End Run

If the GOP congress, Colin Powell and Tony Blair cannot change the administration’s mind on this, I think that Colin Powell may have to finally resign. I don’t see how he can continue when it is obvious that Junior is completely in the hands of the neocon zealots who are intent upon pursuing their imperial fantasy. It was bad enough to insist upon this invasion on its own terms, but they now seem to be dead serious about rendering the UN permanently impotent, even when it comes to humanitarian action. It would seem that they are also intent upon completely gutting the state department’s functions as well.

And, in typical Rumsfeldian backstabbing fashion, they did it while Powell was overseas trying to mend fences with the UN and the EU.

Tony Blair will rue the day he ever took up with these crazy bastards. They just cut him off at the knees, too.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Friday ruled out a leading role for the United Nations (news – web sites) in immediate post-war Iraq (news – web sites) and said Washington and its allies had earned top-status having given “life and blood” to the war effort.

Washington promised to include Iraqis in the decision-making process from the beginning, and said it hoped to get an interim Iraqi authority [can you say, Chalabi?]quickly up-and-running, possibly in parts of the country even before the government of President Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) is toppled in Baghdad.

“It would only be natural to expect that … having given life and blood to liberate Iraq, the coalition would have the leading role. I don’t think anybody is surprised by that,” President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters.

She also made clear that the Pentagon would oversee humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, while other agencies play supportive roles. That puts the Bush administration at odds with Congress, where this week both the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate gave the State Department control of the purse-strings.

U.N. involvement in post-war Iraq is expected to be one of the issues to dominate next Tuesday’s meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Northern Ireland

These people are now just blatently employing strongarm tactics all over the world:

Sounding like a third rate movie thug, a snarling Otto Reich threatened tiny Barbados of all places:

Reich responded to Caricom’s decision not to support the war and subsequent statements by regional leaders.

“It is not the kind of support that we expect from friends,” he said. “We listen very carefully to what our friends say and we’re very disappointed by some of the statements. We’re not violating international law, neither is Great Britain or any of the other countries and I would urge Caricom to study very carefully not only what it says, but the consequences of what it says.”

The US official, who is in the island to attend a conference on Competitiveness in the Caribbean sponsored by the Caribbean Latin American Action, noted that his country was at war and that Americans were being killed in the attempt to disarm Iraq and liberate it from president Saddam Hussein. With that in mind, he stated that the US would appreciate “a little support” from its friends, or at least not to be criticised in public.

He also made the link between support for the US-led war and access to that country for Caribbean goods.

Stating that the region must be more helpful to those who have to approach the US Congress on behalf of the Caribbean territories, he said: “What do I tell a member of Congress if I go asking for increased access for Caribbean products, for example, and he says, ‘well they didn’t support us in our time of need’?”

Godwin’s Law be damned. It’s looking more and more as if Iraq is our Czechoslovakia.