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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (42192)	9/5/2002 2:58:39 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

A Strategy That Hits All Fronts latimes.com [ on that particular, er, "front", an all points bulletin, as it were. I found this bit minorly interesting on the "smoking gun" or lack thereof ] To expedite the process, the State Department this week is completing two detailed reports for distribution worldwide. Department officials said the main document outlines what the U.S. knows about Iraq's programs for weapons of mass destruction. Bush will cite some, but not all, of this information in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 12, they said. The United States has no stunning revelations or dramatic new facts to make the case for ousting Hussein, senior U.S. officials said Wednesday. Instead, the document is based on "what we know, what we suspect and what we fear," a State Department official said. The United States has been working for months with Britain to accumulate an "evidentiary trail" on Iraq's weapons programs since U.N. inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, and it has compiled data from the last 11 years, the official added. "This is not going to be a dramatic 'Here are the pictures, here are the firsthand stories.' It's more a larger-picture summary," the well-placed official said. By this article, at least, the people are not totally convinced. Bush Faces Daunting Task in Building Public Support New Poll Shows Public Questioning Lack of War Rationalehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39896-2002Sep5.html Most presidents would not get themselves rhetorically locked into such a monumental and important task, such as attacking another sovereign nation, without first building the case for doing so. A new poll released this morning by the non-partisan Pew Research Center suggests the president is paying the price for waiting so long. According to the poll, only 37 percent of respondents believe the president has clearly explained the rationale for a war with Iraq, compared to 52 percent who believe he has not. The poll compared the current political environment to the one in August 1990, a few months before the first President Bush launched Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War. In that case, 50 percent of Americans believed the president had clearly explained the rationale for a war compared to 41 percent who did not. . . . How could it be that a president who committed to ousting a foreign leader is just now attempting to convince members of his own party that he has just cause to do so? Part of the answer lies in timing. It is two months before the mid-term elections and members of Congress fear a backlash if they were to fail to support a popular president on a military engagement issue. And certainly part of it has to do with the president's stratospheric approval ratings. An overwhelmingly popular president can, at least for a while, dictate the terms of a debate with generalities and platitudes. Somewhat heterodoxily on the political front, there's this: Can Bush Win By Losing? washingtonpost.com That's on the midterm election front, not on Iraq. That article goes all over the place, it even quotes the dread Andrew Sullivan.

To: JohnM who wrote (42192)	9/5/2002 3:03:24 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Interesting fall. Good analysis. I don't envy you. You are stuck with playing "Alan Alda" to my "Stallone" on the War. He doesn't strike me as that dumb. Like a Fox. You don't get where he is by being an idiot, as much as the media loves to play it that way. We went through 8 years of "Dumb Reagan," and Reagan survived that quite nicely, as History is showing. "Pick three issues, and keep on top of them," seems to be the way to run the Presidency. if the US attacks Iraq with the level of evidence now publicly available They are committed, IMO, to take it to the Congress. If they come out of that, and go to war, I think they will do well, if they don't have a Military Fiasco.