Tag: Dubya Diplomacy

How ’bout an exploding cigar?

“The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.” The NYT relates the details of a January 2003 pre-war meeting between Bush and Blair, and it’s not pretty. Not surprisingly (and like the July 2002 Downing Street memos, the recollections of Paul O’Neill, and countless other sources), this new material confirms that Dubya and the neocons wanted a war in Iraq, come hell or high water.

Albright Eyes.

“It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world’s most powerful nation upon that fiction.” In a must-read LA Times editorial, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright witheringly dissects Dubya Diplomacy. (Via Medley.)

The boys who lied wolf.

Remember “We’ll be greeted as liberators“? How ’bout “I think they’re in the last throes…of the insurgency“? As the administration reaps the dividends of a severe credibility gap on Iraq, Dubya ventures forth once again to tell the nation about all the progress we’re just not seeing over there. “‘I understand people being disheartened when they turn on their TV screen,’ Bush said, adding that ‘nobody likes beheadings’ and other grim images.”

Blue Monday.

He’s a uniter, not a divider…Watch America turn blue (once again) with contempt over the ineptitude and dishonesty of the Dubya administration, from month to month. (Via Medley.)

Iraq, Year Four.

“If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.” As the war in Iraq enters its fourth year (US casualities) and civil war appears increasingly likely on the ground, Dubya and Cheney trod out the same stale talking points we’ve been hearing since “Mission Accomplished” (while Rummy attempts variations on a theme.) Update: Slate‘s Fred Kaplan surveys the mistakes.

“An Unbelievable Mess.”

“We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be ‘yes.'” Several internal Downing Street memos, recently obtained by the Guardian, suggest that our British allies have been wary of US mismanagement in Iraq since at least 2003, when Baghdad envoy John Sawers called the US post-invasion operation “an unbelievable mess.” (By way of Dateline: Bristol.)

Iran runs from Dubya.

“‘It seems to me the United States is not studying the history of Iran very carefully,’ Pourostad said. ‘Whenever they came and supported an idea publicly, the public has done the opposite.‘” As Fred Kaplan pointed out several weeks ago (and as indicated by the results of the last Iranian election), many democratic activists in Iran believe that Dubya’s ham-handed approach to promoting reform is backfiring in a big way.

Report Card: Incomplete.

By way of a friend, the State Department releases its mandated yearly human rights report for 2005 (here), finding cause for alarm in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and Zimbabwe and (surprise, surprise) progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report doesn’t delve into human rights violations here at home (although China tries to fill that gap in response every year), but it does unequivocally state — in bold, no less — that “countries in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers tend to be the world’s most systematic human rights violators.” Hey y’all might be on to something. Deadpans the head of Amnesty International: “The Bush administration’s practice of transferring detainees in the ‘war on terror’ to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture.”

You like the rug?

“For whatever reason, Bush seems fixated on his rug. Virtually all visitors to the Oval Office find him regaling them about how it was chosen and what it represents. Turns out, he always says, the first decision any president makes is what carpet he wants in his office…Sometimes Bush describes it as a metaphor for leadership. Sometimes he relates how Russian President Vladimir Putin admired the carpet. Sometimes he seems most taken by the lighting qualities.” Ah, the glory days…I guess it was only after that tough second decision — the drapes, maybe? — that the job started getting to Dubya.