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

To: JohnM who wrote (130059)	4/25/2004 1:17:44 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

By barring the media from covering the repatriation of the military's dead, does the Pentagon do the public—and its soldiers—a disservice? msnbc.msn.com <<...Every day for months, we have heard about the mounting death toll: More than 600 soldiers have died in Iraq over the course of a year. We have seen mangled corpses, and bleeding Marines carried to safety by their comrades. Yet until today, the images of flag-draped coffins and the solemn and ceremonial rites with which the military returns its dead, have been off-limits to media photographers, reporters and the American public. The Pentagon claims they are simply following a policy put in place during the Persian Gulf war that aims to protect the sensitivities of military families. But many suspect the real reason is to shield the American public from the tragic costs of war, and a desire to suppress images that might remind the world of Vietnam. It’s a pity that the freshest images of the America's fallen consist of blackened bodies being dragged through the street and hung off a downtown bridge in Fallujah. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Air Force this week released hundreds of flag-draped photographs to thememoryhole.org, a Web site that publishes hard-to-find government information. The repatriation of dead soldiers is among the military's highest and proudest traditions. It's wrong that Americans can't share in it...>>

To: JohnM who wrote (130059)	4/25/2004 2:49:22 PM
From: Rascal	Respond to of 281500

This New Yorker article from last year validates many of Woodward's time lines..... In early November of 2001, Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister, who was in Washington, told the Times that Bush's unwillingness to force a Middle East solution "makes a sane man go mad"-despite private views in Saudi Arabia about Arafat's untrustworthiness. In February, the Crown Prince publicly offered to normalize relations between the Arab states and Israel if Israel withdrew from all the occupied territories. Bush, in a series of comments, seemed to vacillate between supporting Israel's right to defend itself against terrorist attacks as it saw fit and urging Israel to exercise restraint. In April, Bandar, in a speech at the University of Oklahoma, seemed to signal a growing disillusionment with the Bush Administration. "I'm proud, not ashamed, to be a friend of the United States," he said, and he added, "But I'm frustrated." A few days later, Bush called Sharon "a man of peace." On April 16th, the White House announced that Crown Prince Abdullah planned to visit Bush at his ranch in Crawford. The circumstances were not promising. Abdullah's opinion of Bush was increasingly unfavorable, and by this time Bush had begun to declare that one of his goals was "regime change" in Iraq. Saudi support was essential, but unless something was done about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Saudis could not oppose another Arab country, not even Iraq. On April 24th, the eve of the visit, Bandar received a private briefing from one of the President's senior officials: Bush, he was told, was unaware of what was happening in the streets of the West Bank or Gaza. "This guy doesn't watch TV-he just doesn't know this stuff," the official said, adding that Bush's aides, many of whom were staunchly pro-Israel, shielded him. Bandar was in a hotel in Houston preparing Abdullah for his meeting with Bush the next morning. Bandar wanted Bush to see what Arabs saw daily on Al Jazeera, hoping that it would open his eyes, and so his aides were trying to get photographs. Eventually, they were able to find some, mostly pictures of dead Palestinian children-a five-year-old with a bullet wound to his head, a child cut in half. He did not want to show the most gruesome; the purpose was not to make Bush sick. Bandar knew that if Bush was unaware of views within the Arab world, he couldn't understand the impact that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was having in the region. Already the trip was becoming something of a fiasco. On Abdullah's first day in Houston, the White House had faxed Bandar a draft of a proposed communique, to be released by the two leaders following their meeting, which seemed to place all the blame for the increase in violence on Arafat and the Palestinians. "This is ridiculous-this is unacceptable," Bandar said to an aide, and he picked up the phone to call Powell. The Secretary of State claimed that he hadn't seen the latest version, and had rejected previous drafts. The draft had come from Vice-President Cheney's office, the rationale being that Abdullah is the Vice-President of Saudi Arabia. Bandar faxed back his rejection to the White House and warned that Cheney should not under any circumstances give a copy of it to the Crown Prince. A meeting with Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Houston hadn't gone well, either. Rumsfeld had spent most of the meeting giving the Crown Prince a lengthy presentation on how much more accurate the American weaponry used in Afghanistan was than that used in the Gulf War. The Crown Prince was also given a new draft of the proposed communique, one that left the impression that the discussion of the Middle East crisis was secondary to issues like the Saudi desire to join the World Trade Organization. The Crown Prince had expected that the communique was a chance to offer a bold agreement on a peace initiative. Do they think I'll be happy just because I came to the ranch? he asked. That I want to say we met and had fun? Early the next morning, after the Crown Prince's plane arrived in Waco, Powell joined Abdullah, Saud, and Bandar for the drive to Crawford. Powell had heard discouraging reports about the meeting with Cheney and Rumsfeld, and it was clear that Abdullah was upset. Abdullah, speaking to Powell, stressed that he had put himself at great risk to meet with Bush. Arab friends, by phone, fax, and letter, were telling him not to go. He said that he intended to deliver a blunt message: that Bush had to get involved, and that he had to end the Israeli occupation-including the siege of Arafat in his compound. With Bush were Cheney, Rice, Powell, and Andrew Card, the President's chief of staff. With the Crown Prince were Bandar, Rihab Massoud, the Embassy's charge d'affaires, and Saud. The Crown Prince said that he was disappointed by the proposed talking points; he repeatedly said that Bush had to do something to end the occupation. Abdullah emphasized the danger to the region; there was rioting in Bahrain, the most peaceful of countries. Egypt was in trouble, and so was Jordan-Jordan could go up in flames. But when the Crown Prince pressed him for the details of a plan to end the occupation, Bush and his advisers kept saying that they had told Sharon to get out of the territories. Abdullah told Bush that he had no idea of the risk he had taken in coming to Crawford; he seemed to be deeply frustrated. "I will get on my aircraft and go home," witnesses recalled him saying. "I will tell people I have tried. I have delivered my message to the President and maybe you didn't understand. . . . I have tried and you cannot do anything. . . . I cannot go on as if nothing has happened. I am going to leave and say I have failed, not you. I have failed by not convincing you, by not persuading you with clearer facts." Bush replied that .. go to link for what happens next! Rascal @RussertBailedOnBushThismorning.com saudi-american-forum.org

