Red-faced Pentagon delays Iraq tenders

[Sticky]

Washington, Dec. 11: With the Bush administration’s decision to bar countries opposed to the war from bidding for US contracts in Iraq escalating into a trans-Atlantic trade dispute, the Pentagon last night delayed issuing tenders for reconstruction work worth $18.6 billion, which was due at the start of the week.

<snip>

The memo, which angered the EU, Russia and Canada, became public a day before President George W. Bush was to request the Presidents of Russia and France and Germany’s chancellor to receive his envoy James Baker and negotiate a write-off of Iraqi debt.

Sources here familiar with the administration’s intense turf battles over Iraq concluded that the timing of the memo was no accident. It coincided with Baker’s appointment as Bush’s envoy to negotiate Iraqi debt.

It is Washington’s latest ill-kept secret that Baker, with very special links with the Bush family, will do more than just deal with the debt problem. His appointment is seen here as a desperate act, involving the current President’s father and other senior Republicans, to salvage the Bush presidency from the Iraqi quagmire.

It is widely expected that Baker will gradually acquire a say in all aspects of Iraqi policy, undercutting defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and vice-president Dick Cheney, the most prominent planners of the war and the disastrous post-war reconstruction efforts.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031212/asp/foreign/story_2671235.asp

[American Renaissance]

1. Sounds like my step father,

After my parents broke up, my mother had a real knack for picking up losers,

Including one drunk retard named Steve, who she eventually married... and divorced.

After they had a fight, he decided to come home to ask for her back, but she was not home, so he waited for her.

When she got home, Steve was on the porch peeing in the flower bed, (remember, he was a drunk) he didn't even finish, and while peeing in her flower bed he went into a drunken ramble about how sorry he was and how much he wanted her back.

Mommy called the police,

Some days I am afraid to pickup the newspaper, worried about what those idiots have been up to in Washington, I live in fear every day at work, because the people who know I am an American often come bopping by my office to make fun of the latest Dubya fuck-up. I didn't vote for that retard! LEAVE ME ALONE.

[UpInArms]

2. ya gotta love that writer from India

no punches pulled in this article :)

Definitely worth a complete read through -

best paragraph

It is Washington’s latest ill-kept secret that Baker, with very special links with the Bush family, will do more than just deal with the debt problem. His appointment is seen here as a desperate act, involving the current President’s father and other senior Republicans, to salvage the Bush presidency from the Iraqi quagmire.

:D :D

wish this guy wrote for US paper - I would buy a subscription so that I could read that rapier sword daily :)

other paragraphs of note:

Faced with the possibility of a second verdict against the US from the WTO, the US trade representative’s (USTR) office was yesterday scrambling for legal cover on Europe’s threat to take the issue to the WTO.

The White House is understood to have asked the USTR’s office to examine whether Iraqi contracts are covered by international trade procurement obligations since the coalition authority is not an entity subject to such obligations.

nice subtle little jab as to the *Co thinking that it could hide behind the skirts of the WTO whilst claiming not be be obligated by its rules.

hahahahahahaha - just wish I could have read it in America <sigh>

[54anickel]

3. Another delay, another couple billion for Hellaburnin

[pinto]

4. Did telegraphindia call our efforts "disastrous"? Yep. Thks for the post.

[cthrumatrix]

5. Baker cleaning up shrub's mess again.... getting primed for the election

magic next year.

[SteveG]

6. Two sentences in Bill Kristol's article worth noting

Appearing in today's Washington Standard Online - the home of the Neo-Con's was and amazing disavowal of the Pentagon's policy by Bill Kristol.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=3481&r=yjxxw

here are the two sentences that say it all.
"But this particular effort by the Pentagon to reward friends and punish enemies is stupid, and should be abandoned."

and far more bluntly the final sentence of the piece.
"This decision is a blunder. We trust it will be reversed."

[wabeewoman]

7. Josh Marshall

had basically the same story on TPM. He says "The following is from someone whom, after some lengthy negotiation, I've agreed to call a 'former high-level Democratic executive branch appointee.'

Here's this person's take on the Baker mission ..."


"What about the liberal dream of an Arab democracy that entranced many Democratic opinion-makers to support the Iraq war? Elections, in Baker’s experience, are not about fairly casting and counting votes; they are about who gets to rule. If a fair election was an indulgence not appropriate in Florida 2000, certainly Iraqis are not going to be allowed to vote for a freely chosen self-government in 2004.. For that matter, we cannot be sure that the United States will have a fair vote count in 2004. You never know what exigencies may arise in a close election." (my emphasis)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

[kskiska]

8. Looks like the Bush Family Fixer

is at it again. He must have an extra large shovel to clean up after these people.