U.S. Aims to Calm Allies Apprehensive About Iraq

[kskiska]

The White House worked to reassure its nervous European partners yesterday, as President Bush faced new criticism from Poland over the decision to launch the war that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party dictatorship.

Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski, in the latest challenge among allies to the rationale for the U.S.-led invasion, said he feels "uncomfortable due to the fact that we were misled with the misinformation on weapons of mass destruction."

Kwasniewski's complaints about prewar intelligence added to a rough week for the Bush administration, which is working to highlight achievements in Iraq one year after the invasion. Bush will mark today's anniversary with an address to dozens of diplomats from nations considered anti-terrorist allies.

Ever since last week's terrorist attacks in Madrid and the electoral tide that swept away the Spanish government that supported the Iraq war, Bush and top foreign policy aides have been dialing European leaders to reassure them and keep their backing in the war against terrorists.

It is an effort to "keep people calm," an administration official said.

(snip)

In an interview to appear in today's Le Monde, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that "the Iraq war hasn't led to a more stable world."

"Let's stick to the facts," de Villepin said, according to a French government transcript. "Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before the war. Today, that country is one of the main centers of terrorism worldwide."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6277-2004Mar18.html

[bemildred]

1. The state propaganda organs must have all the

writers working overtime. "Apprehensive" is not the right word.

[NNN0LHI]

2. The Mighty Wurlitzer is working 24/7 n/t

[teryang]

3. Iraq is disintegrating

...and on the verge of total chaos. McCain tonight, our chairman of the Armed Services subcommittee peddled distressing spin on what is going on in Iraq and Pakistan. All spin disconnected from reality. Creating "democracy" in Iraq will solve middle eastern problems. "Attacks on Americans going down. Heartened by Pakistans cooperation. If we get on with the "peace process" in Israel, our popularity will improve." (paraphrased)

Attacks on Americans continue. The attempts to minimize the significance of American dead and wounded continue. Those in Iraq regardless of national identity who cooperate with Americans are killed. Civilians and contractors are free fire zones. The slaughter hasn't abated. Anarchy prevails. McCain acts as if killing those who cooperate with the occupation forces is of no significance to the alleged policy goal of creating "democracy" in Iraq.

Our regime paid hundreds of millions to buy the latest media show on "the capture al Zwahiri" in Pakistan. F-16s, money, and dropping the military embargo for our new "major ally," Pakistan, the military proliferator of terrorism and nuclear weapons.

Oh yeah, the world is safer. But remember the militarists rubric, it's a dangerous world! So we are spending hundreds of billions we don't have on defense contractors while junta policies fail abroad.

[bemildred]

4. Yeah, but what are they going to do?

I guess we could put a Tiger Team(tm) on it and get stakeholder
commitment to a plan with well defined goals and objective
accountability measures. :puke:

All they can do is keep pretending and hope for a break.
What is amazing here is how fast the thing has developed to this
stage.

And I am filled with guilty schadenfreude.

I'm really wondering what is up in Pakistan. I don't think it's
just a dog-and-pony show.

[teryang]

5. What to do?

Withdraw the troops and let nature take its course.

It's a show purchased for the benefit of an administration in deep, deep trouble. Their foreign policies are in a shambles on virtually every front. If they can surround and capture an isolated group of terrorists in Pakistan (which they saved from destruction early on in Afghanistan as a sop to Musharref) they can claim a victory in the war of terror. Musharref could have taken this group on at any time he wanted. But like a good horse trader at the bazaar, he is getting the price he wanted, hundreds of millions in military aid, top quality fighter aircraft, the end of the military embargo, and best of all, a declaration that he is a major American ally.

I don't doubt that Pakistan sponsored terrorists attacks or Pakistan attacks of some type on India are not far behind. This is what followed the arrival of American forces in Pakistan as the first payment to the viceroy of central Asian terror tactics.

[NNN0LHI]

6. This guy is a big piece of the puzzle too

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0206/p10s02-comv.html

A Pardoned Proliferator

Selling nuclear-weapons technology on the black market should be a crime against humanity. But not in Pakistan, where first it can get you rich and then, after you're caught by foreigners, a slap on the wrist and a presidential pardon.

That's what has happened to a scientist named Abdul Qadeer Khan, who built Pakistan's atomic bomb but who also, over many years, sold the blueprints and materials to make one to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and perhaps other nations as well.

Mr. Khan has gotten off easy because he appeared ready to implicate either former or current Pakistani military officers who helped him or knew of his heinous enterprise. In a deal that will go down in history as a sham, he made a televised confession on Wednesday, and then was pardoned the next day by President Pervez Musharraf. "I have much to answer for it," Khan said in his confession and apology. Indeed.

And why is this personal act of nuclear proliferation being so quickly brushed under a dirty rug? Because the United States needs the goodwill of the Musharraf government and the Pakistani military in the continuing fight against Al Qaeda and in stabilizing post-Taliban Afghanistan.

more

[bemildred]

13. "Withdraw the troops and let nature take its course"

Well, yeah, there is that.
Perhaps we could support the better side, if there was one.
Perhaps we could just stay the hell out of it, maybe look
after our own people for a change.

I was thinking of the show part as being about the AQ #2 fellow
they supposedly had surrounded. Now it seems it is as you say,
an attempt to engineer a victory of some sort, and the AQ #2 guy
is media frosting. Ought to have known.

According to the Asia Times piece (Aidoneus put up in another thread)
they are bogged and the fight is spreading.

[htuttle]

12. Civil war coming up in Pakistan, too

From what I've been reading in non-US sources (asia times, etc...) the so-called 'tribal' areas of Pakistan are close to open revolt. The harder the US has pressured Musharrif, the harder Musharrif has pushed tribal-area leaders to put up an image that they are 'fighting terror', and it looks like they have been pushed too far.

I wouldn't be too surprised if most of this 'fighting al Queda' in Pakistan turned out to be more about fighting Waziristani rebels than al Queda.

[Dr Fate]

7. "Dave, take sedative and think this over..."

n/t

[LiviaOlivia]

8. The stupidity and ineptness of Bushco at it's all time high

Bushco and their party androids have been screaming about the cowardly socialists in Spain caving in to terrorists, then idiotic, pseudo-patriotic rantings coming off the floor of the House and Senate condemning anyone who doesn't blindly play it their way.

And they want to "keep people calm" (their coalition partners) while bad mouthing Europeans for home consumption and votes.

I can only conclude that they are not only stupid, greedy, mean, narcissistic, dangerous, but most likely mentally ill.

[rustydog]

9. All these wusses must be wrong...Bush has made the world safer!

The Republican-dominated House of Representatives have declared it so. It must be true then, right? We are safer now that Saddam the Iraq/9-11 conspirator has been dethroned.

Hell, Bush declared AlQaeda disrupted shortly after we backed out of Afghanistan to get Saddam. I seem to recall him saying Osama was of no concern to him any more, that he was insignificant.

Why is he so significant now?

I mean, the world is safer now, right?
These coalition members are just crybabies, right?
You are with us or you are against us.

Bush, I am fucking against you, your criminal family and your entire Administration.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Bush and de VIllepin on Iraqi terror --

"In an interview to appear in today's Le Monde, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that 'the Iraq war hasn't led to a more stable world.'

'Let's stick to the facts,' de Villepin said, according to a French government transcript. "Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before the war. Today, that country is one of the main centers of terrorism worldwide.'"

Yet, George Bush continues to say, as I heard him say in his speech to the soldiers in Kentucky yesterday, that Iraq was a central sponsor of terrorism before the war. The networks carry the speech, but not the truth.

[Barrett808]

11. kick