Confirms what we all know, or suspect about Bush, he's not
much of a statesman or politician. I can see the argument
for taking out hussein. The containment measures drag on
for years, decades; we're there enforcing a UN resolution,
but being shot at on a regular basis, at war with iraq in
all but name. War is an action to end the fighting, in a
decisive way.
Bush doesn't even provide the appearance that our national
security is threatened by iraq. The day powell spoke at the
UN, pointed to a satellite picture and said 'there, that
building is hiding chemical weapons', it was a big let-down,
for the world and the american people who are as much in
the dark as everyone else about the justification for war.
If Bush had another agenda, perhaps a personal vendetta
against hussein, and lied or invented pretenses for war,
then he's corrupt. If not, then his own administration people
are lying to him, or he's too incompetent to make an effective
case for war - in either case he's inept, incapable of effective
leadership. Take your pick, he's corrupt or he's inept.
In most sensitive positions in the US, people can be fired
for cause, if they're incompetent. Bush needs to be replaced.
____________________________________________________________
Bush forced to revisit the push to war
Tue Jan 13, 4:35 PM ET
By James Harding in Washington
When Tony Blair (news - web sites) came to Camp David for his first
meeting with George W. Bush, the conversation, according to one official
present, went something like this:
Mr Bush, who by Friday, February 23 2001 had been US president for just
over a month, sat across the table in the Laurel Lodge and welcomed the
British prime minister. "May I call you Tony?" he asked. Mr Blair invited
him to do so, thanked him for his welcome and asked if he could call him
George.
Then, according to the official Mr Bush suggested they begin their
discussions with foreign policy - starting with Iraq (news - web sites).
War was not on the agenda but the leaders discussed efforts to make
sanctions against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime more
effective, the official recalls. In the margins, Condoleezza Rice (news -
web sites), the president's national security adviser, discussed how they
might in the future effect regime change in Baghdad.
From the beginning of his administration, Iraq was plainly at the top of
the president's list of foreign policy priorities. This week, Mr Bush has
been forced to revisit the push to war.
Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, has reopened the debate,
claiming that Mr Bush was always intent on Mr Hussein's removal.
Democrats have seized on Mr O'Neill's comments to try to prove that Mr
Bush never had much faith in a diplomatic solution and used the reports
of weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for military action.
In The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind - the book released on Tuesday
about his 23 months in the Bush administration - Mr O'Neill is quoted as
recalling that from one of the earliest National Security Council
meetings on January 30 2001, just 10 days after the inauguration, the
Bush foreign policy team was already discussing not whether - but how -
to topple the government in Baghdad.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was
a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr O'Neill said in an interview
with CBS television to accompany the book's release.
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The
president saying: 'Go find me a way to do this'."
From the start of the Bush administration, neither the president nor
anyone in his foreign policy team ever did much to disguise their
determination to deal with Iraq.
Mr Bush and Mr Blair talked about the Iraq problem in their joint press
conference at Camp David back in February 2001, even though the comment
about both men using Colgate toothpaste was more remarked upon at the
time. Ms Rice had made clear that Iraq was a priority when Mr Bush was
still a candidate.
The more controversial issue in Washington has been when Mr Bush's
determination to remove Mr Hussein translated into a decision to take
military action.
At the Special Summit of the Americas in Monterrey this week, Mr Bush has
suggested that 9/11 changed his thinking. "The stated policy of my
administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear," Mr Bush said, when
asked whether he had begun planning an invasion of Iraq within days of
taking office.
"Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the
initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were
dealing with desert badger or fly-overs and fly-betweens. And then all of
a sudden September 11 hit."
That version of events, though, also seems to oversimplify the
administration's preoccupation with Iraq.
In his account of the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of
September 11 2001, Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who spoke
to most of the president's national security team, wrote that Donald
Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, raised the question of invading Iraq in
response to the attacks at a National Security Council meeting on
September 12.
Mr Woodward wrote in Bush at War: "Before the attacks, the Pentagon (news
- web sites) had been working for months on developing a military option
for Iraq."
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