Nov. 29th, 2003

sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
The top ten stories on Google News about the President's flying visit to Iraq are much more ambivalent than I would have expected.
Thanksgiving surprise raises stakes for Bush
Seattle Times, WA - 16 minutes ago
By Seattle Times news services. Three images tell the story of George W. Bush's presidency in the past two years. The first, of Bush ...

Many Iraqis dismiss visit as political
Arizona Republic, AZ - 1 hour ago
BAGHDAD - Many Iraqis on Friday angrily dismissed President Bush's brief cloak-and-dagger Thanksgiving Day visit as a political stunt to boost his ratings at ...

US soldier killed in Iraq hours after Bush visit
MSNBC - 1 hour ago
By Andrew Marshall. A military spokeswoman said four mortar bombs landed inside the headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division in ...

White House Defends Bush's Thanksgiving Trip to Baghdad
Los Angeles Times (subscription), CA - 1 hour ago
The clandestine and risky journey to visit US troops was an 'important step,' Rice says, insisting there were no political motives. ...

Bush visit gets hit by bouquets, brickbats
Gulf News, United Arab Emirates - 2 hours ago
President George W. Bush's surprise holiday visit to Baghdad was the main course in newspapers' issues yesterday, but the dailies diverged in their assessments ...

Shrouded in darkness
Hindustan Times, India - 5 hours ago
President George W Bush wasn’t wearing a flight suit this time. Nor was there a banner proclaiming ‘mission accomplished’ in the background. ...

Deaths pile up in Iraq
Atlanta Journal Constitution, GA - 5 hours ago
By SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN. Underscoring the dangers that inspired the secrecy surrounding President Bush's Thanksgiving trip to Iraq, a ...

Senators Urge UN Role in Iraq
Washington Post, DC - 6 hours ago
By Jim Krane. BAGHDAD, Nov. 28 -- A day after President Bush's surprise visit, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (DN.Y.) and Jack Reed ...

Secret Baghdad visit is PR coup for Bush
Telegraph.co.uk, UK - 8 hours ago
By Alec Russell in Washington. President George W Bush was back at his Texas ranch yesterday basking in the most adulatory coverage ...

As Bush leaves Iraq, shelling kills a GI
International Herald Tribune, France - 9 hours ago
BAGHDAD An American soldier was killed Friday when guerrillas shelled a military base in the northern city of Mosul. The attack ...
sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
New studies find that the negative impact of bad intelligence on the administration's decisions were exacerbated by their refusal to consider more accurate intelligence which didn't support their desire to go to war.

Like, duh.
More than 10 years' work by U.S. and British intelligence agencies on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or programs has "major gaps and serious intelligence problems," according to a new study by Anthony H. Cordesman, a Middle East and intelligence expert who is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Even a cursory review" of charges the U.S. and British administrations made in white papers released before the Iraq war "shows that point after point that was made was not confirmed during the war or after the first [six] months of effort following the conflict," Cordesman found in his study, a draft of which he provided to The Washington Post.

Although the United States has the world's most sophisticated technical systems for collecting and analyzing intelligence, Cordesman found, the Iraq experience shows that U.S. intelligence is "not yet adequate to support grand strategy and tactical operations against proliferating powers or to make accurate assessments of the need to preempt." Preemption, or waging war to prevent an enemy from attacking, is a key part of the Bush war on terrorism policy.

Another new nongovernmental report, on the Bush administration's controversial claim that Iraq was seeking specialized aluminum tubes to use in a centrifuge to create nuclear weapons material, raises questions about whether senior policymakers ignored technically qualified critics to promote the Iraqi threat.

Together, the two reports track what congressional sources described as many of the tentative findings of investigations by House and Senate committees.
sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
Some of you may recall that advocates of free trade have been unhappy with Our Fearless Leader's protectionist steel tariffs, although not quite as unhappy as the EU and Japan.

Well, it's beginning to look a lot like christmas for ideological hardliners on this issue.

Wonder how many of them live in rust belt states?
Speculation mounted Friday that Washington will scrap or roll back controversial steel tariffs after it sought and obtained an effective delay in retaliatory sanctions by countries opposed to them.

THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO), which had been due to rubber-stamp the verdict of its highest court that the duties are illegal, has put off the key session for nine days at the request of the United States.

The European Union, one of a number of trade partners to take action at the WTO over the levies, had warned it was ready to hit Washington with sanctions on up to $2.2 billion of goods within five days of the WTO approving the court ruling.

With the delay, the countdown to EU retaliation, which would be the largest ever unleashed in a trade fight, was also put on hold.

“If the delay allows the United States time to withdraw the protectionist measures, that is better for everybody,” said Fabian Delcros, a spokesman for the EU in Geneva.

U.S. SOUGHT DELAY

Officially, Washington wanted the delay because it had not been expecting the meeting to take place before Dec. 10, the legal deadline for WTO states to ratify the court decision.

“The president has said he would make a decision in a timely manner and this action will provide additional time, and the ongoing review will continue,” said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.

But the delay comes amid increasing signs that President Bush’s administration is considering ditching the duties, initially for up to 30 percent, which it imposed in 2002 to help defend the country’s struggling steel industry against cheap imports.

Ending the tariffs 16 months ahead of schedule could spark a political backlash against Bush in next year’s presidential election in the pivotal steel-producing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

But key Bush advisers have concluded the tariffs are causing more harm than good and that lifting them would boost Bush’s standing with steel consuming industry, another important constituency, political sources say.

So it's, you know, a principled thing.

feh.

Nov. 29th, 2003 06:56 am
sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
Congressman Dana "I just happened to have a typed-up peace plan in my pocket when I accidentally bumped into that Taliban guy right before 9/11 and entered into private peace negotiations because he seemed like someone I could dialogue with" Rohrabacher, a former speechwriter for the Taliban-supporting Reagan administration, is sad.

According to Robert Novak, his leadership told him a great big fib.
As late as 3 a.m. last Saturday (two hours before the bill passed), ex-Ronald Reagan speechwriter Rohrabacher was ready to break party lines and vote against the bill because it expands health care for illegals. The Republican leadership won his vote by promising to put in the catchall appropriations bill a provision requiring hospitals to report to border control the names of illegals that they treat. When that massive spending measure became public Tuesday, however, Rohrabacher found no such provision.

How much does that suck? I mean, I'm totally sure that most americans with their heads on straight would be happy to see the faceless people who care for their children and prepare their food leave the communicable diseases that people who live in poverty are so prone to untreated for fear of deportation.

A few weeks of diarrhea and a few dead old people seems like a small price to pay.

Somebody needs to get this guy a copy of "Legislators Who Trust What Seem Like Good Guys Who Happen To Behave Like Totalitarians Too Much"

via World O'Crap's daily Corner synopsis.

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