Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension.
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 6/7/2009, 08:44
Rappel du premier message :
Bonjour Biloulou
Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait!
Auteur
Message
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1349 - 17/9/2009, 20:41
ACORN en pleine noyade et Barack Obama ne peut meme pas lui lancer une bouee.
ACORN Videos Prompt More Calls for Investigations Across the Nation
The taxpayer-funded group is already investigation in at least 20 states for potential fraud and voting irregularities. The tally may grow following the release of five videos that appear to show ACORN workers encouraging illegal activities.
FOXNews.com Thursday, September 17, 2009
Spoiler:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signed on to recent calls for investigations into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, saying Thursday that the advocacy group with a history of legal troubles is ripe for a review.
The speaker commented the day after the release of a fifth video of ACORN workers advising two undercover journalists posing as a pimp and prostitute about how to evade tax and housing laws.
At least 20 states are now investigating fraud and potential voting regularities by the taxpayer-backed group. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a state probe of ACORN late Wednesday.
"Any group needs to have scrutiny that is applied to it," Pelosi said at her weekly briefing with Capitol Hill reporters. "It is totally unacceptable and inexcusable in my view. Hundreds of people have embarrassed ACORN. We have to have our own investigation. It's up to the (House) Appropriations Committee to scrutinize them."
The latest video, released Wednesday on FOX News, appears to show an ACORN worker offering to help bring underage girls into the United States to turn tricks. The previous videos purports to show ACORN workers advising "pimp" James O'Keefe and his partner "prostitute" Hannah Giles on how to hide their prostitution "ring" involving foreign, underage girls from federal authorities.
Click here to view more stories and videos on the ACORN controversy.
The videos released so far -- filmed in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Brooklyn, San Bernardino, Calif., and San Diego -- have led to the firing of four workers, an investigation by the Brooklyn D.A. and the termination of a nationwide partnership with the Census Bureau to participate in next year's decennial headcount.
The Senate on Monday voted overwhelming to block HUD from providing funding to the group. The move still has to be approved by the House before it becomes law. That may be difficult to do though since the money may already be in the pipeline and difficult to get back.
The White House signed off on the Census Bureau ending its partnership with ACORN, the first sign of evidence that the Obama administration is taking a closer look at ACORN and the federal funding it receives and perhaps beginning to distance itself.
Candidate Barack Obama paid ACORN $800,000 for its voter registration services during the presidential campaign and said at the time that the group could have a seat at the organizing table.
The release of the latest video from San Diego came on the same day that ACORN announced the launch of an "internal review" to examine all the systems and processes called into question by the videos. In addition, ACORN won't accept new admissions into its community service programs, effective immediately, and within the next few days will conduct staff training, the group's chief executive, Bertha Lewis, said in a written statement.
However, Lewis told ABC News that all the negative attention is a "modern day form of McCarthyism" and said ACORN's efforts help make sure "poor people, young people, minorities are participating in this democracy."
"There is an undertone of racism here. I think they're basically saying these people shouldn't be trusted, how could they be trusted? You know, they're all poor black and brown people," Lewis said. But any effort to appear constructive may be too late to contain the damage.
On Wednesday Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered his agencies to stop all state funding to ACORN, unless it was illegal to do so. Schwarzenegger also sent a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown asking his office to look into ACORN's activities, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The attorney general's office will review the videos and investigate or refer the matter to the local district attorney if it is believed there is any wrongdoing, Brown spokesman Scott Gerber said. ACORN fired back at Minnesota, saying neither it nor its affiliates receive any funding from that state.
But a federal investigation might be next.
Aside from Pelosi's position on a congressional inquiry, several Republican senators are asking the FBI to step in and investigate not just possible criminal activities but also whether ACORN itself is a criminal enterprise.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday that he had only recently heard about the ACORN videos but that given the preliminary information, it is the type of thing that the FBI and Justice Department "would look at."
Republican lawmakers are also urging the Internal Revenue Service to sever ties with group. The IRS partners with ACORN to assist the poor with free tax preparation.
In a written statement, the IRS said it has partnered with hundreds of community and volunteer organizations to provide free tax assistance.
"We are aware of recent events, and we are conducting a thorough review of our relationship with ACORN," the IRS said.
FOX News' Molly Henneberg and Major Garrett and FOXNews.com's Stephen Clark contributed to this report.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1350 - 17/9/2009, 21:54
Sense of Triumph in Moscow
Euphoria over Obama's Decision to Shelf Missile Shield
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1351 - 18/9/2009, 17:20
Placating Russia Won't Work By David J. Kramer Friday, September 18, 2009
Russian leaders never liked the idea that the United States, Poland and the Czech Republic were cooperating on missile defense to confront an emerging Iranian threat. The notion that two former Warsaw Pact states that Moscow used to control would be hosting 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a corresponding radar facility in the Czech Republic was unacceptable. Kremlin leaders alleged that the system was meant to target Russia, not counter Iran, and they had threatened to scuttle unrelated arms control negotiations with the United States unless Washington backed down.
Spoiler:
With the Obama administration's announcement Thursday that it is indeed abandoning the Polish and Czech sites, Moscow's complaining appears to have worked. Yet the administration's capitulation to Russian pressure is a serious betrayal of loyal allies in Warsaw and Prague whose governments pursued politically unpopular positions at the request of the Bush administration to help confront a rising threat from Iran. (Announcing this policy change on Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, added unnecessary insult to injury.)
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama showed little enthusiasm for the missile defense plans of President Bush. After his election, however, Obama appeared to take a firmer position, one closer to his predecessor's thinking. "Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies," he said in Prague on April 5. "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven. If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defense construction in Europe will be removed."
Whatever the official explanation now for not moving forward, many -- including the Kremlin -- will read this shift as an effort to placate Moscow. Announcing the decision ahead of Obama's meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev next week reinforces such thinking. The Obama administration has prioritized a follow-up to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and dropping the Polish and Czech sites removes a major obstacle to finalizing agreement.
Yes, Washington has an interest in an arms control deal with Moscow, but Russia's need for such a deal is much greater: It cannot afford to maintain its aging nuclear weapons, nor could it compete with the United States in any new arms race. Russia's nuclear arsenal is already within or moving toward the ranges proposed in the latest negotiations regarding both warheads (1,500 to 1,675 per country) and delivery vehicles (500 to 1,100). That should have provided Washington with significant negotiating leverage, but the Obama administration's eagerness for an agreement before START expires Dec. 5 has essentially forfeited that leverage.
The Bush administration repeatedly rejected any link between a post-START accord and the Polish and Czech sites. The Obama administration initially rejected linking the two but made the mistake during Obama's trip to Russia this summer of agreeing to a last-minute joint statement on missile defense issues and to language on the joint understanding regarding a coming arms control pact.
In a July 6 joint news conference with Obama, Medvedev seized on this U.S. acquiescence. "In our mutual understanding that has just been signed, we talk about the linkage between offensive and defensive weapons, and this already constitutes a step forward. Some time ago, on this question, we had all -- only differences. Now this linkage is being stated and this opens up the opportunity of bringing positions closer to each other."
Russia's repeated efforts to link the missile defense sites to an arms control agreement should have made it harder politically for Obama to back down. Ten interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar facility in the Czech Republic were never a threat to Russia. Winning Russian help in dealing with Iran as a quid pro quo is also very unlikely. Yet Obama's efforts to placate the Russians come at the expense of U.S. relations with Eastern and Central European governments that are already uneasy about the U.S. commitment to their region. Worse, rewarding bad Russian behavior is likely only to produce more Russian demands on this and other issues.
The administration defends its decision by claiming that Iran is not developing a long-range capability as quickly as was previously thought. The Bush administration, however, had proceeded on the reasoning that Iran would have the capability in four or five years, roughly when the missiles and radar would be fully operational. Announcing this change ahead of an Oct. 1 meeting with Iranian officials also seems particularly unwise.
The Kremlin started a dangerous game of chicken by linking conclusion of a post-START agreement to missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow appears to have prevailed in that contest of wills. The administration should insist on delinking these two separate issues and move forward with the missile defense plans it inherited.
The writer, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor as well as deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in the George W. Bush administration.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1352 - 18/9/2009, 17:56
Allez, juste pour le plaisir de voir une nouvelle fois (la premiere etant quand elle essayait de nous expliquer, qu'elle n'avait jamais ete prevenue de l'utilisation de la fausse noyade lors d'interrogatoires de certains rares prisonniers terroristes ), Nancy et Robert Gibbs , donnant l'impression d'etre au pilori, cherchant leurs mots, elle, blanche comme un linge, lui, sans son sourire narquois et son attitude arrogante!
