Word: bakers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rumblings and vibrations leading up to President George W. Bush's hastily arranged meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Something was up. There was a crisis. Dramatic action was indicated. The President was anxious to go on the offensive after the Democratic election victories and before the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report. He was going to press al-Maliki to do something unpleasant-perhaps move against the most powerful Shi'ite militia, the Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Maliki seemed to be resisting Bush's pressure. He snubbed the President, refusing to meet...
...Iraq." Would Rumsfeld be so spiteful as to embarrass the President like that? We'll probably never know. It may be that the President's agenda for the al-Maliki meeting was a relatively simple public relations ploy: to show support for a weak Iraqi partner and-with the Baker-Hamilton report looming-to reassert that Bush will be the "decider" on Iraq strategy. But even that simple mission failed...
...sometime in the next month or so, Bush will begin the biggest foreign policy course correction of his presidency. No matter what else may get stapled onto it, the maneuver will be based on the agreement reached by the bipartisan commission led by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. Bush aides said last week that there is already agreement on the name for the restart: A New Way Forward, which borrows from the commission's own title, The Way Forward--New Approach. Among people who have known Bush for decades, there is almost...
...PRESIDENT IS ABOUT TO GET A LOT OF reality therapy. The Baker-Hamilton commission's work has been compared to a family intervention for a substance-addicted cousin, but unlike those encounters, this one won't remain behind closed doors. The entire 10-person commission will brief the President this Wednesday and then repeat the lesson for congressional leaders, both incoming and outgoing, later the same day. What happens next is designed to be even more convincing: several days of nonstop interviews on every media outlet, network and cable-TV station--a media blitz that will run well into...
...sake of argument, let's say that the Baker-Bush position is right: the U.S. sets a timetable for withdrawal, and a prolonged lull in violence follows. Is any reasonable person prepared to argue that this would be a bad thing? If anything, a pause in fighting would pose a greater threat to the long-term prospects of the insurgents and militias than it would to the government. The combatants in the civil war feed off the fears of ordinary Iraqis, who look to the armed groups for protection against their sectarian rivals. If the violence were to suddenly stop...