2004 US Elections

Getting Away With Murder?(Newsweek)
The Najaf ceasefire raises questions about when—and if—Moqtada al-Sadr will ever face trial on charges of murder and theft.
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The President's Speech (NY times)
Opinion
If President Bush had been talking a year ago, after the fall of Baghdad, his speech at the Army War College last night might have sounded like a plan for moving forward. He was able to point to a new United Nations resolution being developed in consultation with American allies, not imposed in defiance of them, and to a timetable for moving Iraq toward elected self-government. He talked in general terms of expanding international involvement and stabilizing Iraq. But Mr. Bush was not starting fresh. He spoke after nearly 14 months of policy failures, none of them acknowledged by the president, which have left Iraq increasingly violent and drained Washington's credibility with the Iraqi people and the international community. They have been waiting for Mr. Bush to make a clean break with those policies. He did not do that last night. The speech reflected the fact that Mr. Bush has been backtracking lately, but he did not come close to charting the new course he needs to take. His "five steps" toward Iraqi independence were merely a recitation of the tasks ahead.
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Bush's Epic Gamble (NY times)
By OP-ED COLUMNIST DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 25, 2004

Last night, George Bush made it clear that American military victories alone will not secure Iraq. We keep winning victories, but somehow the violence just keeps on coming.
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Delusions of Triumph (NY times)
By OP-ED COLUMNIST PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 25, 2004

Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that the public has a poor opinion of George Bush's economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Mr. Bush's economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq.

A recent article in The New York Times, citing concerns of "Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists," put it this way: "The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months — a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Mr. Bush's favor — has been largely crowded out of the electorate's psyche by images from Iraq."
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The Misunderestimated Man - How Bush chose stupidity. By Jacob Weisberg (Slate)
Adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms, published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. Reprinted with permission; © 2004 Jacob Weisberg.

The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is yes and no.
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"Did Somebody Say War?(New York Times)
By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 24, 2004

President Bush fell off his bike and hurt himself during a 17-mile excursion at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Saturday. Nothing serious. A few cuts and bruises. He was wearing a bike helmet and a mouth guard, and he was able to climb back on his bike and finish his ride.
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Tribal Warfare in Iraq(New York Times)
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: May 24, 2004

The three factions controlling Iraq long suspicious of one another are now on the brink of open tribal warfare. Not the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds I mean the Pentagon, State Department and C.I.A.
The spark setting off this U.S. bureaucratic conflagration is the former Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, a sophisticated, secular Shiite who organized resistance to the Sunni despot Saddam Hussein before it was popular.
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'Its best use is as a doorstop(Guardian Unlimited)
Brian Whitaker explains why a book packed with sweeping generalisations about Arabs carries so much weight with both neocons and military in the US "
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"What have we done? (Guardian Unlimited)
"The horrific images from Abu Ghraib have come to define the ill-starred occupation of Iraq, but what do they really tell us about America? Are they simply the work of a few rogue soldiers, or the result of the new foreign and domestic policies of the Bush administration, which find ready approval in an increasingly brutalised society? Susan Sontag on the ugly face of the war on terror "
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The ugly face of power
One of Colin Powell's aides has shown TV viewers what the Bush administration is really like, says Philip James.
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The Project for the New American Century (diplo.co.uk)
Remember those four letters because they spell out the hidden agenda of the Bush administration. Sounds like some nutty conspiracy theory? Well, think again. Just consider the evidence :

PNAC stands for The Project for the New American Century and it's a right wing think-tank that includes some very influential members of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney (vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). Check out the PNAC website and read their Statement Of Principles and note the signatures. Here's a quote from that statement (with my emphasis) :

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.

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No time to play the waiting game (Guardian unlimited)
John Kerry's hesitant response to the Abu Ghraib scandal has cost him a chance to inflict damage on George Bush, says Philip James ..
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How can America get out of Iraq?(Guardian Unlimited)
As the situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse, Sherle R Schwenninger, Phyllis Bennis and Mansour Farhang outline possible exit strategies for the US
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Clash of Civilizations (NY times)
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

Testifying before the Senate yesterday, General Richard Myers admitted that we're checkmated in Iraq.

"There is no way to militarily lose in Iraq," he said, describing the generals' consensus. "There is also no way to militarily win in Iraq."

Talk about the sound of one hand clapping. And they say John Kerry is on both sides of issues.

Sounding like Mr. Kerry, General Myers summed up: "This process has to be internationalized. The U.N. has to play the governance role. That's how we're, in my view, eventually going to win.
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Dancing Alone (NY times)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
t is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?

"Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You're the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics."

Yes, that's true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so.
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The Abu Ghraib Spin (NY times)
The administration and its Republican allies appear to have settled on a way to deflect attention from the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: accuse Democrats and the news media of overreacting, then pile all of the remaining responsibility onto officers in the battlefield, far away from President Bush and his political team. That cynical approach was on display yesterday morning in the second Abu Ghraib hearing in the Senate, a body that finally seemed to be assuming its responsibility for overseeing the executive branch after a year of silently watching the bungled Iraq occupation.
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Hold Fast, Idealists(NY times)
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON — Last month, the angry charge at the 9/11 commission was that our intelligence was weak and ineffective. That was because the terrorists were at war and we were not. This month, with the U.S. at war with terror, the angry
charge is that our intelligence was cruelly un-American.
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How can America get out of Iraq? (Guardian)
As the situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Schell, Howard Zinn and William Polk outline possible exit strategies for the US

Wednesday May 12, 2004

Jonathan Schell : Let the Iraqis build their own future

In the debate over the Iraq war, a new fragment of conventional wisdom has fixed itself in the minds of mainstream politicians and commentators: whether or not it was right to go to war, we are told on all sides, the US must now succeed in achieving its aims.
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Just Trust Us(NY times)
OP-ED COLUMNIST - PAUL KRUGMAN
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For Iraqis to Win, the U.S. Must Lose (NY times)
OP-ED COLUMNIST - DAVID BROOKS
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Poles apart (Guardian)
Matthew Wells joins anti-war protesters outside Hillary Clinton's office and finds US opinion on Iraq increasingly polarised ...
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On the Road (NY times)
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God save America ... (Guardian)
The race for the White House will be decided by fundagelicals. That's good news for twice-born George Bush ..
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