Washington Extra – Moonshot no more
Earth calling Newt: When the biggest news of your presidential campaign is the penguin biting your hand at the zoo, it’s probably time to pack it in.
Even though Newt Gingrich’s odds of winning the Republican nomination were about as long as those of realizing his dream for a moon colony, the 68-year-old seemed to enjoy himself to the end. “I never got the sense that he was quote-unquote down,” said adviser Charlie Gerow. “I got the sense on a couple of occasions that he was tired. Really tired.” And really in debt. His campaign spent $4.3 million more than it brought in.
For all his offbeat ideas, Gingrich did bring a dose of seriousness to this campaign. With some stellar debate performances and a deep knowledge of politics and history, he probably made Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum study more and work harder to win support.
Members of the media, targets of some of his most vicious attacks, may not miss Newt much. But there’s no denying that, for the world of news, Gingrich was the gift that kept on giving, right up to his encounter with a penguin.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
US high court appears to back Arizona on immigration – Conservative justices who hold a majority on the Supreme Court appeared to endorse Arizona’s immigration crackdown, rejecting the Obama administration stance that the federal government has sole power over those who illegally enter the United States. During 80 minutes of oral arguments, the justices suggested by their questions and comments that states have significant latitude to adopt laws that discourage illegal immigrants from moving to and staying in the country. For more of this story by James Vicini and Joan Biskupic, read here.
Washington Extra – Lying game
Allies lie.
Those words of wisdom came from outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a congressional hearing. “I would say based on 27 years in CIA and 4 1/2 years in this job — most governments lie to each other. That’s the way business gets done,” Gates said.
“And sometimes they send people to spy on us and they’re our close allies,” he said.
Gates was responding to questions about how the United States can trust and support governments like Pakistan and Afghanistan where the relationship is laced with duplicity.
At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney was asked whether Pakistan was an ally. His response: “Pakistan is a partner of the United States.” Is that different from ally? “I think there are diplomatic nuances between these words.”
Sounds like a demotion from friend to business associate.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Governments lie, really? Of course the US government has the purest of intentions.
The debt talks so far appear to have not gone beyond political posturing which now consumes the actions of both parties rather than taking care of the nations citizens.
The oil swap sounded like a good political move to reduce the price of gas in the short term and get consumers off Obama’s case but stuck us with low grade oil.
The economy will continue to face weak growth and higher prices while we all sit around still witting for Reagan trickle down economics to start working.
Bachman better hope that she dose not find herself in the shadow of Palin’s helicopter.
Washington Extra – Au contraire
Who knew what when about where?
That is the persistent question about Pakistan after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found practically in the backyard of the country’s military and its capital.
Top U.S. defense officials tried to calm the fury today by saying they had no evidence that anyone in the senior Pakistani leadership had knowledge of bin Laden’s location.
“I have seen no evidence at all that the senior leadership knew. In fact, I’ve seen some evidence to the contrary,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
“And we have no evidence yet with respect to anybody else,” he said. “My supposition is, somebody knew.”
The military-intelligence hunt for bin Laden has morphed into the political hunt for bin Laden’s enabler in Pakistan — if there was one … no evidence so far.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Washington Extra – Hunkered down
In all the words said over at the White House today about the Afghanistan review, one name was not mentioned — Osama bin Laden.
The al Qaeda leader, who former President George W. Bush once declared wanted dead or alive, has eluded a manhunt and grown nearly 10 years older since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bin Laden was last heard in an audio message aired on Al Jazeera television on Oct. 27 railing against France, and his freedom remains a symbol of how difficult it will be to declare victory against al Qaeda.
Security officials suspect he is in the border region of Afghanistan-Pakistan, but if they knew for sure where he was, they would have found him.
President Barack Obama said the reason why U.S. forces remain in Afghanistan is 9/11, and the core goal is “disrupting, dismantling and defeating” al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He saw “significant progress” in pursuit of that goal, and said: “In short, al Qaeda is hunkered down.”
On the domestic front, the battle over earmarks is wreaking havoc on Capitol Hill and led Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to use the H word.