Je sais, ce n'est pas gentil mais bon... Humm haaaa!
ACORN
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1353 - 18/9/2009, 18:11
US on target with missile decision
Barack Obama's decision to cancel the US missile defence shield in eastern Europe is a victory for a sane foreign policy
Spoiler:
Last night, President Barack Obama contacted the interim Czech prime minister Jan Fischer and told him that the US was to cancel its deployment of a proposed missile defence system in eastern Europe. The decision was the culmination of a six-month policy review on the part of the Obama administration. It also represented the end of one battle in the war over missile defense, a war that will continue to be waged inside and outside Washington's Beltway.
The decision to deploy a US ballistic missile defence system to eastern Europe was, at its core, a political manoeuver. The military arguments in favour of the deployment were confused and contradictory. Advocates initially argued that the system was intended to deter Iran, and that it could not defend against Russian missiles. Later, as concern about the Iranian missile threat ebbed, supporters argued that cancellation of the programme would represent appeasement of Russian aggression.
The technical case for the system was never terribly compelling, as sea-based ballistic missile defences have proven to be more mobile and more capable than the system that was proposed for Poland. The real reasons for the decision to deploy the system were the happy nexus of defense industry financial interest and an ideological commitment on the part of the Republican party. The former requires no explanation. As for the latter, one foreign policy analyst described it thusly: "Cancelling missile defence is like denying communion to Reagan cultists." Since the Reagan administration, missile defence has stood as an unchallenged article of faith in Republican foreign policy circles. The eastern European system was a logical culmination of these two forces.
Poland and the Czech Republic valued the missile defence system not so much for its technical capabilities, but rather as a signal of US commitment to the defense of their interests against Russia. The construction of US defence establishments would have provided a boost to their economies, and would also have represented a long-term US involvement in the region. The bases might also have given Poland and the Czechs some leverage in intra-European politics: the countries of "old Europe," including France and Germany, were vocally opposed to the deployment.
In spite of the support of the Czech and Polish governments, however, the deployment was never very popular with the people – 70% of Czechs opposed the system, for example. While the decision to cancel it may lead to some short-term problems, it doesn't seem likely that long-term US relations with either Poland or the Czechs will be harmed, given the Nato commitment to defence of the two countries, and separate US agreements to modernise the Polish and Czech armies. While conservatives in the US have warned of dire consequences to America's other eastern European allies in the event of cancellation, the relevance of the missile defence system to Ukraine or Georgia was never spelled out in detail.
Overall, this is a tremendous victory for a sane foreign policy and a responsible defence policy. The US will save money, and avoid needlessly antagonising Russia. While neither the Obama nor Medvedev administrations have characterised the decision as part of any quid pro quo on Iran or any other aspect of US-Russia relations, Russia and the US have been exploring co-operation on several issues, including the war in Afghanistan and policy towards Iran. Russia has recently taken steps to open up its airspace, making resupply of Nato forces in Afghanistan much easier.
Even if Obama didn't win specific concessions from the Russians, he still made the right decision. Saving money and avoiding needless antagonism of Moscow are victories in and of themselves
Je me demande pourquoi personne ne parle des missiles recemment commandes par Chavez a la Russie. (J'ai corrige, ils ne sont pas encore livres... )
Venezuela to get Russian missiles
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has announced that the country will soon take delivery of Russian missiles with a range of 300km (185 miles). Saturday, 12 September 2009 12:3
Spoiler:
Returning from a 10-day tour of Africa, Asia and Europe, including Russia, Mr Chavez is also planning to buy Russian T-72 and T-90.
"Soon some little rockets are going to be arriving... and they don't fail," he announced at the presidential palace.
But he denied they would be used for offensive purposes. "We are not going to attack anybody, these are just defence tools, because we are going to defend our country from any threat, wherever it may come from," the president said.
Venezuela is involved in a long-running diplomatic stand-off with neighbouring Colombia, over the latter's plans to allow US troops greater access to its military bases.
Colombia says the US forces will help in the war against drugs and left-wing guerrillas and will not destabilise the region. Mr Chavez, a fierce opponent of US foreign policy, did not say how many missiles he had ordered.
Russia has been strengthening its ties with several Latin American countries, including Venezuela.
The two countries held joint naval exercises in Venezuelan waters last November. BBC
On Sunday, President Barack Obama will execute what might be called a Modified Full Ginsburg — appearing on five Sunday morning talk shows to make a pitch for health reform.
Spoiler:
It’s a move few politicians have attempted. Even fewer have been able to stick the landing.
The Full Ginsburg, of course, was named for Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer William Ginsburg, who first did the five-fecta of Sunday talk on Feb. 1, 1999. Obama’s move is slightly different – swapping in the Spanish-language network Univision for Fox News Channel.
But there’s no guarantee it’ll work.
Then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C) attempted a Full Ginsburg in October of 2004, only to go down to defeat as the Democratic vice presidential nominee weeks later. Hillary Clinton pulled a Full Ginsburg in September of 2007 at the peak of her political power – 22 points ahead of a long-shot named Barack Obama.
Even the maneuver’s namesake hit a rough patch afterward — widely criticized as star struck for his love of the camera, Lewinsky fired him a few months later.
“There is risk associated with this,” acknowledged White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “But it is also a unique opportunity to reach a pretty diverse audience.”
In the eyes of political pros, it’s also an opportunity for Obama to get dangerously overexposed. You’ve heard of “jumping the shark.” This might be “jumping the Ginsburg.” And on Monday, he’ll do another show, becoming the first sitting president to appear on the David Letterman show.
“More isn’t always more when it comes to a president’s words,” said former Clinton White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers. “This is something they need to start to be concerned about.”
Obama, Myers said, believes that if he has enough time, he can convince anyone of his position on health care reform. “But there’s a limit to that,” she said. “You cannot convince everyone, even when your argument is indisputably airtight and true. You can’t convince people who believe in death panels that there aren’t any death panels.”
The overexposure theme is bipartisan. Former George W. Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Obama is spreading himself too thin. “This is a mistake they can, and should avoid,” Fleischer said. “In the White House, you start to look at your boss through such rose colored glasses that you lose your ability to make objective decisions.”
The White House, though, has made the opposite calculation, figuring that the audience for the Sunday shows is politically active and interested, and therefore ripe for Obama’s pitch, whether they’re liberals or conservatives.
“I think it is important that the president continue to speak to a host of different audiences to reach as many people as possible to talk about the benefits of health care reform,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Friday. “People are getting their news from so many different places and so many different outlets, that we're going to use the president to communicate through that fragmentation.”
The audience may be fragmented but the message is not. Obama will say pretty much the same thing to each audience – and won’t try to offer some unique news nugget to each of the five interviewers. “Things will be pretty consistent across interviews,” Earnest said.
And of course, there’s one big advantage to pulling a Full Ginsburg when you’re the guy in the Oval Office: “When you’re the President, you make them come to you,” said CNN’s John King, host of State of the Union. “Ginsburg had to go to all five studios.”
The White House press office chose the order of the interviews at random — scrambling slips of paper on a desk and picking the names to draw up a list Thursday afternoon. Starting at 3:30 p.m. Friday, the hosts began rotating in and out of the room with Obama in this order: CBS, NBC, ABC, Univision, CNN.
On Sunday, President Barack Obama will execute what might be called a Modified Full Ginsburg -- appearing on five Sunday morning talk shows to make a pitch for health reform. Photo: AP CNN’s King says he doesn’t mind bringing up the rear. “I actually enjoy being last,” he said. “Ask me tomorrow when we’re done, though. There are two possibilities – either he’s tired and sick of us by then, or he’ll be somewhat liberated, knowing it’s the end.”
The interviews, which were pre-taped on Friday, were tightly choreographed. Each interviewer got 15 minutes with the president, seated by a fireplace in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. There were five minutes in between to switch interviewers, but all the networks had to use the same pool camera set-up, in this case, operated by NBC.
While each interview is going on, the other Sunday-show hosts had to cool their heels in the White House briefing room, and were unable to see what their predecessors asked the president.
That means that most of the questions will probably be the same from interview to interview. “The questions are health care, the anger in the country, and what’s going to happen in Afghanistan,” said Bob Schieffer, moderator of CBS’ Face the Nation. “I guess George [Stephanopoulos] and David [Gregory] or any of the others would say the same thing.”
Each of the networks were allowed to select one sound-bite for use on Friday evening’s newscast and in promos for the Sunday show. The rest of the content is embargoed from release until 9 a.m. Sunday.
