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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (4296)	8/5/2003 2:18:41 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793862

I have giving up posting on the FADG thread. Just a waste of time, IMO. So you will see me posting Foreign Affairs material here from now on, and discussing it. I hope everybody feels free to join in. Here is a "puff piece" on Feith from NRO. Shows how the infighting works. Clear Ideas Versus Foggy Bottom The State Department is jealous of all the sound thinking going on at the Pentagon. BY MELANIE KIRKPATRICK Tuesday, August 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. The ripest political target in Washington these days is a man who rarely gets his picture in the paper. Douglas Feith's sin is being Donald Rumsfeld's ideas man and one of the brains behind some of the most significant foreign policy and national security advances of the Bush administration. As Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Mr. Feith has transformed a once relatively obscure corner of the Pentagon into the world's most effective think tank. The fact that the president has adopted many of the ideas brewed there infuriates those who see Defense usurping a role that rightly belongs to the State Department. "Without a doubt, the policy division has the most significant intellectual capabilities in the government," says former Defense Department official Richard Perle, who hired Mr. Feith for the Reagan Pentagon and now sits on the Defense Policy Board. "It's a creative shop that produces a lot of good ideas," says Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser and one of the policy group's main customers. "They are prepared to think differently." The urgency of the need to think differently became evident on Sept. 11, 2001, six weeks after Mr. Feith started on the job and the war on terrorism began. "Soon after the war got started," Mr. Feith says, "I had a talk with the secretary about how we could support him. He said, 'I need a few ideas every day lobbed in front of me.' " Since then Mr. Feith has lobbed ideas with the ferocity of Andre Agassi. He and his team of 450 spend a great deal of time on Iraq and Afghanistan--they conceived the offensive strategy in the global war on terrorism--but their strategic focus extends to virtually every corner of the world. In Russia, they thought through the implications of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and helped negotiate the Moscow Treaty, dramatically reducing nuclear warheads. They urged a rapid expansion of NATO and the development of a strategic relationship with India, moves that paid off in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Mideast, they pushed for U.S. support of the creation of a Palestinian state in return for Palestinian reform--the position announced by the president in his June 24, 2002 speech. The idea that fighting the war on terrorism requires a new military "footprint" world-wide was worked by Mr. Feith's policy staff. It led to decisions to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Germany and South Korea and negotiate basing rights in more places world-wide (Central Asia, for example), closer to where they might be needed. The new basing strategy will affect the way the military fights and the way we do diplomacy for decades. The policy organization represents Defense in the inter-agency process, where its proposals are thrashed out along with those from State, CIA, the National Security Council and others. "There is not a lot of pride of authorship, says the NSC's Mr. Hadley. "They are prepared to launch an idea and then let others modify and improve it." In the Pentagon, Mr. Feith was instrumental in forging a more collaborative relationship with the Joint Staff, which has its own independent policy organization. He and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, co-chair a daily meeting in Mr. Feith's office to share ideas and hash out differences of opinion before they reach Mr. Rumsfeld's desk. The Campaign Planning Committee--"CapCom," in Pentagonspeak--"has become an invaluable tool to work through complicated issues and provide the secretary with a coordinated product," says Gen. Pace. Success breeds enemies, and the influence of Mr. Feith's policy shop doesn't go down well in certain quarters of Foggy Bottom, which seem to resent that good ideas that don't originate in State can sometimes prevail over their own. Nor does it win friends at the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which don't always welcome the competition in intelligence analysis. The result has been a nasty, mostly anonymous, campaign in the media to discredit Mr. Feith and his policy team. The first wave focused on the small Special Plans Office, set up last fall to prepare for possible war in Iraq. This "cabal" (the New Yorker), "highly secretive group" (Knight-Ridder), or "shadowy Pentagon committee" (Agence France Press) was the subject of so much false reporting that Mr. Feith and fellow cabalist William Luti took the rare step of calling a press conference in June to set the record straight. The latest attacks hold Mr. Feith's office responsible for "flawed" postwar planning in Iraq. A story in yesterday's Financial Times is typical: The Pentagon planning was "hurried" and "ignored the extensive work done by the State Department." The criticism is preposterous if only for the fact that Defense's proposals for a provisional government, de-Baathification, and free Iraqi forces to help with security were initially shot down. They have now all been adopted by the Coalition Provisional Authority--albeit after costly delay. In any event, the postwar plans went through a rigorous inter-agency process. Anyone looking to assign blame needs to cast a wider net. Mr. Feith's office is also accused of deep-sixing State's Future of Iraq project. A more accurate way of putting it is that State's ideas didn't make the grade--that is, they didn't survive the inter-agency process. One consumer of the Future of Iraq's output calls it "nothing more than a seminar series that produced concept papers that would have gone nowhere. There were no action plans." The campaign to discredit Mr. Feith is unlikely to have any effect on the one man who matters. Mr. Rumsfeld went out of his way at a news conference recently to say his policy chief was doing a "very fine job." But it would be nice to think that in the competition of ideas for winning the war on terrorism, the nation's policy wonks were all pulling together. Ms. Kirkpatrick is associate editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (4296)	8/5/2003 2:26:25 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793862

