NYT: This Thanksgiving, Bush Team and Iraq Leaders Face Range of New Realities

[DeepModem Mom]

This Thanksgiving, Bush Team and Iraq Leaders Face Range of New Realities
By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: November 23, 2006


(Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
For Thanksgiving Day in 2003, President Bush was flown without advance public knowledge to Baghdad, where he visited soldiers.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 — Three years ago this week, President Bush made a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad, where he told a group of stunned soldiers that the United States did not wage a bloody war to depose Saddam Hussein “only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.”

Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will spend this Thanksgiving at Camp David, in part for a discussion about the meeting recently scheduled for next week between Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, in Amman, Jordan. There, Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki will have to contend with the thuggery and killing that continues to plague Iraq three years after that hopeful Thanksgiving Day visit.

White House officials said Wednesday that Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki would discuss a range of issues — from giving the Iraqis more control over security forces to American frustrations with the pace of the disarmament of militias in Iraq to the new political realities facing the president with the newly elected Democratic Congress, many of whose members are calling for some sort of withdrawal from Iraq.

The meeting comes as the administration, fresh off Republican losses and its subsequent announced ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is considering a significant change in approach to the war in Iraq, which will surpass World War II in duration on Sunday. Officials acknowledge that the change that is in the air in Washington is causing unease for leaders in Iraq.

“It’s an important period we’re in with Iraq and for his government, and there is a lot of speculation going on,” said Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor. “The president will assure the prime minister that he’s the one who sets foreign policy for the country.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/world/middleeast/23policy.html

[Barrett808]

1. Maliki "sets foreign policy for the country"?

That's rich.

[Zensea]

2. That sentence needs an editor .....

"The president will assure the prime minister that he’s the one who sets foreign policy for the country.”...

Which country and who is the he?


:)

[truthisfreedom]

3. They'll BOTH be powerless come January. It doesn't much matter which Dan was referring to.

When the puppetmaster goes limp, the puppet don't dance.

[LongTomH]

4. New realities??????????????

This is the first time that Bush and his cabal have faced ANY reality! :grr:

[niceypoo]

5. Quick Bush, break out the plastic turkey!!!

Dazzle them with a photo op style moment! It fools the rank and file GOP, why not the world!!

[LynnTheDem]

6. When will bush face the old realities?

ANY realities?

[Joe Bacon]

7. This thanksgiving, I bet he's running to Daddy

I wonder how Old Fart Bush feels knowing full well that his son will go down in the histroy books as the most incompetent asshole to ever be put in the Presidency?

[Dangerman]

8. Bush and the new Iraqi prime minister...

Are weasels and murderers.

They're no better than Saddam, and the Iraqi people never been screwed like this.

[Canuckistanian]

9. Well, to be fair...

Bush definitely is a weasel and murderer.. in fact that sums up his presidency very well.

Maliki.. well, he's a weasel, too, but I don't think you can call a store-window mannequin a murderer.

[MindMatter]

10. It is striking just how quickly the rats jump the ship

Blair bailed out about 2 hours after Bush lost the Congress.

Now Bush has completely lost control of the agenda in the Middle East. This is a horrible development for the US. We are now left with 140,000 of our best young men and women trapped in Bush's quagmire and now America is reduced nearly to the point of irrelevance. We can't engage our troops further to establish our relevance because it would take 1,000,000 troops on the ground to secure this place and we don't have those numbers.

The only think our troops can accomplish there now is to die. This is one hell of a mess.

Damn all of the bastards that didn't raise a finger to oppose Bush when it really mattered.

It is time to stop arguing nuances. There is nothing to do now but leave immediately. The situation cannot possibly get any worse with our leaving. At least give these poor Iraqis a chance at becoming a Vietnam -- a country that was able to move beyond all the misery we visited on them and become a viable country on their own.

[radfringe]

11. ...would do anything that could be seen as pre-empting...

In diplomatic circles, the visit was being taken as an attempt to send a clear signal that Mr. Bush was intensely focused on Iraq after a losing election that has been seen as a referendum on the war. The meeting comes as the Iraq Study Group, being led in part by James A. Baker III, his father’s longtime friend and adviser, is moving toward releasing a blueprint for a new approach to Iraq.

“I think after Nov. 7 they have to demonstrate that they’re seriously looking — turning every stone — for a strategy that will work,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a national security official for President Clinton and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Daalder said the administration appeared in part to be trying to pre-empt the study group’s widely expected call for direct talks with the Iranians and the Syrians about the security situation in Iraq.

But two administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak freely about internal matters, said in private conversations that it would be unlikely that the president would do anything that could be seen as pre-emptingfont] Mr. Baker’s report, though they bristled at its expected suggestion of direct talks between the United States and Iran and Syria on Iraq.

...would do anything that could be seen as pre-empting... - they are looking for the spin

[mogster]

12. "the war in Iraq, which will surpass World War II in duration on Sunday"

That says it all.

[goforit]

13. Hmmm... Condi and W at Camp David?