- With a little help from the United States, the people
of El Salvador have decided on a president. In an election on Sunday, they
chose conservative Antonio Saca and rejected leftist Schafik Handal, a
former leader of a guerrilla coalition that fought U.S.-backed military
regimes during the 1980s.
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- A few days before the election, Otto Reich, the senior
official on Latin America at the White House, spoke via teleconference
to journalists gathered at the headquarters of Mr. Saca's political party.
"We are worried," Mr. Reich said, "about the impact that
a victory by [Mr. Handal] would have on U.S. trade, economic and immigration
relations with El Salvador."
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- If that strikes you as an unusually partisan course of
action, it shouldn't. In Nicaragua (2001) and Bolivia (2002), senior U.S.
officials explicitly warned that a leftist victory in presidential voting
would lead to the souring of relations with the United States.
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- Somewhat in the same spirit, Worldbeat offers a warning
to voters in the United States, as its presidential campaign gathers steam:
The prospect of a second victory for George W. Bush is troubling in the
extreme. Not just because of his administration's reckless economic program
or its divisive management of international alliances. No, the most troubling
part of the Bush regime is its penchant for dissembling and its obsession
with global score-settling, regardless of its impact on Americans and the
rest of us.
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- Fresh evidence emerged on the weekend that Mr. Bush was
determined to pursue war against Saddam Hussein despite the absence of
evidence indicating that Iraq possessed usable weapons of mass destruction,
or linking it to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Richard Clarke, a former
head of counterterrorism at the White House, recounts in a new book that
hours after the attacks, key administration members were already talking
about reprisals against Iraq.
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- On Sept. 12, Mr. Clarke says, Mr. Bush asked several
top officials "to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam
did this. See if he's linked in any way." Mr. Clarke, who claims to
have spent several years warning the Clinton and Bush administrations to
take al-Qaeda more seriously, says he replied: "But Mr. President,
al-Qaeda did this," whereupon Mr. Bush countered: "I know, I
know, but ó see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know
any shred ....." (Parts of his account have been corroborated to U.S.
reporters by others.)
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- Mr. Bush's aides are depicting Mr. Clarke as a man of
unrealized ambition taking his revenge, but his core allegations have the
ring of truth. Why? Because they fit a pattern whose contours have become
steadily clearer throughout Mr. Bush's time in office.
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- His predecessor, Bill Clinton, has recalled telling Mr.
Bush in January, 2001, that Osama bin Laden, not Iraq, posed the greatest
danger to U.S. security. Mr. Clarke delivered the same message, at about
the same time. But Mr. Bush had populated the higher levels of his administration
with officials such as deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who during
the 1990s had openly advocated the forcible removal of Mr. Hussein.
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- Mr. Clarke claims that Mr. Wolfowitz chided him for focusing
on Mr. bin Laden, saying Iraq was at least as serious a menace. Mr. Wolfowitz,
testifying yesterday to the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks,
denied slighting the al-Qaeda threat. But we also have the account of Paul
O'Neill, the former treasury secretary. He told journalist Ron Suskind
that removing Mr. Hussein was on the agenda at the inaugural National Security
Council meeting of the Bush administration.
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- There is evidence that by March, 2002 ó nearly
a year before Iraq was invaded ó Mr. Hussein was as good as toast
to the U.S. President. According to Time magazine, one of three senators
who took part in a meeting on Iraq with National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice says Mr. Bush appeared briefly and commented: "F--- Saddam, we're
taking him out."
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- Some time later, Washington cranked up its attempt to
persuade the world that Iraq's WMD threat justified war. Americans have
begun to grasp what that entailed. A Washington Post/ABC News survey last
month found that 54 per cent of Americans believe Mr. Bush exaggerated
or lied about the threat. Just 52 per cent thought him "honest and
trustworthy," his lowest rating in nearly five years of polling on
the question. That is the context, highly unfavourable to Mr. Bush, in
which Mr. Clarke's claims have landed.
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- The invasion and occupation of Iraq detracted from the
campaign against al-Qaeda. It has had profound and destabilizing implications
for global security. It's hard to see how Mr. Bush could establish the
credibility necessary to exercise effective global leadership during a
second term.
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- The decision is up to U.S. voters. Surely they will forgive
the rest of us for caring as much as we do.
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- © 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights
Reserved. http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040324.
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