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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (288706)	8/21/2002 2:13:08 AM
From: JEB	Respond to of 769670

Bush Summit Won't Resolve Iraq Issue 20 August 2002 Summary U.S. President George W. Bush is gathering major U.S. policymakers to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Aug. 21. Despite speculation, the timing and makeup of the meeting indicate that the Bush administration has decided not to make a final decision during the summit on whether to attack Iraq. Analysis U.S. President George W. Bush is holding a summit of leading policymakers at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Aug. 21, reportedly to review budgets and go over "big picture" defense issues, including missile defense. Although a possible attack against Iraq was expected to be discussed, it is not on the agenda as a distinct item. The timing and makeup of the summit indeed does not support the notion that this meeting is really a "war council" to discuss Iraq. Among the attendees will be Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Also present to brief the president on missile defense will be the director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish. One of those who will not be present is Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell reportedly opposes an immediate attack on Iraq. Therefore, his exclusion from the meeting signaled to many that a decision to attack had been made and that he had finally fallen from grace within the Bush administration and was on his way out. The problem with that theory is that it would be politically dangerous for Bush to make the decision to attack while publicly excluding his own secretary of state from the decision-making process. This is particularly true when influential, non-liberal figures are lining up against the invasion. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to former President George Bush during Operation Desert Storm, recently told the Wall Street Journal that an attack on Iraq could destroy the global anti-terrorism coalition. Even Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the allied forces during the Gulf War, voiced opposition to a unilateral invasion of Iraq, The Australian reported, as have other senior Republican senators and congressmen, like House majority leader Dick Armey. Many in this group have no objection to obliterating Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime but feel that the military and geopolitical factors don't favor an attack at this time. If Powell was excluded from a meeting where the decision to strike was made, opponents of a war would have a field day, claiming that all dissent was suppressed. The president could not afford to have a war counsel that excludes Powell. Moreover, Paul Wolfowitz -- Rumsfeld's deputy and the key figure in crafting the anti-Iraq policy -- is not going to be at the meeting either. As the person who would bear much of the responsibility within the civilian defense establishment for crafting an attack policy, Wolfowitz would certainly be present at a war council. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S Central Command in the Middle East, is in the United States but will also not be at the meeting. If the decision to attack had been made and this was a planning and implementation session, both Wolfowitz and Franks would be there There is also the matter of timing. Rumsfeld is scheduled to address troops at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, not far from Crawford. The speech is scheduled for early in the afternoon, meaning that the meeting at Crawford will likely take place in the morning. A meeting to discuss a major military operation with broad implications likely would not be confined to such a short period of time. It may well be that this meeting originally was conceived of as a war council. However, the blowback that the administration got during the week from people who normally are strong supporters of the administration and an aggressive policy toward Iraq may have caused everyone to stop and reconsider. This means that the war council transformed itself into a budget meeting when it became clear that this was not the time for a decision. Alternatively, it's possible that the White House really did need to schedule a defense budget meeting and a briefing on missile defense -- a major budgetary item -- and was genuinely surprised to see it interpreted as a war council. Either theory points to the same conclusion. The issue of invading Iraq has become so sensitive that the Bush administration is having trouble organizing meetings without being buffeted by the winds. Interestingly, public support for an invasion of Iraq is strong, with many polls showing that more than 60 percent of the American public supports an attack. The opposition, which had been coming from allies in the past, is now coming from inside the Beltway from the administration's friends. Thus, the military and diplomatic problem is becoming a political problem as well. The Iraq question is quickly obscuring all other issues. That is a major challenge for the administration, which has other issues to deal with both in terms of al Qaeda and in general. This cannot be permitted to boil indefinitely. Either a decision will have to be made quickly and implemented or Iraq will have to go on the back burner. The intense debate between supporters of an Iraq invasion, like Rumsfeld, and critics of the plan cannot be allowed to run interminably. Otherwise, the White House won't even be able to call a meeting without a public explosion. stratfor.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (288706)	8/21/2002 2:29:34 AM
