Read this lede from an article in the Times and tell me with a straight face that these guys have any idea what they’re doing …
President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq’s debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.
White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon’s directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.
I mean, it defies ridicule <$Ad$>(what will I do?). The tone? How were they supposed to sugar-coat it?
Please …
Clearly, we need to come up with a new executive branch foreign policy appointee, someone whose job it would be to coordinate all this stuff, who could make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, someone who could ride herd over interagency disputes.
Ideally, that person would work out of the White House.
We could call the new post the National Security Coordinator or maybe the National Security Advisor. Something like that.
Just a thought.
And you wonder why they’re bringing Jim Baker into the mix? Forget about Rove’s phone records. I want the last month’s phone records between Dubya and pops …
