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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (454622)	9/8/2003 2:56:40 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Respond to of 769670

Meet the naive - Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz!

To: Bill who wrote (454622)	9/8/2003 2:57:12 PM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

>Only the naive think it's cheap to defend America's freedom. It sure isn't cheap if you don't know what you are doing. My prediction is Bush will not win renomination by the GOP. You heard it here first. Harvey

To: Bill who wrote (454622)	9/8/2003 4:06:34 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

I enjoyed PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH's speech last evening. Based upon all stupidity being posted and several lb of manure the speech was very effective.

To: Bill who wrote (454622)	9/8/2003 5:34:52 PM
From: Harvey Allen	Respond to of 769670

The unpalatable taste of realism George's Bush's triumphalism over Iraq has disappeared and well it might, writes Mark Tran, because in economic terms the task ahead is huge Monday September 8, 2003 It has taken a long time for the US president, George Bush, to come clean with his public on the long-term costs of war in Iraq. But in his 18-minute televised speech to the nation from the White House yesterday, Bush finally began spelling out the scale of the problem. First, he put a figure - $87bn (£54.7bn) - on funds the administration wants to spend year next year on Iraq and Afghanistan. That was higher than the $70bn figure floating around last week and adds a hefty chunk to an already Godzilla-size deficit. The emergency spending for Iraq will easily push the budget gap over $500bn. Sober in tone, and lacking the triumphalism of his last speech on Iraq given from an aircraft carrier, Bush compared the country's reconstruction to the Marshall plan for Europe after the second world war, although he did not mention that programme by name. "America has done this kind of work before," he said. "Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause ... America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit, for their sake and our own." So Bush has set out the enormity of the task now confronting the US in a way that he omitted to do before the war. Already, the US has had to go back to the UN security council for a resolution that it hopes will pave the way for other countries such as India and Pakistan to share the military burden. His short address contained an appeal to countries like China, Germany, France and Russia, who opposed the war, to bury the hatchet and get on with the business of reconstruction. "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties," he said. The bravado has gone as the US realises that going it alone is no longer an option. But Germany and France are not ready to play ball yet on the UN security council. They want a speedier handover of power to the Iraqis than envisaged in the current draft resolution, and the negotiations are expected to drag out for weeks at least. The president's more humble tone reflects the growing realisation that the deepening mess in Iraq could leave him horribly exposed in next year's presidential election. The war may have ended swiftly, but post-war planning has consisted of little more than wishful thinking. The Bush administration seriously underestimated the level of opposition, including the ruthless campaign of bombings and sabotage that has done so much to delay a return to normality. With the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, adamant that no more US troops will be added to the 180,000 already there, Washington is desperate for contributions from others. Britain today dutifully obliged by committing an extra 1,200 troops. Congress is likely to give Bush the extra money he needs, but not without considerable grumbling as funds for Iraq means less money for the domestic economy. While the economy is picking up, the jobless rate remains stubbornly high. Unemployment figures last week showed the loss of another 93,000 jobs in August, the worst since March. Since Bush took office three years ago, the economy has shed nearly 2.7m jobs. That's not a desireable record going into an election and the most recent assessment on jobs from the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, was of little comfort to the administration. Last week, Ben Bernanke, a Fed governor, said that the decline in unemployment was likely to be slow, and estimated that the jobless rate would be between 5.5% and 6% by the time of the November 2004 vote. Opposition Democrats are already attacking Bush for neglecting domestic concerns. Senator Bob Graham from Florida, a presidential hopeful, was quick to point out that the $87bn requested by Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan is more than the US will spend on education for the whole of this year. Bush might get away with a messy Iraq next year, but only if the economy improves significantly. If the jobless rate remains stubbornly high and Iraq continues to fester, that could prove a lethal cocktail, and already the two problems are beginning to feed into each other. guardian.co.uk