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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (7112)	5/9/2006 12:21:27 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Blair's Labour Loss The PM's choices after last week's electoral drubbing. Monday, May 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT After the worst electoral loss of his career, Tony Blair has carried out the bloodiest purge ever of his cabinet. A last gasp from the British leader, or a big step toward a political rebirth? Friday's reshuffle can't substitute for a governing vision or the will to implement it. Mr. Blair and New Labour have been short on both counts of late and paid for it with a pasting in Thursday's local council elections. Unless the Prime Minister moves fast to assert himself, the only interesting question will be what job he'll take after Gordon Brown, the impatient heir apparent, moves into 10 Downing Street. Mr. Blair has proven his political-obituary writers wrong before, most recently after last year's third consecutive but underwhelming Labour win. He took charge then, only to lose momentum. In the coming months, his biggest tests are on domestic policy. The Prime Minister wants Britain to embrace nuclear power, overhaul pensions and introduce market mechanisms into the educational and health care systems--all anathema to his "old Labour" backbench. That this Prime Minister's future depends on his success at home is ironic since his great passion, and historical legacy, is abroad. He pushed Western allies to save Kosovo's Albanians from Slobodan Milosevic and stood firmly with the U.S. against Saddam Hussein. Friday's demotion of Jack Straw from leading the Foreign Office to managing Labour MPs in Parliament suggests that Mr. Blair doesn't think he's done yet--which is good news if true. Mr. Straw angered Number 10 by ruling out a military strike against the Iranian nuclear program as "inconceivable." Of all Western leaders, Mr. Blair has been most eloquent in warning that weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands pose an existential threat. Iran is the next great challenge, and Mr. Blair's moral clarity could be a great asset in meeting it. Though Iraq isn't as big an issue as last year, the Harold Pinter set still detests Mr. Blair for his alliance with Washington. But unlike the country's chattering classes, who set the media agenda, the British electorate's souring romance with New Labour is driven not by anti-Americanism but fatigue with familiar faces. Labour's penchant for scandal--from peerages for big campaign donors to taxpayer-funded plane trips and haircuts for Cherie Blair--has only reinforced public weariness. The low point came with "triple-whammy Wednesday," in April, when two of Mr. Blair's cabinet secretaries were shown to be badly mismanaging their departments and his deputy prime minister admitted to an affair with one of his secretaries. The Conservatives, under new management by 39-year-old David Cameron, have benefited from Labour's troubles. The Tories won 40% of the vote Thursday, compared with Labour's 26%. For the first time in a decade, Britain no longer looks like a virtual one-party state. The image-conscious Mr. Cameron--who is so far shallow on substance--has three years before the next national election is due to prove that the Tories are back for real. Labour rebels want the Prime Minister to set a date for a handover to Mr. Brown, a dour Scot who runs the Treasury. A committed Atlanticist and Euro-realist, he brings a sound economic record tarnished of late by his weakness for spending. But Mr. Brown is an unproven campaigner who seeks to replace the greatest vote-getter in Labour's postwar history. In Western Europe's big states, the guard is changing. Germany and Italy threw out their incumbents in recent months, and France's leaders are politically dead going into next year's elections. Mr. Blair, who has promised to leave before the next national poll, can take heart that he has been one of the most successful politicians of his generation in Europe. His destiny is still in his own hands. opinionjournal.com

To: PROLIFE who wrote (7112)	6/4/2006 4:40:12 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Blogress Clarice Feldman offers an odd twist on the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. She quotes from a January 2004 Vanity Fair profile of Plame and her swaggering spouse, Joe Wilson: [Vice President] Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, visited the C.I.A. several times at Langley and told the staff to make more of an effort to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and to uncover Iraqi attempts to acquire nuclear capabilities. One of the people who objected most fervently to what he saw as "intimidation," according to one former C.I.A. case officer, was Alan Foley, then the head of the Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center. He was Valerie Plame's boss. (Foley could not be reached for comment.) Feldman says she wrote to Foley to inquire about this and received the following reply last week: I didn't know that Valerie Plame or Joseph Wilson existed until after the Novak article [in July 2003]. I have never met nor communicated with either of them. Nor did I have any responsibility or authority relating to them, the reported trip to Niger, or the subsequent leak investigation. . . . Please do not contact me again. Wow, Valerie Plame's identity was so secret, her own boss didn't know who she was! opinionjournal.com