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Iraq

Bush, Blair, Aznar to Meet About Iraq

2003-03-14

On the brink of war, President Bush will travel this weekend to the Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic Ocean to confer with his two closes allies on Iraq. Topping the agenda at the hastily arranged summit among Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar will be strategies for salvaging the trio's troubled war resolution at the U.N., said senior U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Screw the French, on to Baghdad!"

Unless they've hired Mandrake the Magician, any 18th resolution is dead...

The leaders also are likely to discuss plans for Iraq in any scenario in which President Saddam Hussein is deposed. Billing it as a diplomatic summit, officials said the leaders will not discuss battlefield tactics and detailed military strategies, even as they acknowledged that Bush was prepared to drop his bid for a U.N. resolution and fight Iraq without U.N. consent.
"Tony, your troops take the right flank into the southern oil fields, We'll swing left and push to Baghdad. Jose, you get to attack Paris."
Presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters Friday that Bush will leave Sunday. Bush has said that without the United Nations, he would form a "coalition of the willing," which U.S. officials say would include Britain and Spain. As U.N. diplomats predicted failure for Bush's resolution, the president gave aides the go-ahead for the U.S.-Britain-Spain summit. The Azores Islands are a traditional mid-Atlantic refueling stop about 900 miles west of Portugal. Portugal is among the countries that have offered Bush logistical support in any war in Iraq, and it granted U.S. permission to use Lajes Field air base in the island chain. News of the meeting first surfaced Thursday morning, but officials said planning had stopped, only to confirm hours later that talks had resumed amid tense discussions at the United Nations. The Bush administration will continue "working hard to see if we can take this to a vote," Secretary of State Colin Powell said. But he pointedly set a time frame that suggested the diplomatic effort would not extend beyond the weekend.

I think that's because we've got our own timetable set, regardless of what the UN does...

A senior administration official told The Associated Press the United States was waiting for Mexico and Chile to ~~get off the stick~~ decide. In a constantly shifting lineup, the two Latin American countries could ensure the nine votes required for council approval — provided there was no veto, which both France and Russia have said they would cast. France's veto threat was being taken seriously, and the administration may decide not to give France the chance by withdrawing the resolution. Bush was ready to drop the resolution, several aides said, if Blair didn't want it put to a vote. Whatever the decision, the United States will declare that Iraq has missed its final opportunity to disarm, the official said. On the verge of an embarrassing diplomatic defeat, the administration backpedaled from its statements that it was time for the 15 members of the council to stand up and be counted.

I think they've already done that...

At a news conference last week, Bush said he was prepared for a vote, win or lose. "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations," the president said. Aides said the president has pushed for a U.N. vote thus far out of respect for Blair, whose support of Bush has drawn severe criticism in Britain.

Blair's image will bounce back after a successful war. Nothing succeeds like success...

The Security Council vote wasn't Bush's only problem. The president sent a letter to incoming Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vice President Dick Cheney called the leader in hopes of securing permission to invade Iraq through Turkey or to use Turkish airspace for an attack. However, senior administration officials told The New York Times that Turkey dismissed the latest appeals. One official familiar with the conversation between Cheney and Erdogan said "the message was clear that by the time Turkey got its act together, it would be too late to do us any good." Within hours, Navy ships armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles were told to move out of the Mediterranean and into the Red Sea. There are more than 225,000 U.S. troops in the region.
Too late, Turkey. See ya in Kurdistan.
Powell consulted several times Thursday with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, whose government jointly sponsored the new resolution with the United States. Powell said for the first time Thursday that the resolution might be withdrawn. "We are working hard to see if we can take this to a vote ... but we haven't excluded any of the other obvious options that are out there," he told a House Appropriations subcommittee. He said the options under consideration included "to go for a vote and not to go for a vote." Britain proffered a compromise, a series of tests or "benchmarks" to measure Iraq's sincerity about disarming. But France opposed the move and Iraq exulted it could end the political career of the British prime minister. Bush and Blair obviously "have lost the round before it starts while we, along with well-intentioned powers in the world, have won it," the popular daily Babil, owned by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son, Odai, said in a front-page editorial. Suggesting a decision on the resolution was close at hand, Powell told the subcommittee "all the options that you can imagine are before us and we'll be examining them today, tomorrow and into the weekend." But he did not draw back from threatening Iraq with war. "The day of reckoning is fast-approaching," Powell said.
Next week the 101st will have all their equipment. Tick..tick.

Posted by:Steve

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