Phoenix, It's all part and parcel of this - this - well, just too many adjectives to pick from.
CI and Frank
I agree.
Frolic
Thank you for proving that information.
Cellucci also said that there would be consequenses for Canada not supporting the US in this war and when he was asked what those consequesnses would be he said "You'll just have to wait and see".
Amen to the immature bullies comments! But what can we say about the 40% who voted for punish, punish, punish? Pretty much the same thing? C'mon guys, Grow Up!!
frolic
You are surprisingly well up on US/Canada relations. We commonly get Drug Czar Walters (by the way, they'll never put a woman in that post as Drug Czarina just wouldn't sound beefy enough) visiting up here as Canada moves to decriminalize possession of pot for personal use. And it is the same tone - patenalist know-it-all with sneaky threats thrown in for free. After one typically pompous speech here last year, a BC Supreme Court justice remarked rhetorically, "These guys, with more black men in jail for drug related offences than are enrolled in university are telling us how to handle the drug problem?"
This administration is particularly bullish on bullying, from Bush/Rove through the DoD under Rumsfeld, and even the State Department as well (see the resignation letter from the Ambassador to Greece). Bullies, of course, never realize their psycho-pathology. Bush, for example, has no idea that his walk is a strut and that it bears a remarkable similarity to Mussolini's chest-puffed gait. Even if someone were to point it out, his response would most likely be a sudden surge of respect for this eccentric and maligned Italian gentleman. Rove could be roughed up by burly angels, frogmarched from the pearly gates, heaved into the 'going downnnnn' elevator with no thought to personal imperfection as he strategized how to raise the Devil's polling numbers.
Lets not be all negative. Bush also rewards his allies.
Quote:The United States Government has added Batasuna, the political wing of Basque armed separatist group ETA, to its list of terrorist groups, according to an official announcement from the Federal Register.
The decision, which makes the group liable to sanctions in the US, came after pressure from Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's, currently in Washington for talks with President George W Bush.
Mr Aznar was a staunch ally of Mr Bush's in the run-up to the war against Iraq, supporting US moves to win United Nations Security Council backing for military action.
France must answer
for shameful conduct
The fighting in Iraq is over, but the serious split between the United States and France - precipitated by President Jacques Chirac's disgraceful conduct in the weeks before the war and the continuing desire of the French to diminish American power in the world - remains a major international issue.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich captured the French behavior in a word: malicious.
Economic interests, as well as jealousy of power, color the picture. According to the International Herald Tribune, French interests had drilling contracts with Iraq worth as much as $50 billion. The contracts were so lopsidedly favorable to the French firms that no successor regime to Saddam Hussein could respect them.
This was part and parcel of Saddam's incestuous political and commercial relationship with the defense, business and political elites of France.
As the Weekly Standard reported, Saddam threatened to expose what he saw as France's betrayal in the 1991 Gulf War, saying, "If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public."
The fan dance with Iraq dates to the 1970s, when Chirac was the point man in selling nuclear reactors to Iraq, including the Osirak plant bombed by Israel in 1981. (The plant, incidentally, was known as the O'Chirac reactor.) It was Chirac who signed the treaty with Iraq allowing for the transfer of French nuclear technology and specialists.
It was this same Chirac who lavished praise on Saddam as a "personal friend" and a "great statesman" and who invited him to his home. And, it was Chirac who led the French efforts to sell arms to Iraq - some $20 billion worth. Those who believe the U.S. went to war against Iraq inspired by oil are looking in the wrong direction. Try Paris.
This shameful history came to a head during the UN Security Council debates leading up to the war. France's conduct seemed motivated by a visceral and irrational anti-Americanism, connected, one must guess, to the decline of France as a world power and the rise of the U.S. as a hyperpower. That bias, disgracefully, manifested itself in a French vote for Resolution 1441 that was clearly in bad faith. The "serious consequences" language of the resolution was diplo-speak for military action. But Chirac undermined both the resolution and the UN when he stated that "disarmament must happen peacefully," knowing disarmament was impossible without war or the serious threat of it.
Chirac's conduct must be measured against British Prime Minister Tony Blair's sterling performance. The left wing of Blair's Labor Party was immersed in its traditional pacifism and thus hostile to force whatever the provocation. Blair put his premiership on the line and held fast to the alliance.
Two points he made are critical: One, France, by its obstructionist diplomacy, encouraged Saddam to resist UN Resolution 1441. Two, the most dangerous thing in the showdown with Iraq's dictator would have been to let him go unpunished. "It is dangerous if such regimes disbelieve us," Blair said. "Dangerous if they think they can use our weakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us. Dangerous because one day they will mistake our innate revulsion against war for permanent incapacity."
Under President Bush, the U.S. has demonstrated more determination to enforce Security Council resolutions than the Security Council itself. The French and others who would pay any price to avoid war may not understand it, but it's a simple concept. It's called leadership
au
Who is the writer here, and what publication? I mean, it's just a little bit colored in the happy stars and stripes direction...Chirac as 'disgraceful' and Blair as 'sterling' (love that tie in to good, hard English steel). The final paragraph might have been composed by Bush's speechwriters (literally, it might have been).
blatham
It was written by Mortimer Zuckerman and appeared in the New York Daily News. Yes it is a pro US point of view. Are you taking exception to it because it is not the usual fare of anti-US sentiment that regularly appears in a2k.
