Posted on 04/22/2004 4:13:35 PM PDT by saquin
No more UN for US-list
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
Perhaps so, but not in the halls of our own elite news organizations. Have any news organizations other than Fox and a handful of newspaper reports paid the slightest attention to this critical story? Heck no! They are too busy covering such important matters as Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Richard Clarke, that has-been Bob Woodward, and such, in between demanding that our President apologize for something anything.
How is it that Dan Rather managed to get interviews with Saddam? And remember the news that came out awhile ago about how CNN knew the truth about what was going on in Iraq but looked away so they could keep their news bureau there?
At least in the UK, and across the political board there.
Here in the US I've noticed something. No broad coverage and a reticence from many "liberal" media to touch the story.
And someone is feeding the Dem politicians contrary talking points. I've noticed some trying to frame the issue as a "Chalabi" matter - casting doubts on the Al Mada story by stating that paper is controlled by Ahmad Chalabi - and who is supported by "neocons" and therefore must be lying and such. (Drielsma responded by noting in the Scotsman that the owner of Al Mada is actually hostile to Chalabi)
I think its a lame attempt. Nevertheless I think it indicates strong French influence on dem foreign policy talking points. Another example - Kerry's odd sttements about the UN. Not just generic statements he wants them involved in Iraq as many others aver, but specific statements that "reconstruction" should be turned over it. In other words, the French requirement not to wield its veto on UN involvement. I think Kerry is being fed these lines rather than conjuring them up himself. Who's feeding him on his staff?
"SEVAN UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg, the New Yorker writer, recalls an interview he had with Benon Sevan, the oil-for-food U.N. administrator now under scrutiny for allegedly skimming vast amounts of money in bribes from Saddam's regime. It was in a piece for the New Yorker in March 2002. I quote: .... "Nobody's innocent," he said. "Please don't talk about morals with me.'"
Good question. Here's an article that might help identify some potential suspects:
Kerry is shaping his foreign policy: His network of experts spans a range of opinions 4/11/04
[SNIP]
Early speculation about who might serve as Kerry's secretary of State centers mostly on candidates who fit that description: Richard Holbrooke and Sandy Berger, former top officials in the Clinton administration; Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee; and more distantly, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., whose commitment to traditional alliances now place him much closer to the center of thinking in the Democratic than the Republican Party.
[SNIP]
The roster of senior national security advisers his campaign touts names such as Madeleine Albright and William Perry, secretary of State and Defense, respectively, under Clinton strikes many Democratic experts as largely generic. Some insiders say many names in the group have had little role in the campaign. Only a few, such as former Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., have long-standing ties to Kerry himself. Adding to the uncertainty over his direction, the campaign has effectively delegated the process of defining foreign policy alternatives on many issues to the Alliance for American Leadership, a Democratic group that organizes task forces of party thinkers on world affairs. Kerry, after serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 19 years, has placed much less emphasis on identifying a formal team of foreign policy gurus than candidates Bill Clinton in 1992 or George W. Bush in 2000.
[SNIP]
Probably the closest analogue to Bush's Vulcans have been a group of Kerry advisers who hold a weekly conference call directed by Rand Beers, the campaign's "national security and homeland security coordinator." That group has included Lee Feinstein, the former deputy director of policy planning at the State Department, and Joe Wilson, the former diplomat whose report to the CIA challenged Bush's claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.
Well, former Ambassador Wilson is on Kerry's staff and he is a francophile... has connections to the French bureaucracy via his former wife. Whenever he bleated to the press in the past, his appearance was associated with a cloudburst of anonymous intelligence sources both here and abroad- usually in the UK- setting the stage for him.
Perhaps the feeding tube goes through him.
No doubt there are other francophiles and baathophiles within the Kerry administration who could also be conduits.
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