A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PRESIDENT BUSH (PHOTOS): 4.14.04

yahoo.com; whitehouse.gov ^ | April 14, 2004 | GretchenEE

[GretchenEE]

President Bush met with Israel's Prime Minister Sharon (Yahoo quotes) to give "qualified U.S. backing to the Israeli leader's high-stakes proposal to withdraw from Gaza but retain part of the West Bank." Bush "said that Israel has a claim on some West Bank land that Palestinians say is theirs, in a shift in policy that possibly has major implications for Middle East peace negotiations." Text of President Bush's remarks at joint press conference

He spoke with Mexico's President Fox via phone concerning Cuba, and the "International Court of Justice" finding that the US violated the rights of 50-plus Mexicans on death row in America.

Enjoy your visit to the Dose @ Sanity Island.

[GretchenEE]

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders which should emerge from negotiations between the parties, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. And all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

I commend Prime Minister Sharon for his bold and courageous decision to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. I call on the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors to match that boldness and that courage. All of us must show the wisdom and the will to bring lasting peace to that region.

Prime Minister Sharon and President Bush

[goodnesswins]

WOOOHOOOO....First???

[GretchenEE]

Tony Blair comes through once again.


IS WAR A PLACE FOR A TOFU PRESIDENT?
By Wesley Pruden April 13, 2004 http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040413-121658-8775r

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Britain, alas, may one day be part of the European Union, but the good news is that you probably can't make Europeans out of Englishmen.

The spaniels nip at Tony Blair's ankles just the way the terriers scratch at George W.'s shins, and the prime minister stands fast, demonstrating anew why we regard our English cousins as "the old reliables."

And just in time. Tony Blair, like George W. Bush, labors under the burden of a spoiled, arrogant and self-satisfied opposition, driven by a know-it-all media and cheered on by whiners, layabouts and assorted malcontents. No British prime minister nor any American president is ever again likely to enjoy the broad public support for sacrifice that earlier presidents and prime ministers could count on in times of great national peril, and we might as well get used to it. If CNN's cameras and correspondents had been positioned at Omaha Beach on June 6, the pressure on FDR and Winston Churchill to negotiate a cease-fire by nightfall, "to give peace a chance," would have been irresistible.

John Kerry continues trying to have it both ways -- he's against the war in Iraq, but he wouldn't change much about it. He might bring the troops home if he could figure out a way to do that and keep them there, too. He doesn't agree with the elderly hysterics in his party, notably Teddy Kennedy and Robert Byrd, that Iraq is "another Vietnam," but, who knows? It could be. He has a plan for "a broader approach in Iraq," but he's on record (in the Boston Globe) conceding right now that "maybe it doesn't work."

If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president because nothing stuck to him and Bill Clinton was the Velcro candidate because everything did, Monsieur Kerry is "the tofu candidate," with no flavor of his own, ready to absorb every flavor, taste, spice or savory, piquant or not, that touches him. He's the long, tall hunk of tofu that neither America nor its friends or the friends of friends could easily survive.

Monsieur Kerry is under considerable pressure now to tear himself away from ski slope and sick bed to say, exactly and precisely, what and how he proposes to take charge of the war in Iraq and how he would array his nuances, niceties and moderations for the battle that, like it or not, will be the lot of American presidents stretching from here to the horizon. The best he has come up with so far is a strategy of turning it over to the United Nations. But the U.N. bugged out of Baghdad when the first bomb exploded, and it's difficult to imagine Kofi Annan's warriors in pastel marching toward the sound of popguns.

Nobody knows this better than the embattled Tony Blair, who has every selfish reason to cut his losses and scuttle toward placation and mollification. But he repeated his vow over the Easter weekend to stand up to the clear and present challenge to civilization. In a stirring and eloquent message all the more powerful for appearing in London's Guardian, a leading British voice of appeasement, he set out the stakes in a struggle that won't be cheap, quick or easy.

"We are locked in a historic struggle in Iraq," he wrote. "On its outcome hangs more than the fate of the Iraqi people. Were we to fail, which we will not, it is more than 'the power of America' that would be defeated. The hope of freedom and religious tolerance in Iraq would be snuffed out. Dictators would rejoice; fanatics and terrorists would be triumphant. Every nascent strand of moderate Arab opinion, knowing full well that the future should not belong to fundamentalist religion, would be set back in bitter disappointment. ...

"The terrorists prey on ethnic or religious discord. From Kashmir to Chechnya, to Palestine and Israel, they foment hatred, they deter reconciliation. In Europe, they conducted the massacre in Madrid. They threaten France. They forced the cancellation of the president of Germany's visit to Djibouti. They have been foiled in Britain, but only for now.

"Of course they use Iraq. It is vital to them. As each attack brings about American attempts to restore order, so they then characterize it as American brutality. As each piece of chaos menaces the very path toward peace and democracy along which most Iraqis want to travel, they use it to try to make the coalition lose heart, and bring about the retreat that is the fanatics' victory.

"They know it is a historic struggle. They know their victory would do far more than defeat America or Britain. It would defeat civilization and democracy everywhere.

"They know it, but do we? The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find."

[GretchenEE]

Dose going up -

pls wait for the All Clear to post pictures.

Thanks.

[GretchenEE]

goodness, you WIN, goodnesswins! FIRST place.

[txrangerette]

Hi folks'

[Fawnn]

Thanks for today's Dose!

[GretchenEE]

[GretchenEE]

Powell and Rice arriving for the Israel-US leaders' press conference

[txrangerette]

That's Hi folks!(the first post was a flub on
punctuation, but at least I was second.)

[Soaring Feather]

Here I am.

[GretchenEE]

In honor of PM Blair's continued stance against terrorists and for the war in Iraq

[GretchenEE]

[I_be_tc]

Omigosh, I am in the first 100....WhoooEeeeee!! That never happens. I listened to a dimi complain on FOX news this morning that GW was strutting on the carrier landing. Guess he doesn't know that some of us love watching him strut! He looked tired last night, but better today. Poor guy, stuck dealing with the trashman's left over problems.

Hope everyone is well.

TC

[GretchenEE]

[GretchenEE]

[McLynnan]

Hi, Gretchen. Hoping you're well. Seems I only manage time to lurk lately, but I love these pictures! Thanks, and take care.

[GretchenEE]

Sharon got the "blue shirt, blue tie, dark suit" memo

That's all for now.

For historical purposes, here is a link to two cozy pictures of the assumptive Dem presidential candidate with the junior Senator for NY. I post them because they could prove an interesting "remember when" come dem convention time.
http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20040414/t/r4015528519.jpg http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20040414/t/r3854575624.jpg

[baseballmom]

Thanks for the early Dose.

I'm still steaming about those reporters last night and their total disdain and disrespect for our President. Shame on them.

It did send me scurrying for my checkbook, though. Now that I think of it, this would be a great Bush/Cheney '04 fundraising idea. Just schedule a presser, the base gets fired up, and sends in another donation! LOL

[ilovew]

That's a good idea. Hmmm...where did I put my debit card?