The Full Ginsburg is in the elite pantheon of named maneuvers in any field. It is to pundits what Pugachev’s Cobra is to jet fighter pilots, or Fermat’s Last Theorem is to mathematicians. And as with jet pilots and mathematicians, the pundits who have actually completed a Full Ginsberg represent an extremely small elite corps in a highly selective field.
Only eight people, including Ginsburg himself, have ever pulled it off. Dick Cheney did it in 2000, during the Republican National Convention. Edwards did it in 2004. Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff did it in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And Clinton used her 2007 Full Ginsburg to trumpet a health care proposal.
Ginsburg’s 1999 feat amazed the Washington punditocracy. The Sunday network shows are known to be so protective of their bookings that guests are often banned from appearing on other broadcasts – even cable shows – for days in advance of their Sunday show appearances. To be invited on all five shows at the same time shows that an invitee has achieved a truly stratospheric level of newsworthiness.
Still, the networks grant Full Ginsburgs only grudgingly, even to a president. “We don’t like it when he does all the shows,” Schieffer said. “For us, it’s not quite as special as when you have an exclusive. But the president is a newsmaker, and it’s our job to show up and ask questions.”
Ginsburg himself, who ten years after his sex-scandal fueled Sunday show splash is practicing law in Burbank, Calif., joked that he’s proud of the legacy he’s left in Washington. “It’s nice to know that preeminent men and women like Secretary Clinton and President Obama can appreciate and are willing to commit ‘The Full Ginsburg,’” he said in an e-mail to POLITICO.
But his feat has been eclipsed. Earlier this year, three Obama administration officials pulled off a never-before-attempted Triple Full Ginsburg, when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and acting CDC Director Richard Besser appeared as a group on five Sunday shows in May to discuss the spread of swine flu.
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 08:18
SEPTEMBER 19, 2009
Obama Retakes Global Stage, but With Diminished Momentum by JONATHAN WEISMAN
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will follow his springtime star turn in Europe by returning to the world stage next week, weakened by legislative stalemates on climate change and financial regulation, and facing leaders impatient for results on a range of issues.
The president will fly Monday to New York to attend his first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and then to a summit of the Group of 20 largest economic powers in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday.
Spoiler:
In both venues, expectations will be high for concrete action to counter Iran's nuclear program, reinvigorate Middle East peace talks, and shore up support for the war in Afghanistan. Leaders also will be looking for action to counter global warming, revive free trade and strengthen financial regulation.
Unlike at April's G-20 summit in London and July's G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, Mr. Obama can't expect his celebrity status to carry him above the fray.
His climate-change legislation appears likely to slide to next year in the Senate. His financial reregulation efforts are at a standstill in Congress. Russia and China have already stated their opposition to tough sanctions on Iran's energy industry. And his most recent move on trade, far from liberalization, imposed steep import tariffs on Chinese tires.
"The president needs to convert his widespread popularity in much of the world into effectiveness in much of the world," said Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Leadership is not just telling people what you want. Leadership is getting people to do what you need them to do."
Mr. Obama faces rising public dissent, abroad and at home, over continued military action in Afghanistan. On Thursday, John Bruton, the European Commission's ambassador to the U.S., publicly charged the Senate with foot-dragging on climate change. The Chinese are threatening a trade war and accusing Washington of neocolonialism over tire tariffs. On Friday, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the U.S., expressed frustration with U.S. protectionism.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to walk out of the G-20 summit if leaders don't adopt strict compensation limits for financial executives. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's feisty re-election campaign is focused on putting bonus caps on bankers, especially those in the U.S. who she says caused the global economic slide.
"President Obama's stature as of now is not what it was in April in London," said Ted Truman, a former Obama Treasury official now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
"Obviously, he's not quite the rock star."
Mr. Truman said the heads of state aren't likely, however, to stick their fingers in Mr. Obama's eye, as some did with President George W. Bush, in large part because as Mr. Obama struggles at home, he remains more popular abroad.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs disputed that Mr. Obama was entering next week's meetings in a weakened state. On climate change, he said, "I don't think the president thought we were going to come to Pittsburgh with everything wrapped up on the issue of climate change."
On trade, Mr. Gibbs said the move on Chinese tires simply enforced an exiting trade agreement. And on Iran, pressure will continue to mount, he said.
Mr. Obama's week is packed, with a Tuesday summit on climate change, a Wednesday address to the General Assembly, as well as bilateral meetings with the new Japanese prime minister and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. On Thursday, he will be the first U.S. president to run a summit-level meeting of the Security Council to hammer out a new U.N. Security Council resolution on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament.
Then on Friday, he will open the G-20 meeting, with plans to issue broad new rules on bankers' compensation, pledges to begin planning the eventual pullback of stimulus and government economic intervention and new marching orders on climate-change negotiations.
Expectations raised at L'Aquila aren't likely to be met. At that time, the president and administration officials said the diplomatic open door to Iran would be closing by September if Teheran had made no positive gestures. On Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust "mythical" in a provocative gesture before the U.N. meeting. The U.K.'s Sir Nigel said "Plan A" remains diplomatic engagement, not further sanctions.
World leaders at L'Aquila stripped out a dollar figure on aid to developing countries to help them adapt to and combat climate change -- but ordered finance ministers to deliver a climate-financing package in Pittsburgh. That also isn't likely to happen, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Finally, the Group of Eight leaders launched a series of trade meetings, where developing countries were supposed to offer specifics on what industries and services they planned to protect and which they would open to competition.
By Pittsburgh, those talks were supposed to lay the groundwork for relaunching a global free-trade initiative. Administration officials say those talks are continuing, but there is no indication a breakthrough is imminent.
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 08:31
Lack of Progress in Mideast Defies Obama’s Hopes By MARK LANDLER and ETHAN BRONNER Published: September 18, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama had hoped to go to his first United Nations meeting next week with at least one diplomatic coup: a plan to restart the long-stalled Middle East peace talks, to be announced in a three-way meeting with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency George J. Mitchell, the special American envoy, left, and Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, in the West Bank on Friday
Spoiler:
But after a fruitless week of shuttle diplomacy, his special envoy, George J. Mitchell, returned to the United States on Friday night without an agreement on freezing construction of Jewish settlements and amid fresh signs of differences on the basis for peace negotiations. Mr. Obama now faces the prospect of a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, that some say will be little more than a photo opportunity, one that will only underscore how elusive an Arab-Israeli peace agreement is.
The failure of Mr. Mitchell to nail down an agreement with Israel on freezing settlements, which the administration views as vital for successful talks, does not mean that Mr. Obama will not ultimately succeed. Some experts predict that Mr. Netanyahu, a shrewd negotiator, will strike a deal directly with the president, though that seems unlikely to happen before world leaders gather Wednesday for the United Nations General Assembly.
But Mr. Mitchell’s travails — he also faces resistance from Arab countries in making diplomatic gestures toward Israel — show that on yet another front Mr. Obama’s policy of engagement is proving to be a hard sell. If an agreement just to start talking is out of reach, hammering out the details of a comprehensive peace deal seems all the more daunting.
During his weeklong visit to the Middle East, people briefed on the talks said, Mr. Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, found substantial differences between the sides, even on issues that had been agreed upon in previous negotiations, like the basic configuration of Israel’s borders and whether the status of Jerusalem should be included in peace talks.
The State Department declined to comment on the details of Mr. Mitchell’s discussions, though a spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, acknowledged that the trip had failed to produce a breakthrough. “Of course we hoped to have an agreement,” Mr. Kelly said. “Of course we were hoping for some kind of breakthrough. But this is going to be — again, it’s going to be — it’s going to demand a lot of patience. And the U.S. is ready to stay patient and stay engaged.”
Other senior administration officials say they do not view their inability to announce a new round of talks next week as a setback. They say that Mr. Obama expected this to be a lengthy, grueling process, and that Mr. Mitchell has already moved Mr. Netanyahu a long way toward accepting some form of freeze and Arab countries toward considering conciliatory measures toward Israel.
“Given the situation we confronted in January 2009, the amount of progress Senator Mitchell has made in nine months is remarkable,” said a White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor.
In a speech Friday at the Brookings Institution, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “I can guarantee you that President Obama and I are very patient and very determined.”
Still, it was telling that in listing the Obama administration’s priorities for the General Assembly, Mrs. Clinton did not even mention the Middle East, focusing instead on nuclear nonproliferation, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other issues. She mentioned the need for a “comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians” at the end of a wide-ranging address.
American and Palestinian officials said there were two sets of problems, the first dealing with the length and extent of an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and the second dealing with the basis for the negotiations themselves.
