Catching up on the news, we got this:
Bush Calls World Leaders on Iraq Ahead of a Vote in U.N. nytimes.com
The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Jiang Zemin of China and Jacques Chirac of France all conversed with Mr. Bush with a spirit "of openness, of willingness to listen."
The article has the following amusing caption to go with a photo of W on the horn:
President Bush spoke with world leaders in back-to-back phone calls that lasted 30 minutes altogether.
Whoa. That's 10 minutes each. Wonder how much of that was the translators wrestling with "crawfishing", "stiffing", "wheedling", "sidestepping", etc. Meanwhile, checking out the alleged hot news of the moment on Yahoo, all that comes up is a photo with this caption:
Five U.S. Air Force F-16 'Fighting Falcon' jets fly in formation over the U.S. enroute to an exercise in this undated photograph. The Pentagon September 6, 2002 dismissed a British newspaper report that 100 U.S. and British warplanes conducted a major air raid against an airfield in western Iraq that could be a prelude to war. (Staff Sgt. Greg L. Davis/USAF via Reuters) story.news.yahoo.com
What would the Pentagon know about it, though, unless they called up Perle to check first? Or maybe they should have checked Debka. Among the many other stories, this one caught my eye.
Senior Turkish official leads delegation to Iraq in defiance of Washington story.news.yahoo.com
Openly defying Washington's bid for backing to oust Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites), a large Turkish delegation arrived in Baghdad Friday with a clear message: diplomatic — not military — pressure should be used to douse threats of a new U.S.-led war in Iraq. |