"Anti-US"....come on, you are smarter than that.
You speak as if the US is one thing, eternally true and good, which might not ever move in directions which are regretful and deserving of condemnation.
blatham
And you speak as if the US is the great Satan and should never be supported. I should be greatful for one thing at least as a foreigner you do not get to vote.
Au -- For heaven's sake, POST LINKS!!
au
You will not find such generalizations as 'the US is evil' in my posts.
I have said, for example, these two things several times on this site - that 1) the US is responsible for more positive than negative consequences and that 2) what has been achieved in various spheres of activity (science, technology, medicine) in the US over the last 100 years, the future will likely come to consider a golden age.
But as to point 1) above, the same can be said of Luxembourg or Finland or Australia or any number of states. The US is not special in goodness. As regards point 2), there is no question that such developments point to a vibrant and free flow of knowledge and ideas. But it leaves out the uses to which much of this technology has been put.
The US is also, along with the good it has brought, been guilty of significant evils in the world. The folks of Bhopal have yet to receive a single penny in compensation. They aren't waving the stars and stripes there this evening.
The interesting question - the REALLY interesting one - is, why are so many Americans afraid of confronting this, or admitting it? What is the fear? That France or Canada will somehow then take over control of everything? It's all just too ludicrous. And it's really juvenile.
Nicholas Lemann writes about his interviews with Karl Rove in the 5/12 New Yorker, which just arrived. The entire article looks good. The piece ends with the following paragraph which caught my eye:
Quote:...In our last interview, I tried out on Rove a scenario I called "the death of the Democratic Party." The Party has three key funding sources: trial lawyers, Jews, and labor unions. One could systematically disable all three, by passing tort-reform legislation that would cut off the trial lawyers' incomes, by tilting pro-Israel in Middle East policy and thus changing the loyalties of big Jewish contributors, and by trying to shrink the part of the labor force which belongs to the newer, and more Democratic, public-employee unions. And then there are three fundamental services that the Democratic Party is offering to voters: Social Security, Medicare, and public education. Each of these could be peeled away, too: Social Security and Medicare by giving people benefits in the form of individual accounts that they invested in the stock market, and public education by trumping the Democrats on the issue of standards. The Bush Adaministration has pursued every item on that list. Rove didn't offer any specific objection but, rather, a general caveat that the project might be too ambitious. "Well, I think it's a plausible explanation," he said. "I don't think you ever kill any political party. Political parties kill themselves, or are killed, not by the other political party but by their failure to adapt to new circumstances. But do you weaken a political party, either by turning what they see as assets into liabilities, and/rr by taking issues they consider to be theirs, and raiding them?" The thought brought to his round, unlined, guileless face a boyish look of pure delight. "Absolutely!"
au - Zuckerman OWNS the Daily News, because Murdoch beat him out on the purchase of the Post. So Zuckerman can, and does, say whatever he wants whenever he wants in his own paper. Just because he made a lot of money in real estate doesn't mean he's such an expert in all other matters.
But it's always interesting to read narrow, one-sided comments from people who don't think they're doing that. Surely you must have realized by now that anti-Bush does not necessarily equate with anti-American. Most of the rest of the world is not, and has nor, been in favor or approval of what Bush is doing and has done. It's not only Iraq. It's all those little things like backing out of treaties that have kept so many countries in balance. like arrogantly refusing to be held to account for actions while demanding that others are, like the appointments of so many unqualified people to important posts. And they don't think it's the American people; they know it's Bush.
You criticize France for not backing us up. Actually, France has been more consistent than our ever-seeking-reasons for war president. France's position has remained what it was and why it was, and this is not admirable only to those toadies who think every word out of Rove-Bush-Rumsfeld's mouth should be obeyed.
And you should recognize the fact that the rest of the world is observant, and has noticed what is happening in this country vis-a-vis health care, education, fuel consumption, pollution, neglect of the environment. A lot of the rest of the world has come to realize the interdependency that is needed, and has been able to note that in taking an inherited budget surplus to a record budget deficit, this Bush administration has also threatened the delicate balance of the world's economy.
Yes, Blatham, the little puppet does strut, and has the same arm length proportion as Mussolini. What he lacks is a chin. And note the Pinocchio complex becoming more evident. As the lies and actions grow more childish and pronounced, he grows shorter. Day by day. And Rove goes rounder.
Also please note the disappearing of that landing on the aircraft carrier. There has been so much ridicule, and so much coming out about where the ship actually was ("making lazy circles in the sea"), and how Bush's hands "were on the wheel for a short bit while on the straight," and so obviously a photo-op, that this whole ad sleaze seems to have back-fired.
You know, I think maybe it isn't an anti feeling at all. I think it is a laugh, ridiculing, and that, in the end, is worse.
Mamaj: You are so right about the ridicule factor. It's a strong one, and not to be overlooked. It sure worked for the other side, the bastards.
