Mideast Allies Near A State Of Panic (LA Times)

Mideast allies near a state of panic
U.S. leaders' visits to the region reap only warnings and worry.
By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer
December 3, 2006

WASHINGTON — President Bush and his top advisors fanned out across the troubled Middle East over the last week to showcase their diplomatic initiatives to restore strained relationships with traditional allies and forge new ones with leaders in Iraq.

But instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast American influence, the president's journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy — and fear that the Bush administration may make things worse.

President Bush's summit in Jordan with the Iraqi prime minister proved an awkward encounter that deepened doubts about the relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney's stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, yielded a blunt warning from the kingdom's leaders. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's swing through the West Bank and Israel, intended to build Arab support by showing a new U.S. push for peace, found little to work with.

In all, visits designed to show the American team in charge ended instead in diplomatic embarrassment and disappointment, with U.S. leaders rebuked and lectured by Arab counterparts. The trips demonstrated that U.S. allies in the region were struggling to understand what to make of the difficult relationship, and to figure whether, with a new Democratic majority taking over Congress, Bush even had control over his nation's Mideast policy.

more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usmideast3dec03,1,5388106.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Gawd, I hope the people of the ME will one day be able to forgive us.

Maybe they will as soon as we impeach?

lies with the neoconservative architects of the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the Republican controlled Congress approved everything Bush asked for, and neglected to provide the oversight they should have given to matters of such overwhelming importance. Then the press dropped the ball by never calling Bush or Cheney on their lies, or asking questions that should have been obvious. There is plenty of blame to go around, but in the end, Bush is the president, and he is the one who will, and should, be remembered as the worst president in American history.

I am not even addressing his domestic policies, which have been as disastrous in their own way, in the damage they have done to the American people. By combining the two, Bush has dumped the rebuilding of our own economy, and middle class, and our shameful foreign image, for somebody else to deal with. In that, he is doing what he has always done, created huge messes for other people to clean up.