Thread: Bush doing the right thing?

Leaders Work Out Plan For End to Mideast Crisis

President Bush and other world leaders put aside their differences Sunday and crafted a plan to stop the fighting in the Middle East, calling on Islamic militias to halt their rocket attacks on Israel and on Israeli forces to end their military response.

It's suppose to be 102 degrees here in Va., but I think it's going to snow... ~Inkster

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...500571_pf.html

hey people, I think the Neo-cons have kidknaped Inky and left a bot in his place.

they probably have him at gitmo hooked up to a brainwashing machine.

Someone call the ACLU & Amnisty International

:evil:

Yea, I'm starting to wonder why CNN would run the 'expletive" about Bush, his comments may have been staged, the 06 elections are coming up ya know... ~Inky

:evil:

I wouldn't say they were doing nothing Angie, they were actually talking about resolutions while they were eating... I wish i were a fly on the wall at that conference.. also, big whoop with the shit word. Anyone with a pressured job says alot worse.. ~Inkster

I was floored by that video. Granted until now I'd never considered that it was staged, trusting soul that I am, but giving the benefit of the doubt: Was that actually GW talking about politics? I mean, actually discussing other countries as if he knew where they were and was a bit concerned about them. That is a step forward, even if his solution was that everyone just naturally do exactly what he says after about 3 seconds thought on the matter.

My favorite, "I'm thinking of just having Anan tell them....."

Um, actually he's not a servent. This might be why you can't get along with anyone, you seem to think anyone who isn't white works for you.

Yea, if that was to be off the record and CNN reported it without backlash, there must be something fishy about it... ~Inky

Showed me that Bush eats with his mouth open!

And that they speak about a war like it is anything else but a conflict in which people are dying... let's talking more acting!

July 17, 2006 - Only very rarely do we get to hear completely candid comments between allied leaders at what is supposed to be a private lunch. George W. Bush, in an unguarded moment on Monday, uttered a common vulgarity that would surprise no one who's ever worked on a Texas ranch, although it may offend some of his religiously devout supporters. But what was even more jarring about the remarks Bush made to Tony Blair at the closing meal of the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg was what they revealed about his views of Mideast diplomacy. Or, more to the point, his lack of interest in personally taking part in any of it.

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As he munched on a roll, Bush told the British prime minister, with whom he is very familiar terms: "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbullah to stop doing this s--t and it's over." Bush added that he felt like telling U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who visited the gathered leaders, to get on the phone with Syrian President Bashar Assad to "make something happen."


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We don't have Blair's answer to that remark. But another question might be: why doesn't Bush himself make something happen? And to whom was Bush referring when he told Blair that "they" need to pressure Syria? If "they" meant Annan and the U.N., it is true that under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, the world body has officially demanded that Syria stop its interference in Lebanon, including its support of Hizbullah. But the U.N. Security Council generally has little capacity to act on its own, and certainly no enforcement ability. The Council is mainly a tool of the major powers. It is prime ministers and presidents like Bush who are the ones who generally put teeth into those U.N. resolutions.

As the war in the Mideast escalates, the real issue going forward is whether Bush will continue his own policy of non-engagement with the Syrians, despite what Syrian ambassador to the United State Imad Moustapha describes as interest in Damascus in talking again under the right circumstances. And the CIA has been telling the White House for two years now that America lost a valuable cooperative relationship, especially in fighting the Iraqi insurgency, when Bush cut off ties between the two intelligence communities. Moustapha told me in an interview late last week that this cooperation, which ended in January 2005, will not resume until Washington stops bashing Syrian President Bashar Assad in public. "We're not asking you to praise Syria, just stop this campaign against us," Moustapha said. "What broke the neck of the camel was when we helped with the capture of [Saddam half-brother Ibrahim] Sabawi and 32 of his aides. Then the next day we were getting bashed again. We thought enough was enough." Damascus was also angered when Washington blew the cover of one of its operatives, he says.

U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed to NEWSWEEK that a Syrian tip led to Sabawi's capture. Indeed, in the last few years before contacts were cut off, says one intelligence expert who works on contract with the Pentagon, Syrian intelligence helped avert two major attacks on U.S. targets-the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, Canada, and a Navy base in Bahrain. "There was a lot of wonderful cooperation," he says. That started to sour when U.S. occupation officials at first were angered by Assad's alleged support of the Iraq insurgency (the finger-pointing at Damascus stopped more than a year ago, even though the attacks continue unabated). And Washington began to attack Assad publicly in earnest after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, although a U.N. investigation has not drawn any definite conclusions yet about Assad's alleged personal complicity. While Syrian intelligence was almost certainly involved in the Hariri killing, the investigating judge, Serge Brammertz, recently praised the Damascus's cooperation with the probe.

No one doubts that Syria has an anti-American agenda, certainly an anti-Israeli one, or that Assad is harboring hardliners like Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. But Bush seems to have made Syria, bit by bit, a charter member of his "axis of evil" rogues gallery-regimes he will not deal with on any level because they support terror and are anti-democratic. If the U.S. president is still harboring hopes of regime change in Damascus, in the middle of a conflagration that has radicalized many parts of the Arab Middle East, he might want to think again. Were Assad's regime to be toppled, the mosaic of competing sects and ethnicities that makes up Syria could explode into conflict, and some Islamist GROUPS that are natural allies for Hamas and Hizbullah-and possibly Al Qaeda-are already gaining in influence. One U.S. official says that that American pressure on Syria, which includes limited financial sanctions imposed in 2004, may be "radicalizing the country."

And on a more practical level, Bush really needs someone right now who can persuade Syria to stand down from the ongoing—and escalating—war. After Hariri was killed, U.S. and French officials began demanding that Syria end its sway over Lebanon. Last week, after Hizbullah attacked Israel, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded publicly that Syria do something about Lebanon. Perhaps Bush was right, someone should "get Syria to get Hizbullah to stop doing this." Maybe it should be him.

There's one more interesting issue raised by the U.S. president's impromptu aside to Blair. Why Bush was so focused on Syria when publicly he and his top aides have fingered Iran as the chief culprit? The answer to that question may have to await another candid comment.