This one really burns me. Another "unsourced" article out of DC pushing the Mid-East Desk at State's position. The kind of article that the "Rocky Mountain News" will not longer carry. Watch this one get denied fast. U.S. May Reduce Aid to Get Israel to Halt Barrier By STEVEN R. WEISMAN - NEW YORK TIMES WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 - The Bush administration, looking for ways to press Israel to halt construction of a barrier separating its citizens from Palestinian areas, is considering a reduction in loan guarantees for Israel that were approved by Congress this spring, administration officials said today. Any such punitive step by the United States toward Israel would mark a change in President Bush's longstanding efforts to avoid any kind of confrontation with the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon have gone out of their way for months to say that they have few disagreements and that all have been resolved amicably. Such talk was reiterated last week during Mr. Sharon's visit to the White House. What is at issue in the administration's possible action is $9 billion in loan guarantees approved by Congress in the spring. They are intended for housing and commercial projects and were part of a package that also included $1 billion in military aid to help Israel cope with the effects of the Iraq war. Administration officials, who disclosed the potential move, said that it was being considered in response to a campaign by Palestinian leaders, who say the barrier has cut Palestinians off from farms, homes, schools and workplaces. The Palestinians also contend that it is aimed at establishing a de facto border for Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The future boundary of Israel and a Palestinian state is supposed to be negotiated in talks between the two sides. An Israeli official said tonight that word of the administration's move, which was first disclosed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, had not been transmitted to Mr. Sharon's government. "This takes us by surprise," he added. The barrier consists of concrete walls, barbed wire fences, ditches, sensors and other devices designed to keep Palestinians from crossing into Israeli territory or Jewish settlements under attack in the last two years by suicide bombers. President Bush has suggested that while the barrier may be justified in security terms, it has created problems in the current phase of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. After his meeting with Mr. Bush last week, Mr. Sharon promised to look for ways to make the wall less onerous to Palestinians, perhaps by building more gates. Aides to the Israeli leaders say that the disagreement between Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush over the barrier has been friendly. Under the law passed by Congress, none of the money from the loan guarantees is to be spent to help Jewish settlements in the West Bank or Gaza. Indeed, the law requires that if Israel spends any money on such settlements, the loan guarantees must be reduced by that amount, American officials said. Officials added that what is being considered is whether money spent to build the barrier constitutes money spent in an illegal way. Some officials argue that it is, at least to the extent that the barrier veers into the West Bank and Gaza to protect settlements. An administration official said today that a growing consensus in the administration has led to the conclusion that the loan guarantees must not be used to pay for the barrier or to free other Israeli funds to build it. "The feeling is that we do need to do something about the fence," said an administration official. The last time any of this money was frozen, though, was under Mr. Bush's father, and it led to a low point in American-Israeli relations. Since taking office two and a half years ago, President Bush has sought to support Israel. Strong backing has also come from religious conservatives in the Republican Party. Some, including Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have even suggested that Mr. Bush should not press Israel to adopt the peace plan calling for a Palestinian state. The administration has nonetheless persisted in criticizing Israel's barrier as harmful to the peace plan. It was not clear tonight how much domestic criticism from either conservative Republicans or Democratic supporters of Israel would be stirred up by any move to reduce the loan guarantees. Nor was it clear how much of a reduction would be approved or whether it would affect money that has already been spent, which has been in the tens of millions of dollars. Reiterating the guarded American criticism of the barrier, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that a nation "is authorized and it is within its rights to put up a fence, as it sees the need for one," but that the Israeli barrier created difficulties because of the peace negotiations. Speaking to Radio Sawa, an American government-owned radio station broadcasting in the Middle East, Mr. Powell said the United States was "concerned when the fence crosses over onto the land of others." He said the United States was in "discussions with our Israeli friends" to make sure the barrier did not become a "hindrance" to the peace efforts. But he made no mention of reducing assistance. nytimes.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (4296)	8/5/2003 8:52:19 AM
From: MSI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793862

Left and Right have both been fracturing along new lines since 9/11 Its the same Big Gov't game that's gone on since Reagan, and before. Both sides blame the other, and both take lobbyist funds, and pass lobbyist-written legislation, at the expense of the public. "the hard left" for lack of a better term, seems to have seized on Anti-Americanism/Anti-War policies The terms "anti-American", "disloyal", "traitor" etc. are hate-words designed by any in-power administration for critics of whatever policy they have in mind. These terms are most recently used by what are termed "Chickenhawks", a word used by critics to describe the other side, particularly those who have declined an opportunity to serve their country in battle, yet wish to send others to their deaths. Dean is pandering to to this quarter The term "pander" implies you believe Dean is not serious about his positions. Perhaps you can show some evidence that he's changed his convictions to please some segment of the voters. I haven't found any.