I Dunno. It Looks Like a Banana Republic to Me.
I suspect Zalmay Khalilzad doesn’t care to lose all his credibility in the international community just so Condi doesn’t have to admit she lost her latest fight with Cheney (or did she lose a fight with Olmert?). At least, that’s what I surmise from his snarky response to Madame Secretary’s attempt to blame him, Khalilzad, for introducing a resolution at the UN that the Administration later withdrew (h/t Holden).
Washington’s U.N. envoy denied on Tuesday he had acted alone in handing the Security Council a Middle East resolution he later pulled after Israel objected.
The United States withdrew the draft, which hailed the results of a November 27 Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last Friday in what the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers called an embarrassing about-face.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad dismissed what he said were media reports he had submitted the draft resolution "on my own," without consulting the State Department or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"With all due respect, there is nothing with those reports," he told journalists. "I talked to the secretary of state a few hours before I came to the council. We were very well coordinated with people in Washington."
"I don’t know whether the secretary of state had seen the text but I had talked with her and I’m sure she was fully briefed. The same applied to my colleagues," Khalilzad said.
"We don’t just write a text in the mission and come and present it to people. We are an organized government, institutionalized. We are not a banana republic."
See, I’m amused that Khalilzad (who as a good neocon might not care for the Annapolis conference in the first place) got so testy. But also, c’mon, you’ve got the State Department looking foolish in front of the UN. You’ve got former Bush Administration officials fighting over whether and how they used midterm elections to lie us into war. What happened to that legendary but illusory Bush discipline?
After all, once you remove the gleaming facade of a government run like a business, you’re pretty much left with massive corruption and incompetence. You know, a banana republic.
Ah yes – a food fight amongest the Bushies. However, might want to brush up with: “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt.
Banana Republics usually produce enough foodstuffs to get along. This bunch seems to trash the bananas and fling the peels about. But, that’s not unusual for an ill-bred, ill-tempered Chimp.
Shorter Zalmay Khalilzad “Yes, we have no bananas.”
“you’ve got the State Department looking foolish in front of the UN” Not to mention the whole world.
I wonder if the withdrawal of the resolution, which went down several days ago, had anything to do with the release of the NIE yesterday. It doesn’t seem all that far-fetched that one of the minority of reality-based crewmen on the Good Ship Bush-Cheney saw that, and said to him or herself “Screw It” and determined not to let yet another one of the all too few sane initiatives be killed by Cheney.
I would consider the Wolfowitz appointment to head State’s advisory board to be another Cheney victory over Condi. Rehabilitating and re-security clearance-izing Wolfie, it isn’t just a “we take care of our own” statement; it puts another Cheney mole high within “Condi’s” organization. Like a division manager being assigned the chairman’s nephew as his new assistant, it takes the fun out of exercising leadership because it permits constant second-guessing and blame calling, bureaucratic past times beloved of the Master Bureacrat.
a government run like a bussiness cannot possibly succeed
bussiness is not interersted in people it’s interested in profit
and in a bussiness twenty years from now isn’t nearly as important as the bottom line this quater
a government run like a bussiness will fall as soon as the existing infrastructure comes to the end of it’s predicted life cyle
Making the State Dept look silly is a Cheney past time. Ask Colin Powell.
While we are at it, the Israeli Government seems really upset at the NIE, from what their spokesman said on the BBC tonight. Doesn’t suit their agenda atall.
Yeah, reality can have that effect.
If a non-event like Annapolis can be said to already be falling apart, then this is what we are seeing with the withdrawn UN resolution and Israel’s announcement that it will build more apartments in East Jerusalem.
Finally, Khalilzad had some credibility? Who knew?