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

To: LindyBill who wrote (95885)	4/24/2003 1:07:32 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

And the WPo's take on it...Gingrich Says State Department Undermines Bush washingtonpost.com washingtonpost.com Reuters Tuesday, April 22, 2003; 1:33 PM By Jonathan Wright WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an adviser to the Pentagon, called on Tuesday for dramatic change at the State Department, which he accused of backing Middle East dictators and undermining the policies of President Bush. In what appeared to be part of a battle within the Bush administration on the course of U.S. foreign policy after the invasion of Iraq, Gingrich said: "America cannot lead the world with a broken instrument of diplomacy." "Without bold dramatic change at the State Department, the United States will soon find itself on the defensive everywhere, except militarily... The collapse of the State Department as an effective instrument puts all this at risk," he told the American Enterprise Institute. The institute is associated with the neoconservative group that backed the invasion of Iraq. A leading member is another Pentagon adviser, Richard Perle, who lobbied for years for the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and for democratic transformation in the Middle East. Secretary of State Colin Powell irritated the neoconservatives last week when he said he was willing to go to the Syrian capital Damascus, despite accusations that the Syrians had assisted Saddam Hussein's government and was developing chemical weapons. Syria denies the accusations. Gingrich also took up the neoconservative objection to U.S. cooperation with the Quartet of Middle East mediators, who have prepared a peace plan that requires Israel to freeze building work on settlements and make way for a Palestinian state. A U.S. official said the administration was also in the midst of a debate over U.S. policy toward France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq and said it would veto any U.N. resolution authorizing it. Senior officials discussed France policy at a meeting on Monday. "It feeds into the larger question of how do we resolve not just Iraq, but Germany, France... Not much has been decided," said a State Department official, who asked not to be named. SYRIA VISIT 'LUDICROUS' Gingrich found fault with the way the State Department had failed to win over international public opinion to the Iraq war or obtain explicit U.N. authority for the campaign. He then attacked its plans for Middle East policy. "The concept of the American secretary of state going to Damascus to meet with a terrorist-supporting, secret police-wielding dictator is ludicrous," he said. "This is a time for America to demand changes in Damascus before a visit is even considered," he added. On the Quartet, he said: "It is unimaginable that the United States would voluntarily accept a system in which the U.N., the European Union and Russia could routinely outvote President Bush's positions by three to one." The others are the remaining members of the mediation group. "This is a deliberate and systematic effort to undermine the president's policies procedurally by ensuring they will consistently be watered down and distorted," he added. He then attacked the State Department's bureau of Near Eastern affairs, saying the people it has sent to Iraq "were promoted in a culture of propping up dictators, coddling the corrupt and ignoring the secret police." Gingrich carefully spared from attack Secretary Powell, who always wins high approval ratings from the American public and has many friends abroad. A State Department official said publicity about the policy battle had hit morale in the department, especially after a front-page story in The Washington Post on Tuesday. "All of our hearts sank when we read this... For those of us who work in foreign policy to have inter-agency disputes on the front page makes it very hard to work with the foreign audience, who begin to not be certain that what you are telling them is our policy," he said. "It also undermines our foreign policy generally. We are annoyed by it personally... It makes us feel we are at battle with Defense (Department)," he added.

To: LindyBill who wrote (95885)	4/24/2003 1:46:40 AM
From: Doc Bones	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Under Fire, Powell Receives Support From White House Maybe Gingrich didn't attack the administration, but the administration is fighting back anyway. - Doc nytimes.com ... Mr. Powell has been the object of conservative criticism in several past policy battles, but the barrage was renewed with particular bitterness in recent days. Aides to Mr. Powell said they regarded some of the recent attacks as both puzzling and misguided, noting that the secretary had been extremely careful not to undertake any initiatives without explicit approval from the president. A senior White House official, asserted today that Mr. Gingrich's criticism "was seen at the White House as an attack on the president, not an attack on Powell." There was widespread anger at the White House, the official said, but he declined to characterize the reaction of Mr. Bush himself. However, the president is said by Republican politicians to have little love for Mr. Gingrich, going back to Mr. Gingrich's savage attack against Mr. Bush's father for raising taxes, a step that ignited the wrath of conservatives generally. While dismissing Mr. Gingrich's comments, State Department officials said today that they wondered whether Mr. Gingrich might have checked with someone in the administration before launching his attack. The former speaker serves on the Defense Policy Board along with other prominent conservatives and is known to be close to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney. But a Pentagon spokesman said that to the best of his knowledge, no one at the Defense Department had seen Mr. Gingrich's speech or was familiar with its content ahead of time. An administration official said Mr. Cheney had also not seen the speech. Both Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, and Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, dismissed Mr. Gingrich's remarks as misinformed and wrong. Mr. Fleischer called Mr. Powell an "able, able diplomat" who was carrying out "the president's approach" on foreign policy in a successful manner. ...