To: JohnM who wrote (130059)	4/26/2004 10:46:25 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Oval Office failure __________________________________ By Scot Lehigh The Boston Globe April 23, 2004 BOB WOODWARD'S best Oval Office anecdote is telling. And yet, more revealing still is what doesn't take place in "Plan of Attack," Woodward's detailed new book about the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq. According to Woodward, on Dec. 21, 2002, George Tenet, the CIA director, and John McLaughlin, his deputy, went to the Oval Office to run through the CIA's presentation making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When it was done, George W. Bush had a quizzical look on his face. " `Nice try,' Bush said. "I don't think this is quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from.' " Chief of staff Andrew Card, too, was underwhelmed, "worried that there might be no `there there.' " The president then turned to Tenet and asked: "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" Tenet, Woodward writes, "rose up, threw his arms in the air. `It's a slam dunk case' . . . Bush pressed. `George, how confident are you?' " Tenet: "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk." What we have, then, is a president who, with the critical decision on war pressing hard upon him, had gotten a look at the CIA's evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and found himself somewhat dubious about the agency's case. So here's the question: Where was the gimlet-eyed follow-up, the hard-nosed executive evaluation, the painstaking dissection of the evidence that any commander in chief should insist upon before deciding on war? There's precious little evidence of that in Woodward's book. Indeed, the picture that emerges is of a president less concerned with flyspecking the intelligence in determined pursuit of the truth than with making the strongest possible case to the world that Iraq had WMD. "Needs a lot more work," Bush told Card and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about the briefing. "Let's get some people who've actually put together a case for a jury." After the McLaughlin/Tenet briefing, the CIA assembled a 40-page dossier that was turned over to two lawyers -- Scooter Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and Steve Hadley, Rice's deputy -- to use in building a persuasive public argument against Iraq. On Jan. 25, Libby presented that case to a group that included Rice; Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser; Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- but that did not include either the president or the vice president. "Armitage," Woodward writes, "was appalled at what he considered overreaching and hyperbole. Libby was drawing only the worst conclusions from fragments and silky threads." That's a conclusion Colin Powell would come to as well. Still, after going to the CIA and culling the intelligence, the secretary of state made his powerful Feb. 5 presentation to the UN. By then, events were in the saddle. More than three weeks earlier, Cheney and Bush had informed the Saudi ambassador that the decision to go to war had been made. Now, it's true that Saddam had been pursuing a nuclear bomb before the first Gulf War, that he had used chemical weapons against his own people, and that he had had a secret WMD program in the 1990s, a program which the 1995 defection of Hussein Kamel, the Saddam son-in-law in charge of that effort, helped reveal. Still, inspectors had been absent from Iraq since 1998. But in Woodward's account, when Tenet declared the case "a slam dunk," Bush basically took him at his word. With no WMDs found, Tenet, in a speech earlier this year, acknowledged flaws in the intelligence. And in a Feb. 2 interview with The Washington Post, Powell gingerly conceded the obvious: If the administration had known Iraq did not have WMD stockpiles, that knowledge might have affected the decision to go to war. That, Woodward writes, brought a call from Rice to tell Powell that the president was "mad," feeling that the secretary of state had "given the Democrats a remarkable tool." That's one way to describe the truth. Still, the Bush campaign apparently thinks Woodward's book paints a sufficiently positive picture of a resolute, action-oriented president that they have a link to it on their website. But what a careful reading actually reveals is a commander in chief who failed to do or demand the due diligence that any president owes his citizens before committing the nation to war. Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com

