Europe balks at Iraq bailout

[UpInArms]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0909/p01s04-woeu.html

The US-backed UN resolution seeking more troops faces a wall of resistance from Europe.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

PARIS – As France and the United States dig in on opposite sides

of the central question hanging over Iraq's future - who should control the country - Washington stands almost no chance of winning broad European support for its new UN Security Council resolution, analysts and officials here say.

America's suggestion that UN members should send troops to Iraq and that the world body could do more there, clearly offers outsiders only a supporting role. "The lead role has to be played by the United States," US Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted on NBC Sunday. "We have governing responsibility."

That clashes directly with European opinion. "There is a deep conviction in Europe that if you keep a dominant American role in Iraq, the stabilization effort will not work ... because of the constant flavor of an occupation force," says Christoph Betram, head of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. "A dominant role for the UN is the essential condition for getting things right in Iraq."

...more...

(some good reading here)

[monobrau]

1. The worm turns

Well, everybody had a good laugh and throught it was so clever to serve up those freedom fries a few months ago. Looks like the next big patriot menu trend will be a heaping helping of crow.
BON APPÉTITE, assholes!

[patrice]

2. Everybody knows you don't give a panhandler

your pocket change; it only "enables" them.

[Noon_Blue_Apples]

3. Yes, compassionate conservatism in practice

lovely

this is where I start enjoying the show

[NNN0LHI]

4. Back to freedom fries again n/t

[Sick of Bullshit]

6. Oh, Waiter, I'll have some freedom fries

to go with my main course of freedom crow.

[Gloria]

5. Hang tough, Europe!!

Let Bush roll back the tax cuts....to pay for this mess....
and get Congress to question the "no-bid" contracts....that'll be two big
slams at the bastard.

[evworldeditor]

7. Couldn't Agree More

We saw GW's balls on the USS Abraham Lincoln back in May and now we see them again with this audacious request to have "Old Europe" help bail US out of this mess.

My suggestion would be that instead of going to Germany and France, GW go hat in hand to Rupert Murdock and CNN and ABC, NBC, CBS and the rest of corporate America who supported this man and his cabal of idiots and make THEM pay for the mess he made in their behalf.

Maybe a "war tax" on war profiteers and Pentagon mouthpieces would change a few attitudes....

But that's wishful thinking. In the end, Europe will promise a few Billion and deliver a couple million and it will be we Americans -- who tacitly or actively supported this man or simply failed to speak out who will bear the cost. But we too will get off cheap compared to the people in Afghanistan and Iraq.