AfPak — It’s his baby now
On a day when the most powerful people in Washington were discussing Afghanistan and Pakistan, there was one man who might be excused for looking a little shell-shocked.
Frank Ruggiero, who stepped in as acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) following the sudden death of his boss Richard Holbrooke on Monday, had little time to prepare for his first big outing as President Barack Obama’s pointman for the biggest foreign policy headache facing the administration.
Ruggiero spoke to the press after Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates formally unveiled their official review of the year-old Afghan strategy, which said enough progress was being made to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July despite fragile and uneven gains against the Taliban insurgents.
Clinton — accompanied by virtually Holbrooke’s entire office — joined Ruggiero at the press conference in an orchestrated display of continuity and solidarity.
“I have complete confidence in this SRAP team,” Clinton said, adding that Ruggiero had hit the ground running as he took over the duties of the office.
Ruggiero certainly brings a different style to the job than Holbrooke, whose outsized personality and unbridled enthusiasms had made him for decades one of the United States’ most outspoken and recognizable diplomats.
Washington Extra – Natural allies, but not always comfortable ones
The United States and India are, to borrow the phrase of a recent paper by the Center for a New American Security, “natural allies.” The world’s two biggest democracies, with proud traditions of free speech, separation of religion and state, and racial and ethnic diversity, have much in common, and Indians tend to have more favorable views of the United States than most Europeans.
Ties had deepened first under President Bill Clinton and then improved significantly under President George W. Bush, but progress seemed to have stalled in the first two years of the Obama administration. So it was heartening for Indiaphiles to see President Barack Obama finally putting some weight behind the relationship on his trip there, with an array of business deals and an endorsement of India’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Obama is right in seeing relations between the two countries as one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century, and there will be real power in their alliance where they can find common ground. But the relationship will not always be an easy one. Not only do they see countries like Iran, Myanmar and Pakistan in very different ways, they have often found themselves in opposite corners on trade and climate change. India also has a long tradition of non-interference, a byproduct of its anathema to internationalizing its own conflict in Kashmir. The CNAS paper also noted that in the past year, Indian and U.S. votes matched in the U.N. General Assembly just 30 percent of the time.
Read our coverage of Obama’s trip here.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
BP, firms did not cut safety over money-panel
I beg to differ from the premise of India having a democracy and separation of religion and state.
Indian laws are classified as HINDU laes and have to be accepted by the non hindu citizens.
India practices a thousands of years old caste systems and low caste people are discriminated in education and employment.
India has retained a colonial structured military to suppress any unrest or public demonstrations .
The use of the military is not compatable with democracy.
Has the author not witnessed the massacre of Sikhs in India, forcing hundreds of thusands to flee and seek asylum in the west.
Has the author not witnessed the violent and shabby suppression of Kashmiris, forcing them to flee the West, and those who have remained are experiencing a military rule in their country.
India is in violation of the UN security council ruling on Kashmir.
Now just because the current Obama administration has brought the USA economy to ruins, with no solution for unemployment in the USA, India is being identified as natural allies. Why not call China as blood brothers and Cuba first cousins.
Whereas Hisponic people have been pouring into the USA to support the service industry, India is directly responsible for transfer of jobs moving from the USA, simply because of their low salaries.
Let us not fool ourselves, India is the natural ally?
Rex Minor
McCain sees India, U.S. teaming up against “troubling” China
As President Barack Obama begins his visit to India, his erstwhile rival John McCain is voicing hope that Washington and New Delhi will tighten up their military cooperation in the face of China’s “troubling” assertiveness.
McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate and the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a think-tank audience in Washington on Friday that the two huge democracies were natural allies in the quest to temper China’s ambitions.
“While India and the United States each continue to encourage a peaceful rise for China, we must recognize that one of the greatest factors for shaping this outcome and making it more likely is a robust U.S.-India strategic partnership,” McCain said.
McCain suggested that India and the United States could increase the level of representation at each other’s central military commands and work to make their armed forces more “interoperable” through joint military exercises and sharing of intelligence.
