When U.S. bombs hit a civilian warehouse in Afghanistan last year, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded: “We’re not running out of targets, Afghanistan is.” There was laughter in the press gallery.
Is the President turning “new age”? Not only has he massaged the United Nations Security Council into a unanimous vote demanding that Iraq accept weapons inspections, but he seems to have embraced guided meditation practices. In his November 7th press conference at the Executive Office Building, President George W. Bush led the audience through a visualization exercise. “Imagine Saddam Hussein with a nuclear weapon,” he said, “Imagine how the Israeli citizens would feel. Imagine how the citizens of Saudi Arabia would feel. Imagine how the world would change, how he could alter diplomacy by the very presence of a nuclear weapons.”
Although it is generally known that the recent North Korean crisis has deep roots, what is not understood is just how these roots have grown over the past several years.
The “Troubles” in Northern Ireland are back, courtesy of an unholy Trinity of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Protestant loyalists who refuse to share power with Ulster’s Catholics, and the Bush administration.
As Washington prepares for war in Iraq, officials are trying to reassure Afghanistan that it will not be lost in the shuffle. Muhammad Ali, heavy weight champ and UN Messenger of Peace, recently completed a three-day tour of Afghanistan where he tried to focus international attention on the country’s plight and gave volleyballs and jumping ropes to children. U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill also came, bearing promises that the war in Iraq would not derail Washington’s commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan.
The fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in November 2001 presented the international community with an unprecedented opportunity to restore peace and security to a perennial trouble spot. Almost one year later it appears that it has failed.
Given what is at stake, one would have thought that the administration would have made a stronger case for going to war than President George W. Bush did on Monday evening.
A year ago, in his address to the nation, President Bush vowed, “I will not yield, I will not rest, I will not relent” in leading the war against terror. For about five months, it appeared that he intended to carry through on this solemn commitment–the war in Afghanistan was waged with vigor and dispatch, and Al Qaeda was severely damaged. But since January, the president has turned American attention and resources away from Al Qaeda to lead a crusade against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, pushing the anti-terrorism campaign to the sidelines.
After President’s Speech, Questions Remain Unanswered By Stephen Zunes and Erik Leaver October 16, 2002 Editor : Tom Barry, Interhemispheric Resource Center ( IRC )
>After months of internal wrangling over tactics and strategy, it now appears that the White House has settled on the basic design for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. President Bush was given a detailed plan for the assault on September 10, and it appears that key combat units have been moved to the Middle East or are being readied for deployment to the region. Although most of the world is still focused on the diplomatic whirlwind at the United Nations, American military personnel are behaving as if a war with Iraq is imminent. And while it is impossible to predict the exact day and hour when hostilities will commence, it is unlikely that “D-Day” will occur much later than the second or third week of February 2003.