To: JohnM who wrote (130059)	4/27/2004 9:18:58 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Is It Time for the 'Good Soldier' to Resign as the Secretary of State? _________________________ by Stanley I. Kutler Published on Sunday, April 25, 2004 by the Chicago Tribune Powell's Choice of Action Secretary of State Colin Powell is one of the most recognizable, and maybe the most well-liked figure across party lines, in the Bush administration. He has served his country long and well. Yet evidence mounts that he was (and remains) on the sidelines to advise and implement President Bush's major foreign activities, especially the Iraq war. Powell's reluctance to invade Iraq has been no secret. Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," has added new, attributable quotes. If, as Woodward suggested, Powell is "out of the loop," and peripheral to the president's major decisions, then he should resign. He owes that course to himself, his reputation and to the nation. Principled resignations have not been prominent in American history. Resignations have become elaborately ritualized, designed largely to spare both sides public embarrassment. The famous Watergate resignations of April 30, 1973, offer a case in point. President Richard Nixon's top aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman "regretfully" resigned, and with apparent equal "regret," the president accepted them. Atty. Gen. Richard Kleindienst similarly "resigned" that day. All three fought tenaciously to preserve their jobs; they had no choice, however, and they left at Nixon's insistence. That same day, Nixon simply fired John Dean, the counsel to the president. Nixon was unconcerned about his feelings or reputation; for good reason, as we were to learn in less than two months. Powell might want to be remembered for the manner of his leaving. Resigning on principle, in the firm belief you behaved correctly, is a rare act. U.S. Atty. Gen. Elliot Richardson resigned in 1973 with dignity and grace when he refused to carry out Nixon's order to dismiss Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. William Jennings Bryan resigned as secretary of state because he believed President Woodrow Wilson's actions would lead the nation to war. And Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, resigned because he disagreed with military operations to rescue Iranian hostages in 1979. All had the satisfaction of eventual vindication. Richard Clarke's resignation as Bush's chief adviser on counter-terrorism apparently resulted from his growing sense of frustration. He also regarded the looming war with Iraq as misdirected. At first, he requested transfer to a cyber-security position, and apparently cared deeply about that issue. Yet in January 2003, he quit during the run-up to the Iraq war. Powell has acknowledged that he talked to Bob Woodward about his role in the decision to go to war. He has denied that he was "out of the loop." But he has not specifically confirmed or rejected any of the remarks Woodward attributed to him. Did Powell tell the president that he would be "the proud owner of 25 million people; [y]ou will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all."? Did he tell the president, "If you break it, you own it."? We don't know. But the useful Latin maxim here is that "silence connotes consent." A principled resignation by Powell might offer the nation clarity and focus as it prepares to debate and judge the actions of the administration. Powell's speech to the United Nations, "documenting" the administration's case for war, has proven both exaggerated and deceitful. Powell himself found the usual Washington language to acknowledge his errors without, of course, explicitly saying so. Profound principles are at stake: Does the administration have a right to use foreign policy for its own political and personal agendas? May the government make a blatantly dishonest case, based on hyped claims that Iraq held vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction, and had strong links to Al Qaeda, to lead the nation to war? As evidence mounts that the Iraq war was unnecessary or, at best, unjustified, contrary to what the administration contended, Colin Powell should weigh his own beliefs and his responsibility. Powell is a highly decorated military officer, rising to chairman of the Joint Chefs of Staff, and he served well as President George H.W. Bush's national security adviser. Powell certainly has been a good soldier for this president. Recently, he bristled at a congressman who had questioned Bush's military record. Yet in his autobiography, Powell angrily denounced "the sons of the powerful and well placed ... [who] managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." Powell has indicated, and it has been widely reported, that he will not be part of a second Bush administration. His choice then is simple: serve until January 2005, fight some skirmishes against Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, yet remain marginalized except when there is a need to parade the "Good Soldier"; or resign now because he has been badly used, even ignored, by the administration. Resignation would ensure a historic and successful memoir. ________________________________ Stanley I. Kutler is the author of "The Wars of Watergate." Copyright 2004 Stanley I. Kutler commondreams.org