How the World Can Aid Iraq Without Helping Bush...

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0922-08.htm

Published on Monday, September 22, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
How the World Can Aid Iraq Without Helping Bush
by Simon Tisdall

When George Bush addressed the UN general assembly in September last year, his message was blunt. The UN must either support his campaign against Iraq or be doomed to irrelevance. In the event, most countries refused to back him and, ignoring the UN, Bush plunged into war. Tomorrow, when Bush returns to the general assembly, his tone is expected to be somewhat less brusque. Although Bush is loath to admit it, the US badly needs international assistance, troops and money to prevent its Iraq occupation becoming an inescapable quagmire. In other words, the UN has turned out to be anything but "irrelevant". And through officials like Colin Powell, Bush the heedless unilateralist is now emphasizing consultation and an agreed, multilateral approach.

Has he seen the error of his ways? Hardly. If Bush has changed his tune, it is not because he has developed new-found respect for the UN and those who opposed his war. It is because the cost of Iraq, in terms of American lives and American tax dollars, is beginning to have a seriously negative impact on his re-election hopes. It is because ordinary Americans are critical (as ever, in fact) of his go-it-alone approach.

It is because Bush's credibility, like Tony Blair's, is rapidly shredding. His admission last week that there is "no evidence" tying Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks was a significant moment. For months, he and his top advisers have been deliberately giving the very opposite impression. As a result, a large majority of Americans did come to believe Saddam was somehow responsible for September 11. They can see now that Bush knowingly misled them.

When this realization is coupled with Bush's failure to justify claims that Saddam presented an imminent threat to the US and possessed fearsome weapons of mass destruction, it is not hard to see why trust in his leadership is eroding. When George Bush Sr broke his famous "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge, he broke the back of his 1992 re-election bid. Bush Jr's forced confession on Iraq may yet prove to be a similar watershed.


more................

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. By forming a Coalition of the Willing and Liberating the US

Our beaches await.

[MuseRider]

2. And WE will throw flowers!