“If one or the other had worked, if the freeze had been broader or if the terms for negotiation had been broader, that would have been enough to get the ball rolling,” an aide to Mr. Mitchell said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “But with gaps over both, we have to keep working.”
Mr. Mitchell met twice on Friday with Mr. Netanyahu after two meetings with Mr. Abbas. An aide to Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel was willing to restart negotiations immediately, so the difficulty lay not with Israel but with the Palestinians.
The Netanyahu aide said that the gaps involved not only what Israel could give — a settlement freeze and agreeing that a two-state solution would be based on certain borders — but also what Arab states would give in return as confidence-building measures. The United States is pushing Arab countries to allow Israel to reopen trade missions in those countries and to allow Israeli airlines to fly over their territory.
The Americans and Palestinians have been pushing Israel to agree to freeze settlement building entirely as evidence of its seriousness about peace talks. The settlements are on land that the Palestinians want for their future state. But Mr. Netanyahu has declined to do so, saying only that he would be willing to reduce or slow building.
He plans to finish construction on 2,500 units and recently authorized starting another 500. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said that without a freeze in advance, negotiations were pointless.
If Mr. Obama does go ahead with a meeting at the United Nations, officials said he would push both sides hard to yield more. But they predicted that Mr. Mitchell would have to continue his shuttles. “They can have a photo opportunity, but they can’t announce the resumption of talks,” Mr. Erekat said by phone after Mr. Mitchell’s meeting with Mr. Abbas. “They will try again next month.” Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1357 - 19/9/2009, 09:30
Massachusetts Governor Says White House Pressing for Quick Kennedy Replacement
A month after a White House spokesman labeled the issue a state matter, Deval Patrick said he and Obama spoke about changing the law as they both attended Kennedy's funeral AP
Friday, September 18, 2009
Biloulou
Nombre de messages : 54566 Localisation : Jardins suspendus sur la Woluwe - Belgique Date d'inscription : 27/10/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 10:18
Sylvette, juste pour vous dire que j'apprécie particulièrement cette présentation des textes qui fait usage des spoilers. Ca aère les pages et ajoute énormément à la clarté des textes et facilité de lecture.
Bravo !
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 11:36
Merci, Biloulou
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 12:07
Les manifestations contre l'elargissement du gouvernement, l'agrandissement du deficit, la prise en main de l'assurance sante, les tea-parties (memes soucis), les reactions de certains dans les media (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity etc.. etc.. memes sujets) sont couverts de maniere tres differente par l'elite mediatique NY Times en tete) de celle utilee lors des manifestations dirigees contre le gouvernement Bush.
Un vent de violence et de folie dangereuse s'abattrait sur les Etats Unis. Nancy en pleurerait:
Nancy
La reponse de Glen Beck:
Spoiler:
NB: le commentaire qui accompagne cette video ne correspond pas a mon opinion
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 12:34
En fait, je viens de m'apercevoir que ce n'est que la conclusion de la reponse de Beck. Je tacherai de retrouver la video complete. Il y est parfait.
Souvent, il est un peu... "trop" sur les bords pour moi, mais bon la....
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1362 - 19/9/2009, 19:47
.... et Vladimir, il n'y sera pas? ah non c'est vrai, ce sera pour la prochaine fois. Dommage, belle brochette tout de meme
Obama's first dance at the U.N. By JOSH GERSTEIN | 9/19/09 7:47 AM EDT
Tom DeLay may be Dancing with the Stars, but it’s President Barack Obama who’ll need some fancy footwork next week as he tries to dodge the dictators during his first-ever visit to the United Nations. Stung by GOP criticism of his Hugo Chavez grip-and-grin in April, Obama doesn’t need the political fallout from any more cozy encounters or smiling snapshots with anti-American rivals.
Spoiler:
“Every president worries about Castro giving them a bear hug or Yassir Arafat giving them a bear hug—and every president and his staff take steps to avoid it,” said Nancy Soderberg, who served as the No. 2 U.S. official at the U.N. under President Bill Clinton. “There’s always a very delicate orchestration of who he’s going to shake hands with.”
“It’s like the American Ballet Theater,” said one aide who planned U.N. trips for two former presidents. At this year’s U.N. meeting, Libyan President Muammar Qadhafi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are two leaders Obama would likely prefer not be on his dance card. Chavez, the fiery Venezuelan president, and Zimbabwe’s leader Robert Mugabe also will be there.
But avoiding an insistent suitor at the bustling U.N. headquarters can be difficult – despite the painstaking efforts aides sometimes take to send a U.S. president down a different hallway, or into a different corner of a meeting hall to avoid unwelcome diplomatic advances.
“It’s inevitable that you’re going to be in the same room with people,” said John Bolton, U.N. Ambassador under President George W. Bush. “It’s not like the Secret Service controls the floor of the Security Council. If Ahmadinejad just comes up to Obama and talks to him, who’s going to stand in the way?”
So what’s a president to do when cornered?
Perhaps employ a technique Clinton perfected in 1993, when his aides tried to head off a bear hug from Arafat, the Palestinian leader, during his appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the White House.
“Clinton’s staffers, Tony Lake and Martin Indyk, spent a good 20 minutes showing him how to shake [Arafat’s] hand and grab his arms so he couldn’t do a bear hug. It’s a kind of hip jujitsu. If you notice, there is no bear hug picture of Arafat and Clinton,” Soderberg said. “I’m sure they’re dusting that off for Qadhafi.”
The bad news for Obama is that it’ll be hard to avoid Qadhafi next week. The United States is heading up the U.N. Security Council, while Libya currently holds the presidency of the U.N. General Assembly. That means Qadhafi is scheduled to speak immediately after Obama on Wednesday morning, and the two men could meet in a green room of sorts just off the floor.
“It gives Qadhafi a kind of opportunity behind the scenes to see Obama back there,” Bolton said. “He can test it out and see what Obama’s reaction is.”
Later Wednesday, there is a lunch sponsored by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and that’s where U.S. presidents and their aides have had to be most vigilant for unwanted diplomatic advances.
The Chavez moment came at a summit in the Caribbean later that month, when Obama shook hands with the Venezuelan president and pictures captured wide smiles on both men’s faces. Later, Chavez sought out Obama at the same summit and handed him an anti-American book. Obama called the gift a “nice gesture,” but critics pilloried him for being chummy with a leader who once referred to President George W. Bush as “the devil.”
And in July, photographers snapped shots of Obama’s handshake with Qadhafi.
Former advance staffers say they have sometimes stepped between the American president and a foreign leader to head off an undesired interaction. Sometimes it’s not that foreign leaders are unsavory, just that they’re not deemed important enough to warrant the president’s limited time.
An advance aide to Bushes 41 and 43, Spencer Geissinger, said the U.S. president’s delegation often took pains to avoid leaders who were considered unfriendly.
“The UN helps us,…letting us know the schedule of a particular individual. We know when he or she arrives and where—and we choose to arrive through another entrance, hold in a particular room and know when they’re going to be in the hallway,” Geissinger said. “It’s pretty common practice in the advance world.”
Geissinger said he thinks his advance teams were “pretty successful” at heading off such encounters, but that Chavez did manage to approach Bush once, away from cameras, at a U.N. event.
Efforts to make political hay of a U.N. handshake can backfire. A brief greeting there between Castro and President Bill Clinton in 2000 became a political football when First Lady Hillary Clinton’s competitor in the New York Senate race, Rep. Rick Lazio, went after the Clintons for being too cozy with dubious leaders.
“I think we send the wrong message when we embrace—whether it’s Mrs. Arafat, or Fidel Castro,” Lazio said.
The White House replied with a solid counterpunch—blindsiding Lazio by giving the New York Post an official photo of the congressman shaking hands with Yassir Arafat during a Middle East trip in 1998. The picture took the steam out of Lazio’s efforts to tar Clinton for her embrace of Suha Arafat during a similar trip the following year.
According to several diplomats, the most famous refused handshake in modern diplomatic history was U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s rebuff of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai at peace talks on Indochina held in Geneva in 1954. “Dulles ostentatiously refused to shake his hand,” said Winston Lord, a diplomat who joined President Richard Nixon’s historic mission to China in 1972.
“Nixon…was very conscious of this slight,” Lord recalled. “When he got out of the plane, he …walked towards Zhou Enlai with his hand oustretched very obviously….We knew that it still stuck in Zhou’s mind.”
Lord said Nixon later gave everyone on the trip mementos that featured a close up of the two clasped hands and the words, “Order of the New China Hand.”
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 19/9/2009, 19:59
On peut le dire tout-de-meme, Bravo! Vive l'U.N.!
