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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (73462)	7/26/2006 10:35:45 PM
From: 10K a day	Respond to of 173976

Plan B was to stay for 15 years and make all the neocorns happy.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (73462)	7/26/2006 11:15:19 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 173976

Regime change, 1950s-style By Roger Hardy BBC News Middle East Analyst Western powers decide that the ruler of a major Arab state has become an intolerable threat. They launch a concerted attack to topple him, but provoke a storm of international controversy over the wisdom - and legality - of their action. Half a century on from the Suez crisis, the contemporary echoes are unmistakable. In 1956 the Western powers were Britain and France. The Arab ruler was President Nasser of Egypt. Both felt threatened by his dramatic decision to nationalise the company which operated the Suez Canal. The British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, regarded the canal as the "jugular" of the British empire. The French resented the help Nasser was giving the Algerian insurgency. The two European powers reached a secret agreement with Israel to attack Egypt, regain the canal and overthrow Nasser. US halted intervention But it all went disastrously wrong. The American President, Dwight Eisenhower, was furious with his British ally for keeping him in the dark - and forced the three aggressors to halt their attack and withdraw from Egyptian territory. Nasser emerged an Arab hero, Eden's career ended in ruins - and the whole affair confirmed the demise of Britain and France as global powers. Then and now historians find the comparison between Egypt in 1956 and Iraq in 2003 irresistible - even if the differences are as obvious as the similarities. Saddam Hussein was no Nasser - however much he would have wished to be. In the earlier crisis, the United States brought the fighting to a close; in the later one, it was the instigator. Above all, the international climate was completely different. In the 1950s there were two superpowers locked in a Cold War. In 2003 America dominated world affairs in an entirely new way. Was it legal? Nevertheless both crises raised issues that are uncannily alike. Suez made me realise that Britain was no longer a world power Graham Rodhouse, Helmond, Netherlands Was the action of the Western powers legal? In neither case did the argument of self-defence really hold up. Were they sincere in going to the United Nations in search of a diplomatic solution - or had they already made up their minds to go to war? In both cases, there is evidence of the latter. Given that the real aim was "regime change", how far was there a coherent plan for the "day after"? In 2003, as in 1956, there seems to have been astonishingly little planning for the aftermath. History's verdict Finally, how far was public opinion deceived? This is a sensitive charge. All politicians make mistakes, but mistakes based on deception carry an added stigma. Eden kept the truth about Suez not only from the Americans, but from members of his own cabinet. Certainly today's British prime minister, Tony Blair, would resist any comparison between himself and Eden. He would say he made an honest mistake in claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. His critics would say he "spun" the country into a war which achieved "regime change" but with disastrous consequences. History's judgement on Britain's role over Suez has been damning. It remains, to this day, a moment of shame - a warning to politicians and generals alike of the price to be paid for risky foreign adventures. For history's verdict on the Iraq affair, we will have to wait a little longer.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (73462)	7/27/2006 12:42:36 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

July 27, 2006 Op-Ed Columnist Failure Upon Failure By BOB HERBERT Imagine a surgeon who is completely clueless, who has no idea what he or she is doing. Imagine a pilot who is equally incompetent. Now imagine a president. The Middle East is in flames. Iraq has become a charnel house, a crucible of horror with no end to the agony in sight. Lebanon is in danger of going down for the count. And the crazies in Iran, empowered by the actions of their enemies, are salivating like vultures. They can’t wait to feast on the remains of U.S. policies and tactics spawned by a sophomoric neoconservative fantasy — that democracy imposed at gunpoint in Iraq would spread peace and freedom, like the flowers of spring, throughout the Middle East. If a Democratic president had pursued exactly the same policies, and achieved exactly the same tragic results as George W. Bush, that president would have been the target of a ferocious drive for impeachment by the G.O.P. Mr. Bush spent a fair amount of time this week with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. There was plenty to talk about, nearly all of it hideous. Over the past couple of months Iraqi civilians have been getting blown away at the stunning rate of four or five an hour. Even Karl Rove had a tough time drawing a smiley face on that picture. “Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible,” said Mr. Bush, “and therefore there needs to be more troops.” One did not get the sense, listening to this assessment from the commander in chief, that things would soon be well in hand. There was, instead, a disturbing sense of déjà vu. A sense of the president at a complete loss, not really knowing what to do. I recalled the image of Mr. Bush sitting in a Sarasota, Fla., classroom after being informed of the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead of reacting instantly, commandingly, he just sat there for long wasted moments, with a bewildered look on his face, holding a second-grade story called “The Pet Goat.” And then there was the famous picture of Mr. Bush, on his way back from a monthlong vacation, looking out the window of Air Force One as it flew low over the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. “It’s devastating,” Mr. Bush was quoted as saying. “It’s got to be doubly devastating on the ground.” I’ll tell you what’s devastating. The monumental and mind-numbing toll of Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq, which is being documented in a series of important books, the latest being Thomas Ricks’s “Fiasco.” Mr. Ricks gives us more disturbing details about the administration’s “flawed plan for war” and “worse approach to occupation.” Near the end of his book, he writes: “In January 2005, the C.I.A.’s internal think tank, the National Intelligence Council, concluded that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for a new generation of jihadist terrorists. The country had become ‘a magnet for international terrorist activity,’ said the council’s chairman, Robert Hutchings.” Saddled with one failure after another, the administration seems paralyzed, completely unable to shape the big issues facing the U.S. and the world today. Condoleezza Rice is in charge of the diplomatic effort regarding Lebanon. She’s been about as effective at that as the president was in his response to Katrina. But Dr. Rice is still quick with the scary imagery. Her comment, “I have no doubt there are those who wish to strangle a democratic and sovereign Lebanon in its crib,” recalls her famous, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” It might help if she spent less time giving us provocative metaphors and more time on the very difficult nuts and bolts of trying to maintain or bring about peace. It may be that a hamstrung Bush administration is a better bet than the same crew being free to act as it pleases. Imagine how much better off we’d have been if Congress had found the wisdom and the courage to prevent the president from invading Iraq. In two years and a few months Americans will vote again for president. I hope the long list of tragic failures by Bush & Co. prompts people to take that election more seriously than some in the past. If you were about to be lifted onto an operating table, you’d be more interested in the competence of the surgeon than in his or her personality. Mr. Bush’s record reminds us that similarly careful consideration should be given to those who would be president.