Ellis Hennican: Seeking help, wanting control

Seeking Help, Wanting Control
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nyhen053441565sep05,0,6202956.column?coll=ny-news-columnists
September 5, 2003


On second thought, maybe we do need the rest of the world after all.
Here we are, four months after Bush climbed into a flight suit, stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared, "Mission accomplished!" in Iraq. One hundred and forty thousand American troops are still in that godforsaken country and dying - and will be for a good long while. Things are getting worse, not better. And even the president has decided we sure could use some help now from the French and the Germans and the Russians and all those other countries we just spent a full year insulting for refusing to go along with our unilateral war.

You send your troops into our quagmire, and the occupation will still be run by us. Your guys get to do some of the dying, but have none of the authority at all. And Halliburton will still keep all its contracts to rebuild the place.


This whole thing would be a whole lot easier if we hadn't wasted our credibility telling the world about nuclear missiles that never existed and weapons of mass destruction that no one can find.
The world was lied to last time. They are not eager to be lied to again.

And he's right about Bush* not being ready to admit he was wrong. I was just listening to Powell's speech but had to turn it off--I'll read the transcript somewhere--I get so sick of the spin and posturing. (as in 'we always cared about our allies our relations with NATO and the UN'--not exact quote) It's easier to bear reading it--one can skim. Powell also kept attributing all these fine multilateral feelings to Bush*. He repeated "the president" over and over ad nauseum (literally in my case).

So mainstream media columns like this are SO welcome.