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1364 - 20/9/2009, 12:14
Obama Said to Request That Paterson Drop Campaign By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and JEFF ZELENY Published: September 19, 2009 Jim Wilson/The New York Times
President Obama shook Gov. David A. Paterson's
WASHINGTON — President Obama has sent a request to Gov. David A. Paterson that he withdraw from the New York governor’s race, fearing that Mr. Paterson cannot recover from his dismal political standing, according to two senior administration officials and a New York Democratic operative with direct knowledge of the situation.
Spoiler:
The decision to ask Mr. Paterson to step aside was proposed by political advisers to Mr. Obama, but approved by the president himself, one of the administration officials said.
“Is there concern about the situation in New York? Absolutely,” the second administration official said Saturday evening. “Has that concern been conveyed to the governor? Yes.”
The administration officials and the Democratic operative spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions with the governor were intended to be confidential.
The president’s request was conveyed to the Mr. Paterson by Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a Queens Democrat, who has developed a strong relationship with the Obama administration, they said. The move against a sitting Democratic governor represents an extraordinary intervention into a state political race by the president, and is a delicate one, given that Mr. Paterson is one of only two African-American governors in the nation.
But Mr. Obama’s political team and other party leaders have grown increasingly worried that the governor’s unpopularity could drag down Democratic members of Congress in New York, as well as the Democratic-controlled Legislature, in next fall’s election.
Mr. Paterson and his aides did not respond to repeated requests for comment Saturday. Mr. Paterson arrived on Long Island Saturday evening to attend a dinner, but walked hurriedly past a reporter who tried to ask him about the White House request.
An aide to Mr. Meeks said the congressman could not be reached Saturday.
“The message the White House wanted to send — that it wants Paterson to step aside — was delivered,” said the Democratic operative,, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were intended to be confidential. “He is resistant.”
The general election is more than a year away, but Mr. Obama and his political team are moving now in part because of signals from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, that he may run for governor, according to Democrats who have spoken with White House officials. Many Democratic leaders believe that Mr. Giuliani’s presence at the top of the Republican ticket could spark enthusiasm among his party’s voters, who might otherwise have little desire to go to the polls.
Leading Democrats in the state have expressed deep concern about Mr. Paterson’s ability to hold on to the office. But most have been wary of openly suggesting he step aside.
The White House move could give them cover to abandon Mr. Paterson and endorse another candidate, most likely Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been debating for months whether to take on Mr. Paterson in a primary.
Mr. Paterson, who was elevated to governor from lieutenant governor in March 2008, in the wake of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation after a prostitution scandal, announced in October that he would seek a full term.
But in the intervening months, White House officials have watched the deteriorating political fortunes of Mr. Paterson with growing alarm, as his popularity plunged and he committed a series of missteps that raised questions about his ability to govern.
In addition, the relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Paterson has been shaky, dating to the governor’s selection of a replacement for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who resigned from the Senate to become secretary of state. White House officials had received assurances from Mr. Paterson that he would not pick Kirsten E. Gillibrand, then a little-known Democratic congresswoman from a heavily Republican district outside of Albany, according to a prominent Democrat who discussed the matter with a senior White House official.
The White House and Democratic House leaders were concerned that her sudden departure from the House would give Republicans a prime opportunity to reclaim the seat. Aides to the president conveyed those concerns to the governor, according to Democrats who have discussed the matter with Mr. Obama’s aides.
In the end, Mr. Paterson selected Ms. Gillibrand anyway, infuriating White House officials and Democratic leaders in Washington. Making matters worse, the governor also publicly snubbed Caroline Kennedy, a close personal friend and ally of Mr. Obama’s, who announced in December her wish to be chosen as Mrs. Clinton’s replacement, but then withdrew her name from consideration in January, citing personal reasons.
The concerns of Obama aides deepened last month, when the governor, speaking on a radio talk show in New York, suggested that criticism of him was racially motivated and that Mr. Obama would soon suffer similar attacks. Mr. Obama’s advisers, who have long sought to defuse the issue of race, found the comments inflammatory and expressed their displeasure directly to the Paterson camp.
The move by the White House will probably bring new attention to Mr. Cuomo, now the most popular Democratic figure in the state. While only 30 percent of voters in a Quinnipiac poll last month approved of the job that Mr. Paterson was doing, 74 percent approved of Mr. Cuomo’s job performance.
The situation between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Paterson has been a complicated one. Mr. Cuomo is still haunted by the fierce backlash he stirred in 2002 when he decided to run in the Democratic primary for governor against H. Carl McCall, the first serious black candidate for governor.
Now, Mr. Cuomo effectively has the blessing of the nation’s first black president to run against New York’s first black governor. That will probably neutralize any criticism he may face among the governor’s prominent black allies, including Representative Charles B. Rangel of Harlem, who warned this year that the party would become racially polarized if Mr. Cuomo took on Mr. Paterson.
Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting in New York.
Shansaa
Nombre de messages : 1674 Date d'inscription : 02/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 20/9/2009, 13:06
September 16, 2009, 9:30 pm
Working Class Zero
Matt Nager Mark Williams speaking during a Tea Party Express rally at the Cape Buffalo Grille in Dallas, Texas, on Sept, 4, before heading to Washington, D.C.
The first nine years of the new century have yet to find a defining label, something as catchy as Tom Wolfe’s “Me Decade” of the 1970s or the “Silent Generation” of 1950s men in gray flannel suits. Bookmarked by the horror of 9/11 and the history of a black president, the aughts certainly don’t lack for drama. But last week, lost in the commotion over the brat’s cry of Joe Wilson and the shotgun blast of rage in the Washington protest, something definitive was released just as this decade nears its curtain call.
For average Americans, the last 10 years were a lost decade. At the end of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, American households had less money and less economic security, and fewer of them were covered by health care than 10 years earlier, the Census Bureau reported in its annual survey. The poverty rate in 2008 rose to 13.2 percent, the highest in 11 years, while median household income fell to $50,303. Ten years earlier, adjusted for inflation, it was $51,295. Of course this reflects the ravages of a horrid recession. But the decline started before the collapse in the housing and financial sectors — and it was calculated, in the eyes of some.
Harvard economist Lawrence Katz called it “a plutocratic boom.” If anything comes close to defining the era, that would be my nomination. President Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes — and the biggest beneficiaries by far were the top 1 percent of earners. At the same time, Wall Street was inflated by the helium of a regulation-free economy that eventually gave us Bernie Madoff and banks begging for bailouts.
Now consider the people who showed up in a state of generalized rage in Washington over the weekend. They have no leaders, save a self-described rodeo clown — Glenn Beck of Fox News — and some well-funded Astroturf outfits from the permanent lobbying class inside the Beltway. They are loosely organized under a Tea Party movement, but these people are closer to British Tories than 18th century patriots with a love of equality. And they have the wrong target.
Mark Williams, a Sacramento talk radio host, was speaking to CNN on behalf of the demonstrators — many of whom carried signs comparing Obama to a witch doctor, an undocumented worker or a Nazi — when he played the blue collar card. Who is Williams? A garden variety demagogue who calls Obama “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” and the Democratic party “a domestic enemy” of America. He also refers to the president as “racist in chief.” That says all you need to know about leaders of the Tea Party movement. Williams repeatedly invoked the “working stiffs” who feel left out. Working people are always the last to get aboard the gravy train, and the first to be used in campaigns that will not advance their cause. And with these demonstrators, and the hucksters trying to distract them from real issues, history repeats itself.
Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle?
Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table?
Where were the angry “stiffs” when the banking industry rolled the 2005 Congress into rewriting bankruptcy law, making it easier to keep people in permanent credit card hock?
Where were they when President Bush started the bailouts, with $700 billion that had to be paid on a few days’ notice — with no debate — to save global capitalism?
They were nowhere, because they were clueless, just as most journalists were.
But now, at a time when a new president wants to reform health care to fix the largest single cause of middle-class economic collapse, he’s called a Nazi by these self-described friends of the working stiff.
“A working class hero is something to be,” John Lennon, that product of ragged Liverpool, sang just after leaving the Beatles. “Keep you doped with religion and sex and T.V.”
As someone who had a union card in my wallet before I owned a Mastercard, I don’t share Lennon’s dark view of blue collar workers. But as long as they can be distracted by people who say all government is bad, while turning a blind eye to manipulation at corporate levels, they’re doomed to shouting at phantoms.
One more detail caught my eye in these new economic reports on the lost decade. People in their prime earning years — age 45 to 54 — took the biggest hit in the last years of the Bush Administration, their median income falling by $5,000. And the region that suffered most — the South.
