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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (50252)	10/8/2002 2:55:27 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

Why Nadine, what a cheesy rhetorical flourish on your part. Have you been taking lessons from CobaltBlue? Or is this one of those officially Nadine-approved uses of sarcasm? Cheney's secret meetings with his old oil patch buddies on setting energy policy aren't exactly an open book, but it's pretty clear who he did and didn't meet with, and it's pretty clear whose interests were served on the policy front. Rumsfeld, I would be moderately interested and somewhat surprised if you could back up your invented accusation. But there's always my favorite Polish joke of the moment: Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions that the United States planned to intervene by itself in Iraq. ``Trying to promote and perpetuate the concept of unilateralism is not on the mark,'' Rumsfeld told reporters after meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski at the presidential palace. nytimes.com Despite that odd slip, I have to give Rummy credit for being somewhat more upfront than most of W's crew, though. You might want to consider the rather straightforward take on the matter by Terrell Arnold, as quoted by E in #reply-18087480 The Problem Of Double Standards Even the deterrent may be uncertain. For any rationale for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq to have real credibility, it is essential to get rid of the hypocrisy of the double standards that are implicit in many Bush Administration statements. In addition to Iraq, US leaders have talked about going after Libya, Syria, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea to pre-empt their acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. But those countries are well aware that the United States has not threatened the actual owners: ourselves, Britain, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Israel who, among them, have enough weapons today to return the earth to the stone age. Bush core team members have said repeatedly that Saddam must be made to live up to the 19 or more United Nations resolutions he has not observed. Israel, on the other hand, has ignored more than 30 to date virtually without US comment. Whatever might be going on behind the scenes, if anything, to get the Israelis to shape up, the public posture of the United States on this issue must be even-handed. Or, you might just keep pumping out the "War is peace" propaganda line of the moment. As for what W actually thinks on the matter, that's a question for the ages. He gets trotted out for a carefully prepared presentation now and then, otherwise it's hard to say. Maybe they got Eliot Cohen tucked away at the WH telling him how to be presidential.