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

To: FaultLine who wrote (114981)	9/16/2003 6:45:46 AM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<But in France it took two centuries, five republics, two empires and one dictatorship to get there.>> It is quite obvious to many objective observers that the direction France is trying to push the UN will again be a decision made in France's selfish interests and not to the benefit of the Iraqi's or the West. There are too many people whose motives and views are purely motivated by their contempt for the USA and or specifically Bush. Push Iraq to failure and the Bush Admin and the USA will have a serious blackeye. This joy will be very short lived for America haters because a failure in Iraq will be have extremely serious consequences.

To: FaultLine who wrote (114981)	9/16/2003 10:45:13 AM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

I'm a little confused here. It's not just France and Germany that are taking the line Zakaria and the local Francophobes find dubious. Consider: As the administration prepares to seek another United Nations resolution to attract more foreign troops and financial help, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz struck the most conciliatory note yet by a senior Pentagon official toward giving other countries a say in Iraq. "We have no desire to own this problem or to control it," Mr. Wolfowitz told the committee. "The more other countries are prepared to contribute, the more they're absolutely entitled to share and control over how resources are used." nytimes.com Then there's that other neocon leading light and alleged "architect of the Bush doctrine", apparently reached by the frogs at his Provence hidaway or something: Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon adviser and architect of the U.S. war to topple Saddam Hussein, said the United States had made mistakes in Iraq and that power should be handed over to the Iraqis as fast as possible. In an interview with the Le Figaro daily newspaper to be published Thursday, Perle defended the U.S.-led war in Iraq and restated his belief that France had been wrong to lead international opposition to the conflict. "Of course, we haven't done everything right," said Perle, according to the French text of the interview. "Mistakes have been made and there will be others. "Our principal mistake, in my opinion, was that we didn't manage to work closely with the Iraqis before the war, so that there was an Iraqi opposition capable of taking charge immediately," he said. "Today, the answer is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible," he added. abcnews.go.com I mean, it's a nice change from the pre-war propaganda campaign that the op-ed genre is actually showing some diversity of opinion on the right. On the other hand, reading between the lines, it seems that Rummy's inner circle is still pretty devoted to the Chalabi line, ever hopeful that they'll get to move on to other phases of their great game scheme, like the original plan called for. And since they're always right, arguing against them is sort of futile. Still, just to be cranky, I stand by my modest proposal that Wolfowitz or Perle or Rummy himself be given Bremer's job. They wanted that war so very bad, they really deserve to own the aftermath.

To: FaultLine who wrote (114981)	9/16/2003 11:20:45 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Nice column by Zakaria but I think he misses the point. This line, turning Iraq over to the Iraqis, is likely to become the Bush version of "declare victory and leave." Or maybe he gets the point and wishes to get out ahead of that argument as quickly as possible. I don't see the Bush folk going to this argument in the near term but if matters continue in their present direction, it's the likely outcome. And when a very, very bloody civil war is the outcome, they will blame it on the Iraqis.