Older southern whites — that’s who got hit hardest by the freewheeling decade now fading. They should be angry. But they’re five years too late.
About Timothy Egan
Timothy Egan worked for 18 years as a writer for The New York Times, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, then as a national enterprise reporter. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of reporters who wrote the series How Race Is Lived in America. He lives in Seattle.
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 20/9/2009, 16:04
Revirement! Plus de menaces envers FOX News
ACORN CEO 'Outraged' by Behavior of Employees in Prostitute Tapes
ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis tries to calm a growing firestorm over the behavior of her group's employees. FOXNews.com
Sunday, September 20, 2009
ACORN's top officer said Sunday that she is "outraged" by secret videotapes that showed her organization's employees offering advice to undercover filmmakers posing as a pimp and prostitute, as she pledged to "reform" the inner workings of the activist group.
Chief organizer Bertha Lewis tried to calm a growing firestorm over the behavior of her group's employees. Allegations of voter registration fraud and other ethical lapses have plagued ACORN for years, but the secret videotapes were the last straw for the group's critics -- as well as its long-time defenders.
The videotapes, filmed by two conservative activists, led to both the House and Senate voting to de-fund ACORN last week. Many Democrats joined Republicans in voting for the measures.
"Any organization is not entirely perfect," Lewis said on "FOX News Sunday." "I was outraged by it. Everyone should be, and I can understand how the Congress was also."
She said any employee "too stupid" not to adhere to professional standards will be terminated. "Internally, let's have some reform," Lewis said.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1367 - 20/9/2009, 17:21
-A stab in the Back Canceling the missile shield betrays our allies.
by Jamie M. Fly 09/28/2009, Volume 015, Issue 02
President Obama's decision to cancel plans for U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic is a knife in the back for those countries. The implications for U.S. security and the transatlantic relationship are profound. Critics rightly note that the sudden announcement Thursday sends a dangerous message to allies, both in Europe and elsewhere, who rely on U.S. security guarantees.
Spoiler:
Even those who agree with the administration's approach concede that the rollout was clumsy--middle of the night phone calls and little prior consultation. In July 2007, Senator Obama criticized his predecessor for this very thing. The Bush administration, he said, had "done a poor job of consulting its NATO allies about the deployment of a missile defense system that has major implications for all of them."
In addition to the geopolitical implications of this con-cession to Russia, there are several major problems with the administration's plan.
Questionable intelligence on Iran. In his announcement, President Obama stated that his decision was driven by an updated intelligence assessment of Iran's missile programs. According to the White House fact sheet, the administration appears to believe that it doesn't need to worry about Iran's possessing an ICBM capability until around 2020.
In the wake of the intelligence community's failures before the Iraq war and its mismanagement of intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear program, it is surprising to see the White House take intelligence about Iran's sensitive military programs at face value. It is naïve to believe that Iran, as it makes strides in its nuclear program will not also speed up its efforts to develop long-range missile technology or acquire it from a country like North Korea.
This shift in the intelligence community's assessment dovetails conveniently with the views of Ellen Tauscher, the new undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and a former member of Congress, who earlier this year accused supporters of European missile defense of "running around with their hair on fire about a long range threat from Iran that does not exist."
Reliance on unproven technology. Obama and his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill have traditionally claimed that they support missile defense, but only systems that are fully tested or "proven." The problem for defenders of Obama's decision is that the system they now support is exactly what they accused the Bush system of being--unproven.
The White House fact sheet notes that by 2020, the United States will deploy the SM-3 Block IIB "after development and testing." Even James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted on Thursday that the technology is "still to be proven." The ground-based interceptors the Bush administration intended to place in Poland were much farther along than Obama's system. Again, President Obama is doing precisely what Senator Obama found objectionable when he said, in 2007, "The Bush administration has in the past exaggerated missile defense capabilities and rushed deployments for political purposes."
Exorbitant cost. The administration has not stated what its four-phase approach will cost. General Cartwright in his briefing did argue that relying on SM-3 missiles is more cost effective than using the ground-based interceptors intended for Poland because the individual interceptors are cheaper. What Cartwright did not mention is the cost of the additional radars and bases, as well as development and testing.
Last year, the Congressional Budget Office waded into the debate over missile defense options for Europe and concluded that a sea-based SM-3 system--which the Obama administration plans to deploy during phase one--would cost $21.9 billion, much more than the $12.8 billion for the Bush missile shield.
The announcement came prior to a flurry of autumn diplomacy--the president's upcoming bilateral meetings with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev at the United Nations General Assembly and the G-20 in Pittsburgh later in the month, the October 1 sit down between Undersecretary of State William Burns and the Iranians, and the reconvening in Geneva of the START negotiations, in which the Russians have insisted that limits on U.S. missile defenses be part of any new agreement.
President Obama seems to think that by making a grand gesture and downplaying the Iranian threat he will garner good will from the Russians and the Iranians going into these talks, never mind the hurt feelings of long-time allies. More likely, Iran, Russia, and a watching world will see this for what it is: a colossal sign of U.S. weakness.
Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. He served in the office of the secretary of defense and on the national security staff in 2005-2009.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1368 - 20/9/2009, 17:30
Obama turns cool on Israel A disturbing thing has happened on the long and winding road to Middle East peace. Suddenly, the major obstacle is a few apartments going up in existing Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
What a difference a year makes. Under the Bush administration, the preconditions for peace rested heavily on the Palestinians, who were asked to renounce violence, bring order to the territories and recognize Israel's right to exist.
Spoiler:
The Obama administration, which wants to restart the talks later this month, has scrapped those prerequisites and instead drawn a hard line in the sand over the settlements. The building must stop, the White House says, before negotiations begin.
The shift in the relationship between the United States and Israel is raising anxiety levels both in Israel and among its supporters in this country.
American Jews, who overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama last year, are trying to reconcile their enthusiasm for the president with their worry about his coolness toward the Jewish state.
Israel showed its concern last week by dispatching former Ambassador Alon Pinkas on a U.S. tour.
"The jury is still out on whether this is an enduring shift in policy or part of a broader strategy that will ultimately project American power to extract gestures from the Arabs," Pinkas said during a visit to The Detroit News.
He's hoping for the latter -- that Obama is trying to build street creditn the Arab world by squeezing Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. But he acknowledged that something more ominous may be at work.
Obama's commitment to Israel has always been a question. His emotional response during the campaign to Hamas rocket fire on Israeli children calmed Jewish voters.
But his speech in Cairo to the Islamic world hinted at a causal effect between Palestinian suffering and Israeli occupation.
That's a departure from the established American position that the Palestinians are the author of their own misery. Shifting the pressure point in the conflict to the Israeli settlements confirms the new view.
Obama's top aide, Rahm Emanuel, linked America's willingness to engage on the Iranian nuclear threat to a cessation of settlement activity, reflecting the Arab position that everything pivots on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The administration also signaled a willingness to accept a coalition government in the Palestinian territories that includes the Hamas terrorists.
Now, Obama is making an issue of building in settlements that likely will remain part of Israel in a final agreement.
The irony is that most Israelis agree that settlement expansion should stop. But Netanyahu is holding together a delicate coalition that would dissolve if he agrees to a freeze.
Obama's insensitivity to Netanyahu's dilemma is a poor way to begin the peace process.
Israel got walked into a disastrous accord at Oslo 16 years ago by an American president eager to play honest broker. It's not likely to make that mistake again.
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. E-mail: nfinley@detnews.com.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1369 - 20/9/2009, 18:40
Libya's Al-Qaddafi Denied Posh NYC Townhouse for U.N. Visit
Sunday, September 20, 2009
AP Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi
Keep on moving, Muammar.
Agents for Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi were met with a strong-arm from a real-estate broker they approached to rent a posh townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side for his visit to the city this week.
Spoiler:
The broker, with characteristic New York chutzpah, told them to take a hike back to the desert.
"They kept asking, 'What would be the price? What would be the price?' I thought about it and said, 'Why don't you send Megrahi back to Scotland, and then maybe we can work something out.' They hung up on me immediately," said Jason Haber, a broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman.
Haber was referring to convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was released from prison in Scotland last month with terminal cancer and greeted with a hero's welcome in Tripoli that Qaddafi orchestrated.
Uproar over the release has made it hard for Qaddafi to find a place to set up his Bedouin tent while in town for the U.N. General Assembly.
Residents of Englewood, N.J., had already rejected his plan to stay at a home the Libyan Mission owns there, so diplomats approached Haber about the swank rental pad he was peddling at 5 E. 78th St.
Click here to read more on this story from the New York Post.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1370 - 21/9/2009, 01:18
How will the nation pay for health reform?
