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On 8 Apr 2004 02:31:30 -0700, (maff), Message ID:
<18510aff.0404080131.3a487f4b@posting.google.com> wrote in alt.atheism;
Some more questions for Condoleezza
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1188074,00.html
Some more questions for Condoleezza
Bush's national security adviser sabotaged the road map to peace
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday April 8, 2004
The Guardian
Condoleezza Rice is to be questioned in public only about the Bush
administration's policy on terrorism before September 11. But her
negligence and incompetence encompasses the entirety of the Bush foreign
policy.
The story of Rice's role in the destruction of the Middle East peace
process has never been told.Yet the pattern of her conduct is of a piece
with the disregard of terrorism despite all warnings before 9/11. The
national security adviser is the central organiser of foreign policy for
the president, and Rice quickly became one of President Bush's most
intimate aides.
In January 2002, Rice launched a serious effort to restart the Middle
East peace process. She hired Flynt Leverett, a foreign service officer
on the policy planning staff of the state department, as director of the
initiative. Rice told him she understood that the absence of a peace
process was hurting the war on terrorism and that Leverett should
propose any measures he thought necessary, regardless of political
controversy. Leverett developed a plan dealing with security,
Palestinian political reform and Jerusalem. Its core was essentially the
same as President Clinton's ultimate proposal. Rice rejected it as
politically untenable for Bush, who would have been forced to confront
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to enact it.
On April 4, Bush delivered a speech calling for a "two state" solution,
but without any details, and sent his secretary of state, Colin Powell,
to the region. Leverett travelled with him. Powell gained agreement for
the basic outline of the original plan. But just as he was to announce
his breakthrough, Rice intervened, instructing him that he could not
discuss any political process and that the whole burden of
accountability must be put on the Palestinians and none on the Israelis.
Rice had crumbled in the face of internal political opposition from the
neoconservative armada. "The neocons in the Pentagon and the vice
president's office, plus Karl Rove's political shop, prevailed,"
Leverett told me. Undeterred, Leverett turned to work on what became
known as "the road map". On July 31, the Jordanian foreign minister,
Marwan Muasher, met Rice to urge support for it. "Condi says, no. All
you get is a speech, no plan," said Leverett. The next day King Abdullah
came to see the president, bringing his foreign minister with him.
"Condi had told the president nothing of her conversation," said
Leverett, who was present. Bush instantly said of Abdullah's proposal:
"Good idea, let's see what we can do on that." Leverett said, "That was
the origin of the road map."
By November, the road map was ready to be publicly released. But Sharon
opposed it, claiming that proposing it would interfere with the upcoming
Israeli election. Leverett argued to Rice: "We had promised to put it
out. If we pull it now we reverse a commitment and would be intervening
in Israeli politics in another way. That argument was not appreciated by
Condi. So they didn't put out the road map." It was only under pressure
from Tony Blair, as a precondition to his alliance on the eve of the
Iraq invasion, that Bush announced the road map on March 14 2003.
n June, Bush attended two summits on the road map, in Aqaba and Sharm
el-Sheik, where he expressed commitment. He turned the project over to
Rice, who never presented him with a plan of how to achieve it. "He said
that Condi would ride herd on this process. She never even saddled up,"
said Leverett. Six months earlier, Rice had appointed neoconservative
Elliott Abrams as her Middle East coordinator on the national security
council, and he threw up obstacles to prevent the road map from going
forward. Bush, for his part, never followed up on his own rhetoric and
was utterly absent from the policy making. So Leverett decided he must
quit: "I didn't want to stick around for a charade."
On terrorism, Rice insists Bush wanted a strategy rather than to be
"swatting flies". But the strategy that lay on her desk unimplemented on
September 11 was virtually the same as the one presented to her by the
NSC counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, on January 25 2001. On that
fateful September 11, Rice was to deliver a speech on the administration
priorities that stressed missile defence and not terrorism. Now, she
will not release the full text of that speech.
The story of the Middle East debacle, like that of the pre-9/11
terrorism fiasco, reveals the inner workings of Bush's White House: the
president -aggressive and manipulated, ignorant of his own policies and
their consequences, negligent; the secretary of state - proud,
instinctively subordinate, constantly in retreat; the vice-president -
as Richelieu, conniving, at the head of a neoconservative cabal, the
power behind the throne; the national security adviser - seemingly open,
even vulnerable, posing as the honest broker, but deceitful and
derelict, an underhanded lightweight.
· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and
Washington editor of Salon.com
Sidney_Blumenthal@yahoo.com
(c) 2004 Guardian newspapers
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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