and China. It also has oil, which tends to wash away the stain of anti-democratic abuses.

Otherwise, how could Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, have won the label “good friend” from Rice when he visited Washington shortly after her own department noted her guest’s government had a poor human rights record and “continued to commit and condone serious abuses.”

Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s third-largest oil producer, behind Nigeria and Angola. That counts for a lot in a world where talk is cheap and oil expensive.