From: JEB	Respond to of 769670

Dishonest, front-page anti-war crusade By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Aug. 19, 2002, 5:17PM Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines' New York Times. Hearst was for the Spanish-American War. Raines (for those who have been incommunicado for the last year) opposes war with Iraq. The Raines campaign is ongoing. A story that should be on Page A-22, the absence of one Iraqi opposition leader (out of a dozen-odd) at a meeting in Washington, is Page A-1, above the fold. Message: Disarray in the war camp. A previous above-the-fold front-page story revealed -- stop the presses! -- that the war might be financially costly. Then there are the constant references to growing opposition to war with Iraq -- in fact, the polls are unchanged since January -- culminating on Aug. 16 with the lead front-page headline: "Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy." The amusing part was including among these Republican foreign policy luminaries Rep. Dick Armey, R-Flower Mound, a man not often cited by the Times for his sagacity, a man who just a few weeks ago made a spectacle of himself by publicly advocating the removal of the Palestinians from the West Bank. Yesterday, he was a buffoon. Today, he is a statesman. That was the comic relief. The egregious part of the story was the touting of Henry Kissinger as one of the top Republican leaders breaking with Bush over Iraq. This revelation was based on an op-ed article (Outlook, Aug. 11) that Kissinger had published. How can one possibly include Kissinger in this opposition group? He writes in the very article the Times cites: "The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system and the demonstrated hostility of Saddam combine to produce an imperative for pre-emptive action." The remarkable thing about Kissinger's article is not that he breaks with Bush but that in supporting the Bush policy of pre-emptive war, he breaks with one of the central tenets of his own "realist" school of foreign policy. Realism is the billiard ball school of foreign policy. It cares what states do to each other on the outside, not how they govern themselves on the inside. Realism is not into regime change. Indeed, as Kissinger himself explains, pre-emptive attack goes against the principle enshrined at the Treaty of Westphalia: the inviolability of states. Nonetheless, in the case of Iraq, Kissinger endorses the Bush doctrine because the advent of weapons of mass destruction no longer permits us to wait for the other guy to strike first. None of this deters The Times from making Kissinger one of its two major Republican poster boys breaking with the president (the other being former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft). Indeed, the very next day's paper, again the lead front-page story, reiterated the fiction, citing Kissinger (with Scowcroft) as part of "a group of leading Republicans who were warning (Bush) against going to war with Iraq." Against going to war? Kissinger makes the case not just for going to war but for going to war soon. "Waiting will only magnify possibilities for blackmail," he warns. Moreover, he adds, the war on terrorism itself is at risk if it stops with Afghanistan and spares Saddam Hussein. If we flinch, we'll see "radicals encouraged by the demonstration of American hesitation and moderates demoralized by the continuation of an unimpaired Iraq as an aggressive regional power." The Times trumpets the critics' warning about the risks of "creating greater instability in the Middle East and harming long-term American interests." But Kissinger makes precisely the opposite argument: "The overthrow of the Iraqi regime would have potentially beneficent political consequences" -- serving to chasten "the so-called Arab street," encourage moderates in Syria and Saudi Arabia and Iran, "demonstrate to the Palestinian Authority that America is serious about overcoming corrupt tyrannies and bring about a better balance in oil policy within OPEC." Quite a list. The entire Times attempt to rope Kissinger into the opposition rests on his talking about the difficulties and the importance of the postwar settlement: "Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed." But everyone knows that we will have to stay and help rebuild Iraq as a peaceful, nondictatorial state. Who says otherwise? Where is the break with Bush? It is one thing to give your front page to a crusade against war with Iraq. That's partisan journalism, and that's what Raines' Times does for a living. It's another thing to include Henry Kissinger in your crusade. That's just stupid. After all, it's checkable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- chron.com