Posted on 03/08/2003 10:09:26 AM PST by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, who came to power by a slim electoral margin and with little experience in foreign policy, suddenly finds himself in one of the deepest diplomatic crises of any recent American president.
Despite rising international opposition and without U.N. support, he is preparing to use U.S. force to disarm and depose Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein. Bush is staking his credibility - perhaps his presidency - on success in Iraq.
Bush insists his pursuit of Saddam is not personal. But throughout much of the world, Bush is being held personally accountable for the march to war.
"This is a war that has Bush's name on it, for better or worse," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center.
Leaders who have openly supported Bush - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Australian Prime Minister John Howard - have found their positions increasingly at odds with public sentiment at home.
A showdown comes this week in the U.N. Security Council as members weigh the consequences of opposing the United States.
Bush indicated in a prime-time television news conference last week that he would seek a U.N. war vote, even lacking the support to prevail.
In a late effort to make the resolution more palatable, the United States and Britain proposed giving Saddam until March 17 to comply with U.N. inspections or face war. Other Security Council members balked, with France threatening to use its veto.
Polls overseas show little support for military action now to disarm Iraq. Even Israel is deeply divided on the subject.
U.S. polls show that most Americans support Bush but would like the administration to win international backing before using force.
"For those who urge more diplomacy, I would simply say that diplomacy hasn't worked," Bush counters.
Many hawks want Bush to finish the job that his father began with the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But Bush insists there is nothing personal about his effort, even saying he did not feel any personal anger about an alleged Iraqi plot to kill members of his family with a car bomb during a 1993 visit to Kuwait.
"The fact that he tried to kill my father and my wife shows the nature of the man. He's cold-blooded," Bush said last week. "The decision I'm making and have made to disarm Saddam Hussein is based on the security of the American people."
Even so, Bush has gone to great lengths to personalize and demonize his enemies, especially alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Saddam.
"I think he's in a personal contest of wills with Saddam Hussein. And he's determined not to blink first. And to that sense, it is personal," said David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq. Despite Bush's rhetoric, "most people in the world want the inspection process to continue," Albright said.
James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said Bush had "made this more confrontational with the international community than he needed to." Forcing Security Council members to publicly take sides "puts the other countries in a terrible position," Steinberg said.
Some of Bush's certitude and self-confidence is seen in Europe and other parts of the world as American arrogance.
But European nations also have their own agendas and were becoming restive about growing U.S. power before Bush took office, said Andrew Kuchins of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"My view is that we've handled this diplomatically in a very clumsy way, and we've really painted ourselves in a box. And I think we've needlessly alienated a lot of key allies and partners," Kuchins said.
Bush supporters say some way must be found around U.N. procrastination, and trans-Atlantic wounds will heal once Saddam is gone from power.
"The U.N. is a very noble institution. It's been here over 50 years. And it will continue to serve a purpose in the future," said Secretary of State Colin Powell.
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EDITOR'S NOTE - Tom Raum has covered Washington for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.
9. Does AP have a code of ethics?
The AP believes firmly in a fair and objective news report. The AP subscribes to the code of ethics written by the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.
The AP has been anti-Bush since long before the Iraq crisis came up. Their liberal biased writers began bashing Bush before he was even in the White House.
I take everything they report with a grain of salt.
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I'm saving the entire HTML for the above, so that it can be put onto U.N. threads easily. Here's what the HTML looks like, just remove the spaces between the < > symbols.********************************************************** Great free bumper stickers here! Click and print out two of these: < a HREF="http://burgesses.com/un2.pdf" > < h2 >"Only UNamericans put the UN before the U.S.!"< /h2 >< /a > < P >Just use a few pieces of 3M brand magic tape to stick them in your rear car window. (The tape will come off cleanly with no glue residue even after months in the sun.)
Just use a few pieces of 3M brand magic tape to stick them in your rear car window. (The tape will come off cleanly with no glue residue even after months in the sun.)
*********************************************************
I'm saving the entire HTML for the above, so that it can be put onto U.N. threads easily. Here's what the HTML looks like, just remove the spaces between the < > symbols.********************************************************** Great free bumper stickers here! Click and print out two of these: < a HREF="http://burgesses.com/un2.pdf" > < h2 >"Only UNamericans put the UN before the U.S.!"< /h2 >< /a > < P >Just use a few pieces of 3M brand magic tape to stick them in your rear car window. (The tape will come off cleanly with no glue residue even after months in the sun.)
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