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

To: see clearly now who wrote (186985)	5/20/2006 3:36:22 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Politician Gore appears at Cannes _______________________________________________________ By Darren Waters BBC News in Cannes Published: 2006/05/20 17:43:47 GMT Former US vice-president Al Gore, who is at the Cannes Film Festival, has warned the world is facing a "planetary emergency" due to global warming. A documentary based on the politician's environmental campaigning is being screened at the festival. Mr Gore said the world faced a stark choice between the end of civilisation and a future for its children. He also said he was not considering running again for presidential office in 2008. Mr Gore said global warming was a "challenge to our moral imagination to understand it and then to respond to it urgently". The documentary An Inconvenient Truth is based on lectures Al Gore has been delivering about environmental crisis for many years. The film shows photographs of changes to glaciers around the world, with snow disappearing from the Alps, Antarctica and the South Pole. "People have been moved by it," Mr Gore said. "People coming out feeling a sense of urgency." He stressed the problem was moral, not political, and said he hoped the current US government would re-think its environmental strategy and sign up to the successor to the Kyoto treaty. "I even believe that there is a chance that within the next two years even Bush and Cheney will be forced to change their position on this crisis," he said. "One can only attempt to create one's own reality for so long. Reality proper has a way of insisting itself upon you. "Mother nature has joined this debate with a very powerful and persistent voice." But he said he was not thinking of running for president in two years. "I don't plan to be a candidate again for national office," he said. "There are other ways to serve." 'Polluting interests' He would not be drawn on his opinions of any potential presidential candidates, saying it was too early for such a discussion. Mr Gore, who is donating his proceeds from the film towards a new environmental charity, said there were "some powerful polluting interests that have way too much influence in the American political system". He said President George W Bush had missed an opportunity after 11 September terrorist attacks to declare that the US should be independent of oil and coal. "Leadership can make a difference," he said. "What I can most valuably do is try to change the minds of the American people and elsewhere in the world about this planetary emergency." news.bbc.co.uk

To: see clearly now who wrote (186985)	5/20/2006 5:41:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Saying No to Bush's Yes Men ___________________________________________________________ By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times May 17, 2006 President Bush has slipped in one recent poll to a 29 percent approval rating. Frankly, I can't believe that. Those polls can't possibly be accurate. I mean, really, ask yourself: How could there still be 29 percent of the people who approve of this presidency? Personally, I think the president can reshuffle his cabinet all he wants, but his poll ratings are not going to substantially recover — ever. Americans are slow to judgment about a president, very slow. And in times of war, in particular, they are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I think a lot of Americans in recent months have simply lost confidence in this administration's competence and honesty. What has eaten away most at the support for this administration, I believe, has been the fact that time and time again, it has put politics and ideology ahead of the interests of the United States, and I think a lot of people are just sick of it. I know I sure am. To me, the most baffling thing about the Bush presidency is this: If you had worked for so long to be president, wouldn't you want to staff your administration with the very best people you could find, especially in national security and especially in the area of intelligence, which has been the source of so much controversy — from 9/11 to Iraq? Wouldn't that be your instinct? Well, not only did the president put the C.I.A. in the hands of a complete partisan hack named Porter Goss, but he then allowed Mr. Goss to appoint as the No. 3 man at the agency — the C.I.A.'s executive director — Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, whose previous position was chief of the C.I.A.'s logistics office in Germany, which provides its Middle East stations with supplies. Mr. Foggo has spent almost his entire undistinguished C.I.A. career in midlevel administrative jobs. He ingratiated himself with Mr. Goss during his days as a congressman by funneling inside dope about the C.I.A. under George Tenet to Mr. Goss, Newsweek reported. When Mr. Goss was tapped by the president to head the C.I.A., he plucked Mr. Foggo from obscurity to handle day-to-day operations at the agency, where he immediately made his mark by purging the C.I.A. of veteran spies and managers deemed unfriendly to the White House. I feel safer already. Mr. Foggo resigned, along with Mr. Goss, after the C.I.A.'s chief internal watchdog opened an investigation to determine whether Mr. Foggo had helped steer a contract, apparently involving bottled water, to a company run by his old friend Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who has been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case involving the corrupt San Diego congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who is now in prison. Mr. Foggo is not an expert on Iran or Iraq or Russia, but rather on Perrier, Poland Spring and Fiji water. That is the guy the Bush team chose as its chief operating officer at the C.I.A. Is there no job in this administration that is too important to be handed over to a political hack? No. In his excellent book on the Iraq war, "The Assassins' Gate," George Packer tells the story of how some of the State Department's best Iraq experts were barred from going to Iraq immediately after the invasion — when they were needed most — because that didn't pass Dick Cheney's or Don Rumsfeld's ideology tests. And that is the core of the matter: the Bush team believes in loyalty over expertise. When ideology always trumps reality, loyalty always trumps expertise. Yes, Mr. Bush has seen the error of his ways and has sacked the Goss crew, but we just wasted a year and saw a number of experienced C.I.A. people quit the agency in disgust. It's comical to think of this administration hoping to get a popularity lift from shaking up the president's cabinet, considering the fact that it has kept its cabinet secretaries so out of sight — even the good ones, and there are good ones — so the president will always dominate the landscape. When you centralize power the way Mr. Bush did, you alone get stuck with all the responsibility when things go bad. And that is what is happening now. The idea that the president's poll numbers would go up if he replaced his Treasury secretary is ludicrous. Replacing him would be like replacing one ghost with another. I understand that loyalty is important, but what good is it to have loyal crew members when the ship is sinking? So they can sing your praises on the way down to the ocean floor? I just don't understand how a president whose whole legacy depends on getting national security and intelligence right would have tolerated anything but the very best in those areas. What in the world was he thinking?