Bush isolated as speech to UN falls flat

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1048521,00.html

Bush isolated as speech to UN falls flat

Gary Younge in New York Wednesday September 24, 2003 The Guardian

George Bush was increasingly isolated on the global stage yesterday as he defied intense criticism from a litany of world leaders at the United Nations over the war on Iraq. Showing no contrition for defying the world body in March or the declining security situation in Iraq, the US president called for the world to set aside past differences and help rebuild the country: "Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid - and all nations of goodwill should step forward and provide that support," he said.

But the French president, Jacques Chirac, who spoke after Mr Bush, blamed the US-led war for sparking one of the most severe crises in the history of the UN and argued that Mr Bush's unilateral actions could lead to anarchy."No one can act alone in the name of all and no one can accept the anarchy of a society without rules," he said. "The war, launched without the authorisation of the security council, shook the multilateral system. The UN has just been through one of the most grave crises in its history." Earlier the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, condemned the doctrine of preemptive military intervention, arguing that it could lead to the unjustified "lawless use of force" and posed a "fundamental challenge" to world peace and stability. "My concern is that, if it were to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification," said Mr Annan. "This logic represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last 58 years." The Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who also spoke before Mr Bush, said: "A war can perhaps be won single-handedly. But peace - lasting peace - cannot be secured without the support of all."

Mr Bush's speech was received with polite applause from the 191-member states, while his critics were given a far warmer reception.
The American president was not just under fire for his decision to wage war without international consent but also for his refusal to move more quickly towards handing control of the country back to the Iraqi people. Both Mr Chirac and the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, called for a transition within months, insisting that this was crucial to securing peace. Mr Bush has not laid out a timetable.<snip>

[Bucky__Badger]

1. but... if Bushco hands over control of Iraq to the Iraquis to soon...

he'd loose out on all of the OIL MONEY!

[JPace]

2. What oil money?

They can't get the stuff out of the country
cause the pipes keep getting blown up. AWOL
is finding out how weak he really is!

[underpants]

7. Actually I believe they are having to IMPORT oil into Iraq

for the reasons you cited.

[Enraged_Ape]

9. The pipes get blown up and we pay Halliburton big $$$...

to fix them.

Halliburton still pays ex-CEO Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

No, I don't see a conflict of interest there.

[underpants]

8. This will totally screw up their Business model

Heads are being scratched at Halliburton and Bechtel (with consultation coming from Bremmer) about how others can be let in and the profit margins not being changed.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

10. Easy

They let the Europeans in by just taking their money.
;-)

[underpants]

11. Aha a new revenue stream

Genius. And make sure WE handle all the money. Hell we don't have to account for it to our own taxpayers them foreigners don't have a chance.

[Gman]

14. LOL!

Great point!

All the meeting rooms are busy and Excel spreadsheets humming...

[realFedUp]

3. Let them eat cake

The answer for the Bushies...host a big
state dinner, with lots of French wines, champagnes,
truffles, pastries, meats from Germany, vodkas
from Russia etc. and invite the French, Germans, Russians.

[Mari333]

4. It was a BUST, just like the last one

meandering idiot. The US public didnt buy it. The Rove machine fails again.


"T E R R A N O O K L Y E R"

[T Roosevelt]

5. Shouldn't it be "terranook-u-lar"

;-)

[truthisfreedom]

6. hahahahahahahaha

loser.

[wabeewoman]

12. This is a real opportunity

for democrats to continue to pound on the fact that bush has no plan. The public is believing it. So bush's choice is to admit he has no plan, come up with a believable plan that is fair to the Iraqi people or the true plan which continues to pillage the country. Any of these options gives Democrats opportunity.

[henslee]

13. Under the circumstances, this admin. is more desperate and dangerous than

ever. Let's approach this wounded animal cautiously.

[opihimoimoi]

15. Wounded?? Or Sick.???

In any event, I agree, desperate and unpredicable.

The Pub Masters who control the Shrub must have known the UN results before hand so why did they let him go forward to give a crummy speech/ ?? Are they setting up the Shrub to take the Fall, like twist in the wind time??

[AndyTiedye]

16. They Wanted the UN To Say No Anyway

So that we will "have to" keep Iraq under US control.
He just wanted to be able to say he tried the UN. We can see how hard he was trying.

[htuttle]

17. That wasn't a speech to the UN

That was a speech for the US.

He just happened to be standing in front of the UN General Assembly when he gave it.

[peterh]

18. One official is really upbeat….

But, if you notice, he never gives his name….so just how fucking proud is he of his assessment? What a joke.

(sorry – can’t link to the below)


WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A senior administration official offered an upbeat
assessment Wednesday of President George W. Bush's diplomatic efforts at the
U.N. General Assembly, saying that no leader the president has met with has said
they won't assist the U.S. in rebuilding Iraq.
The official rejected the idea that Bush received a chilly reception when he
gave his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday and said several other
leaders had complimented Bush on the speech.
In his address, Bush said the war in Iraq was the right thing to do and
enforcing the U.N. Security Council resolutions had preserved the credibility of
the U.N. At the time, the U.N. Security Council didn't authorize an invasion of
Iraq.
"I think the president feels he came here and did what he needed to do. He
needed to make clear to people that the United States values our best friends
and the international community in meeting goals and challenges," the official
said.
"But that means we actually have to meet them. We can not be in a position of
sweeping under the rug that there are some really tough issues out there and
just talking about them is not meeting them," the official added.
The official said that U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan made the same point
when he condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq but added that no one should be
surprised the U.S. acted when the U.N. became paralyzed.

[cliss]

19. I really believe Bush is at the point of no return.

At my office, people seem to not even care about him any longer. I think they view him as an embarrassment.

Compare that with just a few months ago (man, how things can change!) the flag was being paraded around. Patriotism was everywhere. One man is hugely overweight, and he would stagger around with his American Flag shirt. The red and white stripes were stretched across his stomach, and the space between the buttons had gaps.

Now, even the Bush-bashing emails have stopped. I think people would rather forget about him than to make an issue of it, since they were so dreadfully wrong about the whole thing. I believe he made them look like fools.

Now, they just want to write him off.

[ILeft]

20. He's a malignant tumor. We can't just forget about him...

The whole damn Bush Regime is a cancer that has spread through all of the federal government. They're going to kill us; it's just a matter of how long it's gonna take.

[R Hickey]

21. Forget the Oil. We must save the world's Children from sex.

What a brilliant Red Herring. Talk about changing the subject...

Bush's message to UN: "How can UN delegates worry about Iraq's oil, when some poor child, somewhere in the world, at this very moment, might be getting exploited...losing her virginity...for pennies on the dollar?"

The Neo-cons probably thought that 'sexing up' Bush's speech ought to really throw those UN delegates off track. Ashcroft probably started drooling when Karl Rove came up with the idea.

Its surprising Bush didn't whip out a gigantic plastic dildo during the address, and start waving it around his head as he spoke, perhaps pointing it accusingly at the Thiland deligation.

The Bush dildo ploy would certainly have been more dramatic than Colon Powell's tiny glass vial of fake anthrax germs. Perhaps Bush could have even pounded the thing on the podium the way Nikita Kruschev pounded his shoe, back in the 1960's.

I was half expecting Bush to launch into a story about his youthful drunken indiscretions with a donkey in some Mexican border-town, and how he's grown and matured so much since then.

Maybe Dubya should have devoted his entire speech to illict sex, and not said a word about our invasion of Iraq, and the PNAC's plans to steal all that oil.