When President Lyndon Johnson was pushing for the creation of Medicare in the 1960s, he was focused on getting seniors health insurance - and figuring out how to pay for it later. He seemed to care more about doing the right thing than the cost of doing it.
Spoiler:
"I don't argue about that any more than I argue about Lady Bird buying flour. You got to have flour and coffee in your house and education and health. I'll spend the goddamn money. I may cut back some tanks. But not on health," he told Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
That was then.
This is now: "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to the deficit, either now or in the future," said President Barack Obama in a recent speech to Congress urging health-care reform.
So how will congressional proposals for reform - estimated to cost as much as $1 trillion - be paid for?
If the money can't be borrowed from future generations, that leaves only cuts or tax increases on the table. "Prevention" of diseases - which some lawmakers focus on to reduce future spending in health care - won't generate dollars to pay for insuring millions of Americans today.
In a time of record federal deficits, and when health costs need to be better controlled, Obama and Congress must explain how doing the right thing today - getting Americans health insurance - will be funded. The nation can't afford runaway health-care costs.
Some ideas under consideration:
Changes to Medicare
Congress is seeking a big chunk of money from making changes to Medicare. One idea with broad support from Democrats is slashing federal subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans, private insurance plans that replace traditional Medicare in the management of some seniors' health care.
They cost taxpayers a bundle.
The Congressional Budget Office determined money could be saved in Medicare by reducing what the government pays for some health services. Changes to the Medicare drug program are also on the table.
An important proposal getting little attention is creating an "Independent Medicare Advisory Council." This panel would recommend changes in the program's payment policies, which would be subject to approval by the administration. That's a departure from now, where a panel makes recommendations, but Congress decides if they're implemented. The goal is to remove special-interest lobbying and politics from decisions about Medicare.
Less money for hospitals
One proposal would funnel fewer federal dollars to hospitals treating a disproportionate number of uninsured people. The thinking is that if reform is successful in getting more Americans insured, hospitals will not have to provide as much uncompensated care.
Tax increases
Some lawmakers would impose a surcharge on those earning more than $1 million a year. There's talk of increasing taxes on the most expensive health-insurance plans - which offer generous coverage.
A word about prevention
If every American got on the treadmill every day and ate more vegetables, the money to pay for insuring more Americans wouldn't just miraculously appear. Preventative health care - such as drugs to control high blood pressure - could actually result in spending more health dollars. (Recent studies show screening for prostate cancer may lead to unnecessary spending for medical treatments.)
Proposals focused on prevention may reduce health spending over the long run and improve quality of life. But that's not the same as coming up with money to pay for reform today.
- - - The truth is insuring millions of uninsured Americans will cost money. Americans deserve honest answers about where that money will come from. But lawmakers also must remind the public that taking care of people in the United States of America is the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do in 1965; it's the right thing to do now.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1371 - 21/9/2009, 01:54
Obama's Worldwide Star Power Finds Limits Skepticism Abroad Echoes Doubt at Home
By Michael D. Shear and Howard Schneider Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, September 20, 2009
Eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama has become a global celebrity, far more popular abroad than he is at home and sometimes eclipsing foreign leaders among their own people.
Spoiler:
He has sought to use his renown to repair America's image in the world, extending an "open hand" in major speeches on trips to more than a dozen countries. Obama has restarted talks to limit nuclear weapons, begun engaging adversaries, helped orchestrate the world's response to economic collapse and reversed Bush-era policies that had angered allies and distanced the United States from the world community.
But just as his domestic honeymoon has clearly ended, international events have demonstrated the limits of Obama's personal charm.
As he takes the stage to address the United Nations for the first time Wednesday, Obama will face world leaders -- adversaries and allies alike -- whose rebukes of the new American president serve as reminders that the world's differences with the United States transcend who is in the White House.
European nations have refused to send significant numbers of new troops to aid the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan. Few countries have agreed to accept detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Scottish officials ignored Obama's plea to keep the Lockerbie bomber in prison, and U.S. efforts to head off a coup in Honduras were ineffective. North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons, Iran may be doing so, and Middle East leaders have rebuffed Obama's efforts at peacemaking.
"When he came into office, there was kind of a sigh of relief around the world because he wasn't Bush," said Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "What was he going to do to solve these problems? They haven't seen that yet."
Obama's top foreign policy advisers say the president's popularity abroad has helped to clear a path for substantial policy achievement by ushering in a new era of respect for the United States in other countries.
Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview that the administration's conscious decision to break with the past -- and specifically with the presidency of George W. Bush -- has altered the dynamics of world politics.
"It's palpable every day with a new openness and a new willingness to listen and respect our positions and our policies, a readiness to cooperate even where in the past we have met resistance," she said. "Not just change in tone and reaction, but change in policy that has been noted and recognized."
Yet even staunch Obama defenders such as Rice concede that the expectations for the president abroad were exceedingly high.
"What did you expect?" she said. "The president gets elected and all of a sudden, you know, we reach nirvana in short order? I mean, that's a little bit ridiculous."
Unappreciated Realities
Obama began building expectations for peace in the Middle East in the first months of his presidency and raised hopes even higher with a June speech in Cairo in which he pledged that he could make things happen.
He asked Israel to ease its embargo of the Gaza Strip and freeze construction in West Bank settlements. He asked the Arab states to take steps toward "normalization" of ties with Israel. He made restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks a top priority, announced plans to repair relations with Syria and said he would engage, rather than confront, Iran.
On Saturday, the White House announced that Obama plans to hold a three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in New York on Tuesday. It will be the first meeting between the two since Netanyahu took office.
"It is another sign of the president's deep commitment to comprehensive peace that he wants to personally engage at this juncture," special envoy George J. Mitchell said.
But progress has been slow, and the frustration has built on all sides -- among Israeli officials upset that he focused public demands on them; among Arabs, especially Palestinians, over his inability to wrest concessions from Israel; among human rights activists who say his idealism has not been borne out in action.
"I think there has been too little appreciation of realities and too much well-intentioned belief in the power of rhetoric and goodwill," said Mark Heller, principal research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Rice countered that Obama has made "significant progress on a wide array of issues" relating to the Middle East peace process, which she noted has been a difficult problem for "every prior administration."
But White House officials said they do not expect an agreement on settlements to be announced at the three-way meeting next week. The Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip has said that Mitchell's inability to negotiate that agreement with Israel proves Obama's shortcomings.
It is "proof of the failure of the Obama administration in helping the Palestinian people," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement, reflecting a broad skepticism among Arabs about whether Obama's overture to the Muslim world would make a difference on the ground.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, have also expressed concern that his policy of engagement toward Iran is allowing too much time to pass without any steps to slow Tehran's nuclear program. Israel and other nations say they suspect that Iran is intent on building a weapon; Iran says its program is peaceful.
The United States has agreed to hold discussions with Iran and several other countries on Oct. 1, prompting fears in Israel and among critics of the administration that delay will inevitably result.
"It is not just here that the administration is starting to be mugged by reality," Heller said. "They used nice words and tried to engage . . . In the meantime, the scorecard on North Korea is not much better. On [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez it is not much better. We don't see reforms pushed in Cuba."
'Process of Disappointment'
Writing recently in Le Figaro, one of France's leading daily newspapers, Pierre Rousselin, one of the paper's top editors, offered an assessment that might still be considered heresy in Europe: "Barack Obama is not the Messiah."
Obama's political struggles at home and his performance internationally have led some observers abroad to remark that a charismatic leader who seemed to be walking on water last year is only human, subject to the same bruising political battles as everybody else.
Several have noted that his effort to cultivate better relations with Russia has not produced concrete help from Moscow in the confrontation with Iran and that -- so far -- Israel has stiff-armed his plea for an end to Jewish settlements.
Obama has made good on his promises to begin winding down the Iraq war and to take steps to close Guantanamo. But at the same time, he has ramped up U.S. fighting in Afghanistan, a sore point with many Europeans and a difficult political issue for Obama's counterparts around the world. And despite shifting U.S. policy on climate change, the president is unlikely to see a global climate-change agreement materialize at the summit in Copenhagen later this year.
U.S. officials point to their success in getting Russia and China to back stiff new sanctions on North Korea as evidence of their success on the world stage.
The real test of attitudes in European capitals is likely to emerge in coming months, experts there say, particularly if Obama fails to make headway on his main foreign policy objectives or if the war in Afghanistan causes an unacceptable casualty rate among European soldiers attached to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
"There's definitely going to be a process of disappointment that goes on internationally because U.S. interests are much more constant than many people recognize," said David Bosco, a professor of international politics at American University and the author of a new book about the U.N. Security Council. "But he remains quite popular abroad, and foreign leaders know that."
