More American news
As usual all the best coverage of the insurgencies in Iraq and Washington can be found on other sites.Kevin Drum has loads of good stuff. A prominent international relations expert Democrat says the mood in Washington is the worst for 30 years:
Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the private Council on Foreign Relations — and a top Pentagon strategist during the Vietnam War — said he had never seen confidence sink as quickly in Washington as it has in recent weeks.
"I've never heard the kind of dark defeatism I'm hearing now, both in and out of government, including the worst days of the Vietnam War," said Gelb, a Democrat. "Support for this war is plummeting. In Vietnam, that happened much more slowly, and only after much higher casualties.
Also it seems that much of the US's pre-war intelligence may have been faked by defectors from Ahmed Chalabi's organisation (itself funded by the Pentagon). The old saying that neo-cons were 'liberals mugged by reality' should perhaps be amended to noting that they are 'right-wingers mugged by the Iranian spy agency'.
Anyway, the National Review stands by their man, and elsewhere allegations are flying that it's all a CIA put-up job to discredit him.
I guess in these dark days we should all be thankful that the Bush white house is run so much more competently and efficiently than the Clinton one.
ps Incidentally though I disagreed with the suggestion from Martin Kettle (seen on Harry's Place) that Blair should publicly disagree with Bush (even to commenting on Rumsfeld's position) merely to bolster his own support, it is a little weird that Michael Howard gets criticised for saying what he said, whilst in Washington most of the Administration is in open warfare.
posted by Matthew @ 5/24/2004 09:39:00 AM
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