You can’t have it both ways! In this article about the North Korean crisis, she is quoted as having said (last Sunday), “We cannot allow the North Koreans to step back into a bilateral discussion with the United States.” Suggesting, of course, that the UN Security Council has to be the body through which the world must communicate with the North Koreans. Meanwhile, of course, she’s at the head of the group doing the most to destroy the Security Council with snide comments and thinly-veiled disdain for a process that she doens’t seem to like.

this morning I’m left with the disquieting feeling that in several years it will be clear to everyone that the current administration in the US made a series of huge, obvious strategic and tactical political errors during this escalation of the Iraq question. Already, it’s clear that the administration has totally blown it. The new push against Iraq should have been a slam dunk! No one in the world – not the French, not the Germans, not the peaceniks worldwide – supports Saddam Hussein. No one thinks Iraq is a peaceful, misunderstood country that should just be left alone. No one (pretty much) disagrees that something had to be done or that the status quo was sustainable.

Nonetheless, here we are, a day after millions of people worldwide demonstrated against the current administrations’s actions. How has this come to pass? How did this go from a slam-dunk, an obvious “must-do” to a situation that risks the destruction of the UN, the end of NATO, and a comprehensible trashing of the United States’ reputation as a legitimate world leader?

How can it be anything less than a massive public relations AND policy failure on the part of the Bush administration? They have lied, they have shamefully disrespected almost everyone other than Britain on the world stage, they have insulted friends and foes alike, and paid nothing but lip service to anyone and everyone who might frame their paranoid rantings in a structure that can legitimately take action that would meet with wide approval.

That, barring the unforeseen horrors that may still confront us, will be the legacy of George W Bush.

but when he does, he’s erudite like few others, in the “blogosphere” or elsewhere.

interviewed in In These Times: “I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup dfetat imaginable.”

was mostly predictable, but the important new proposal about AIDS in Africa was striking. Trouble is, though, at BEST it’s dishonest policy misdirection at the expense of dying Africans, at worst an outright lie.

Compare and Contrast the following…

From the text of Bush’s speech last night:

…to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life-extending drugs and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS and for children orphaned by AIDS. I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.

From a Salon article last December entitled, Bush’s drive for global abstinence

Dewey stated unequivocally that the U.S. would seek to block the passage of any international family planning policy that permits abortion or promotes contraception for adolescents. “The United States supports the sanctity of life from conception to natural death,” he said. “There has been a concerted effort to create a gulf by pushing the United States to violate its principles and accept language that promotes abortion.”

U.S. delegates maintained that phrases present in the conference’s proposed policy — such as “reproductive rights” and “consistent condom use” — were euphemisms for abortion and the approval of “underage” sex — policies far out of line with the current Bush administration, which advocates abstinence outside of marriage and opposes abortion.

So we have on one hand a major policy intiative to combat AIDS in Africa, but on the other hand a senior US official striking any mention of condoms from the text of any UN policy designed to combat the issue. More than a little contradictory – more than a little disgusting. Bush should be ashamed of trying to garner support for his little war with Iraq on the backs of sick and dying Africans.