Surveys consistently show that Obama remains popular among people throughout Europe. A new poll by the German Marshall Fund put his approval rate at 77 percent across Europe and at 92 percent in Germany.
"I'm not criticizing the previous administration, because they were equally motivated, but I think the view [of other governments] was that by cooperating too closely with the Americans at that time tainted them," said one senior Obama official. "So I feel there is a greater receptivity now to engage the United States because of some of the decisions made by President Obama."
In Latin America, the aftermath of the coup in Honduras in June has prompted criticism of Obama's policies. Although the administration condemned the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya and said it would not recognize the government that took power, it has been unable to restore him to power.
Obama's election was welcomed by some of South America's most influential leaders, among them Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But as in other corners of the world, the initial warm relations have cooled as the United States has pursued a Bush-era policy that consolidates the U.S. military presence in Colombia, Washington's closest ally on the continent.
A Spotlight in New York
In his speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday, Obama will lay out "his view of international cooperation in the 21st century and the need to move beyond old divisions," Rice told reporters Friday.
Rice's predecessor, John Bolton, predicted that "the greeting will be rapturous" for the new U.S. president. "It's a triumph for Obama personally, but I have yet to see his personal popularity translate into concrete steps forward," Bolton said.
Despite the warm greeting, the media's attention -- and as a result, the world's -- may be riveted on others.
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be speaking shortly after Obama. In a preview of his speech Friday morning, Ahmadinejad told an anti-Israel rally in Tehran that the Holocaust was "a false pretext to create Israel" and said confronting the regime is a "national and religious duty."
That kind of rhetoric will put the spotlight squarely on Obama's policy of engagement and the upcoming talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Istanbul.
"I don't think there's much likelihood that there will be an interaction" between the two leaders, Rice said. "There's no obvious venue in which that would occur, and certainly we have no meetings or anything of the sort planned."
A day later, Obama will chair a meeting of the 15-member Security Council, where Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi , who gave a hero's welcome to the Lockerbie bomber, will be in attendance. An interaction between the two in the small council chambers could be awkward.
Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted that Obama's visit to the United Nations will be welcomed by most of the world's leaders.
"Most of them want him to succeed," Gelb said. "Now they are looking for him to put up the goods."
Schneider reported from Jerusalem. Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Glenn Kessler and correspondents Edward Cody in Paris and Juan Forero in Bogota and special correspondent Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1372 - 21/9/2009, 02:19
Washington Post
September 18, 2009 Does He Lie? ByCharles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that. He ... well, you judge.
Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth.
Spoiler:
(1) "I will not sign (a plan)," he solemnly pledged, "if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."
Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama's very next sentence: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."
This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there's absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.
Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.
Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. "Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?"
(2) And then there's the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.
But more importantly, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don't voluntarily turn themselves in.
When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?
(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.
That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977. Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn't he gotten started on the painless billions in "waste and fraud" savings?
Obama doesn't lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things -- energy, education and health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel's Law -- a crisis is a terrible thing to waste -- failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.
So on to the next gambit: selling health care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office's demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform -- until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.
Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.
Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton because he possessed a winning, near irresistible charm. Obama's persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.
Invité Invité
Sujet: 1373 - A surge? ou pas... 21/9/2009, 10:08
McChrystal: 'Failure' Without More U.S. Forces in Afghanistan
The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, says in a confidential report that without additional forces, the war against insurgents will end in failure. AP
Monday, September 21, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in a confidential report that without additional forces, the war against insurgents there will end in failure, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Spoiler:
Photos
Gen. Stanley McChrystal is President Obama's top commander in Afghanistan. (AP Photo)
McChrystal's grim assessment of the war was published on the Post's Web site, with some portions withheld at the government's request.
"Although considerable effort and sacrifice have resulted in some progress, many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating," McChrystal wrote in his summary.
The report was sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates in August and is now under review by President Barack Obama, who is trying to decide whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
While asking for more troops, McChrystal also pointed out "the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy." The U.S. needs to interact better with the Afghan people, McChrystal said, and better organize its efforts with NATO allies.
The Pentagon and the White House are awaiting a separate, more detailed request for additional troops and resources. Media reports Friday and Saturday said McChrystal has finished it but was told to pocket it, partly because of the charged politics surrounding the decision. McChrystal's senior spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the report is not complete.
"The resource request is being finalized and will be sent forward to the chain of command at some point in the near future," Smith said from Afghanistan.
Obama denied asking McChrystal to sit on the request, but he gave no deadline for making a decision about whether to send more Americans into harm's way.
Obama said in a series of television interviews broadcast Sunday that he will not allow politics to govern his decision. He left little doubt he is re-evaluating whether more forces will do any good. "The first question is, `Are we doing the right thing?"' Obama said. "Are we pursuing the right strategy?"
The war has taken on a highly partisan edge. Senate Republicans are demanding an influx of forces to turn around a war that soon will enter its ninth year, while members of Obama's own party are trying to put on the brakes.
"No, no, no, no," Obama responded when asked whether he or aides had directed McChrystal to temporarily withhold a request for additional U.S. forces and other resources.
"The only thing I've said to my folks is, 'A, I want an unvarnished assessment, but, B, I don't want to put the resource question before the strategy question,"' Obama said. "Because there is a natural inclination to say, 'If I get more, then I can do more."'
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week he expected McChrystal's request for additional forces and other resources "in the very near future."
Other military officials had said the request would go to McChrystal's boss, Gen. David Petraeus, and up the chain of command in a matter of weeks. The White House discounted that timeline, but has remained vague about how long it would take to receive the report and act on it.
McChrystal found security worse than he expected when he took command this summer to lead what Obama described as a narrowed, intensive campaign to uproot Al Qaeda and prevent the terrorist group from again using Afghanistan as a safe haven.
In the interviews taped Friday at the White House, Obama said he's asking these questions of the military: "How does this advance America's national security interests? How does it make sure that al-Qaida and its extremist allies cannot attack the United States homeland, our allies, our troops who are based in Europe?"
"If supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy, then we'll move forward," the president continued. "But if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan."
Obama has ordered 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, increasing the number of U.S. forces there to a record 68,000, and watched as Marines pushed deep into Taliban-controlled districts ahead of Afghanistan's national elections in August.
The disappointing outcome of the voting -- no definitive winner weeks later and mounting allegations that the incumbent President Hamid Karzai rigged the election -- is coloring both Obama's view of the conflict and the partisan debate.
Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has told Obama he wants no new troops request at least until the United States makes a bolder effort to expand and train Afghanistan's own armed forces.
On Sunday, Levin addressed the give-and-take over McChrystal's report.
"I think what's going on here is that there is a number of questions which are being asked to Gen. McChrystal about some of the assumptions which have been previously made in the strategy, including that there would be an election which would be a stabilizing influence instead of a destabilizing influence," said Levin, D-Mich.
The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Obama should follow the military's advice. McConnell said Petraeus "did a great job with the surge in Iraq. I think he knows what he's doing. Gen. McChrystal is a part of that. We have a lot of confidence in those two generals. I think the president does as well."
Obama spoke on CNN's "State of the Union," ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press," and CBS' "Face the Nation." Levin and McConnell were on CNN.
Invité Invité
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 21/9/2009, 11:18
C'est assez surprenant tout de meme, que notre ministre de la Justice Eric Holder ait qualifie les Americains de "laches" parce que selon lui, ils sont incapables d'avoir un discours/un echange sur le racisme et que lorsqu'il y en a un
-1) en juillet dernier au sujet du policier BLANC qui avait arrete un professeur d'universite AFRO-AMERICAIN -2) la semaine derniere, suite au commentaire de Carter)
il leur est reproche, comme ce w.e. (lors de ses apparitions matinales sur 5 chaines differentes (Mais pas FOX, hein) - a eux mais surtout aux media qui ont ose lancer cet echange...) par le president.
Depuis que le gouvernement Obama est en place, j'ai le net sentiment, en tant que citoyenne americaine, d'etre traitee comme une enfant, que l'on dispute constamment; une autre phase de la mise en place de l'"etat nounou"?
.gif)
Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension.
), Nancy 
et Robert Gibbs 
, donnant l'impression d'etre au pilori, cherchant leurs mots, elle, blanche comme un linge, lui, sans son sourire narquois et son attitude arrogante! 
Merci, Biloulou 
Matt Nager Mark Williams speaking during a Tea Party Express rally at the Cape Buffalo Grille in Dallas, Texas, on Sept, 4, before heading to Washington, D.C.
