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

To: epsteinbd who wrote (90171)	4/5/2003 8:25:36 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Not that I would ever rub it in folks, but even the NYT is now admitting that Bush has come out of this well. Howell Raines must be walking his office and gnashing his teeth. April 5, 2003 Military Successes Benefit Bush By R. W. APPLE Jr. WASHINGTON, April 4, Even by the standards of the Third Army's headlong dash across France under Gen. George S. Patton in World War II, the allied invasion of Iraq has accelerated with stunning speed in less than a week. No less remarkable has been the transformation of the political atmosphere at home and, to a lesser degree, abroad. The dramatic, lightning-like thrust of the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, their way eased by the devastating application of air power to the Republican Guard, has taken the political heat off President Bush and his hard-nosed Pentagon boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The burgeoning debate over the size of the American force in Iraq has been tamped down. Should taking Baghdad prove easier than expected, that debate may re-emerge when American and British troops turn to the chore of occupying and administering a postwar Iraq. But for the time being, domestic discussion of the war is going in favor of the Bush administration, and there are signs that some heat is easing from the debate in Europe. It remains to be seen what problems the expected fall of Saddam Hussein's government will cause for the United States in the Arab world. Last weekend, only the first tentative probes toward Baghdad were under way. Military officers in Washington and the Middle East spent the day fending off suggestions that coalition forces had executed an "operational pause." There were widespread suggestions that the American battle plan was fatally flawed, and that insufficient troops were available in Iraq. As this weekend begins, the picture has changed out of all recognition, if not necessarily definitively. Elements of the Third Infantry Division are encamped at the Baghdad airport, a cab ride from the nexus of Mr. Hussein's power; other American troops stand at the gates of the ancient capital. They have arrived there faster than either critics or supporters of the war imagined that they could, after only episodically heavy fighting, suffering only relatively light casualties. "By any standard," former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said tonight, "it is a remarkable military achievement." On Monday, officers on the battlefield were criticizing Mr. Rumsfeld, comparing him to Robert S. McNamara, one of the architects of failed United States policies in Vietnam. One colonel said Mr. Rumsfeld had got what he wanted ? a war fought "on the cheap." The next day the secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, hit back, commandos rescued an American prisoner of war for the first time since World War II and American columns pulled within 50 miles of Baghdad. The tide turned. REST AT:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/international/worldspecial/05ASSE.html

To: epsteinbd who wrote (90171)	4/5/2003 11:47:40 AM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Just imagine the next Foreign Minister of Irak shouting his mouth off at the whole UN General Assembly... Am I right to believe that had you or I been Irakis, that speech would already have been written? Care to read my opening sentence? Could it be similar to the one of Ernst Reuter on September 9, 1948? He was the mayor of Berlin and addressed a crowd of 300,000 in front of the bombed Reichstag: "You peoples of the world, you peoples of America, of England, of France! Look at this city and recognize that you must not abandon this city!" spd-berlin.de rasscass.com Yes, President Bush, please don't abandon Baghdad and Iraq after Saddam has perished in his bunker.