WASHINGTON - Dan Bartlett, one of President Bush's most trusted advisers and his longest-serving aide, said Friday he is resigning to begin a career outside of government.
In an interview, Bartlett, who turned 36 on Friday, said he had been pondering his departure for months and decided now is the best time to get a less demanding job so he can concentrate on helping raise three children all under the age of 4.
He is the most important White House insider to leave Bush’s side since the resignation last November of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
I have to wonder who is left in the Bush White House? An even crazier question is who is even willing to take a Bush White House job in the midst of all the scandals, the falling Bush job approval ratings, the Iraq war, and the self-destruction of the Republican Party? All for a job that will last for a year and a half?
Baghdad embassy plans appear on Internet: There are a number of MSNBC stories to post here. This second story has also been in the news. Apparently computer-generated graphic images of the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq were posted on the website of the architectural firm, Berger Devine Yaeger Inc., contracted to design the facility. According to MSNBC:
he 10 images included a scheme of the overall layout of the compound, plus depictions of individual buildings including the embassy itself, office annexes, the Marine Corps security post, swimming pool, recreation center and the ambassador’s and deputy ambassador’s residences.
U.S. officials said the posted plans conformed at least roughly to conceptual drawings for the new embassy, which is being built on the banks of the Tigris River behind huge fences due to concerns about insurgents’ attacks.
[....]
Berger Devine Yaeger’s parent company, the giant contractor Louis Berger Group, said the plans had been very preliminary and would not be of help to potential U.S. enemies.
“The actual information that was up there was purely conjectural and conceptual in nature,” said company spokesman Jeffrey Willis. “Google Earth could give you a better snapshot of what the site looks like on the ground.”
Some U.S. officials acknowledged that damage may have been done by the postings and used expletives to describe their personal reactions. Still, they downplayed the overall risk.
You have to love the contradiction with the U.S. officials here--Oh FRACK! Who put the frackin' embassy plans on the internet? Oh well, it is no big deal since they are not the final plans.
Phony Analogies: This is a great Jonathan Alter column through Newsweek, which Alter demolishes the Bush administration's analogies between Iraq and Korea. Alter writes:
[The] new line out of the White House is that Iraq is Korea. As White House spokesman Tony Snow pointed out, we’ve had U.S. troops in South Korea for 50 years (actually, it’s 57) and the same might prove true in Iraq. Aside from the fact that no one told us in 2002 and 2003 that we were signing on to a half-century commitment (just a slight omission, no?), the analogy is a poor one.
U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea at the explicit request of the South Korean government and people. When President Carter raised the possibility of pulling them out in 1977, American Gen. John K. Singlaub was not the only one to object. South Koreans know that American forces are the only thing standing between them and being overrun by a million North Korean troops stationed just over the border. Only now, more than 50 years after the end of hostilities, is the formal state of war being brought to a close. Aside from some demonstrators once in a while, no one in South Korea seriously wants our troops to go, at least until the threat from the North recedes and unification begins. Then we’ll be gone.
In Iraq, by contrast, many polls show that about three quarters of the Iraqi people favor us leaving. Even those Iraqis who want us to help them fight Al Qaeda think we can do so with strike forces from bases outside the country. The idea of us spending hundreds of millions of dollars establishing permanent bases inside Iraq (something that has received amazingly little publicity) is repugnant to them. This is where a bit of residual nationalism kicks in. Iraqis don’t like the idea of foreigners permanently on their soil. No people—or tribes—do.
[....]
So why the move to permanent bases in Iraq? For years, I have been reluctant to embrace the oil theory of American policymaking in the Middle East. I’ve subscribed to the notion that oil is only part of a complex set of strategic, political and moral issues animating American interests. I still believe that in the short term. Bush and the few remaining supporters of his policy are motivated by more than oil. They want to avoid a failed state in the middle of a volatile region.
But what does that aim have to do with permanent bases? The only two reasons to station troops in the Middle East for half a century are protecting oil supplies (reflecting a pessimistic view of energy independence) outside the normal channels of trade and diplomacy, and projecting raw military power. These are the imperial aims of an empire. During the cold war, charges of U.S. imperialism in Korea and Vietnam were false. Those wars were about superpower struggles. This time, the “I word" is not a left-wing epithet but a straightforward description of policy aims—yet another difference from those two older wars in Asia.
The United States has become a failed "imperialist" power, thanks to the George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the PNAC neocons that reside in the Bush White House.
Bush Condemns Iran's Detention of Americans: I found this off The Washington Post;
President Bush lashed out at Iran today for detaining American citizens and called for them to be freed "immediately and unconditionally."
In a White House statement, Bush said the four detainees whose families have spoken out publicly had dedicated their lives to building bridges between Americans and Iranians, a goal that Tehran also claimed to share.
"Their presence in Iran -- to visit their parents or to conduct humanitarian work -- poses no threat," the Bush statement said. "Indeed, their activities are typical of the abiding ties that Iranian-Americans have with their land of origin."
I am just amazed at the hypocrisy of this president. President Bush is lashing out at the Iranian government for the treatment of four American prisoners, demanding that they be freed "immediately and unconditionally." And yet this administration has 750 "illegal combatants" locked up in the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, captured in Iraq and Afghanistan--just lock them up, throw away the key, and let them rot.
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