|
Bush Visits Britain, realizes they have just as many morons as the states
Amid royal pageantry and a smattering of anti-war protesters, President Bush opened a state visit Wednesday defending the invasion of Iraq as a necessary use of military power while likening reconstruction efforts to rebuilding a shattered Europe after two world wars. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip gave a royal salute to the American leader, greeting Bush at Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace, the queenâs London residence, also was a focal point for demonstrators bitterly opposed to the Iraq war. They shouted "Murderer!" and "You are not welcome!" as Bushâs helicopter ferried him to the palace Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, they gathered again behind metal barriers, watched by large numbers of yellow-jacketed police officers. The light crowd of And the palace was the setting of a major embarrassment for British security services. A journalist got hired as a royal servant despite presenting bogus credentials. The Daily Mirror newspaper said its reporter, who quit the job as a royal footman Tuesday night after Bushâs arrival at the palace, had full access to the queenâs residence and to the presidentâs guest room for his two-month tenure. That is disconcerting. Later, in a speech to academics at Whitehall Palace, Bush was seeking to puncture what he views as misconceptions on this side of the Atlantic about Americaâs use of force. He was subtly invoking Europeâs history of appeasement of dictators, and the price Europeans paid for their governmentsâ inaction. Bush was explicitly reminding Europeans about the critical work the Allies did to set postwar Germany on the path to democracy, a process the Bush administration and the British are trying to accelerate today in Iraq. On the first full day of a 3 1/2-day trip to England, Bush was trying to reframe Europeansâ perceptions of American military might. He wants to sway people here like Nina Baker, a Scottish Green Party Ah yes, the oleâ stole the presidency routine — very stale now. Bush argues that all free countries are at risk from terrorism, and that Iraq is a central front in the battle against terrorists. Wednesday, he was broadening his argument by offering what his senior aides called a "three-pillared" argument for war as a last resort. Bush was noting Europeâs long history of wars, which in the White House view has created the Europeansâ tendency to embrace international cooperative organizations like the United Nations. Bushâs speech was the centerpiece of a visit designed to win over Europeans. He was reaching out to a second audience as well, by granting an interview to the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, which has an Arab readership. Also Wednesday, he was meeting with relatives of Britons lost in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Thursday, Bush was to sit down with family members of British soldiers killed in Iraq. Britain has sent more troops to Iraq than any country aside from America, about 9,000, and the British have lost more than any other American ally â 52 deaths since the start of the war. Posted by: Jarhead 2003-11-19 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=21441 |