“There’s no reason why we can’t work to facilitate India’s deployment of advanced defense capabilities such as nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, missile defense architecture as well as India’s inclusion in the development of the joint strike fighter,” the next generation fighter aircraft being developed by the United States, the United Kingdom and others, McCain said.
The United States should also firmly back India’s desire for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, he said.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves why John McCain would want to escalate the rhetoric in an already tense situation with China so publicly. Does anyone think that the best way to bring our situation with China to a peaceful conclusion would include teaming up with another country and issuing daily public insults about your supposed world partners (ie China)?
I have two theories. One, though certainly no proof exists, is that McCain would like Obama to look bad at all costs, so he has set him up to fail in foreign policy by picking the easiest public fight in history!
The second, though less develish is probably the most likely. McCain really does believe that the best way to change things is through public feuding and insult escalation and furhter through military action and intimidation. This itself is a problem. Shouldn’t war still be the “last resort”? And if you want to go to war or pick a fight with somebody, why not North Korea? They are dangerous and they are furthermore testing nuclear weapons and shooting up South Korean islands with missles.
I can only surmise that McCain really believes these things because the initial explanation is just too scary to think about. That would make him an out and out traitor to the United States and I certainly hope that this war hero would never be on the level of Boehner and that he could somehow rise above that Republican Charleton.
But that leaves this aweful explanation about the military being first and foremost on his mind to use in nearly any situation. He has often said that he would never negotiate with what he perceived to be terrorists. He has made marked comments on how he would never even open lines of communication with people that he perceived to be threats. Well, I ask you, what would be the outcome of that disastrous policy 100% of the time? War. No thanks. Bush gave us enough unjustified war. Let’s work it out this time.
Washington Extra – Trade Protection
We travel the Karakoram Highway from China to Pakistan on today’s edition of Washington Extra. Driving the agenda for Reuters today is news that the United States could be heading for another trade row with China, after it announced plans to toughen rules against what it sees as unfair trade practices. A number of the proposals are likely to irk Beijing and could provoke retaliation.
It is all part of the Democrats’ “Make it in America” agenda to save manufacturing jobs at home. Critics will no doubt see it as more evidence that President Barack Obama is a closet protectionist. Others argue that this is a shrewd move from the administration to head off still more damaging moves from Congress.
Over at the IMF, Pakistan’s finance minister is in town seeking more help to salvage his country’s economy in the face of the devastating floods. The mood so far seems hopeful. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh said Pakistan wanted to keep pursuing an $11 billion IMF loan program and demonstrate its resolve to take tough economic decisions, dismissing reports that it might abandon the program. The IMF, for its part, is already urging donors to give grants, not loans, for rebuilding projects, to avoid adding to Pakistan’s heavy debt burden.
While we are on the subject of the IMF, an interesting little row is developing which could throw the global lender into disarray. The United States is urging Europe to give some of the seats it occupies on the IMF’s 24-member board to emerging market countries to reflect their growing global economic weight. You won’t be surprised to learn that Europe has balked at the idea of yielding some of its nine chairs — because it is divided over how to do it. The sides face an Oct. 31 deadline when the mandate of the existing board expires. “The IMF will be in crisis unless a solution is found in time,” a senior board official said.
Here are our top stories from today…
U.S. lays out plan to strengthen anti-dumping regime
Washington Extra
In many ways the documents released by WikiLeaks last night merely underscored the bleak assessment of the Afghan war which General Stanley McChrystal issued last August.
At the time McChrystal warned the overall situation was “deteriorating”, complained of “under-resourcing” and called for not just more resources but a “fundamentally new approach” from NATO forces if failure were to be avoided.
McChrystal, who had access to a whole lot more information than WikiLeaks, said the Taliban were aided by “elements of some intelligence agencies” — meaning the Pakistanis — something US officials have been saying for years. He talked of a popular “crisis of confidence” with the government of Afghanistan and warned that the steady stream of civilian casualties had to be stemmed.
The administration is arguing these documents, which date until December 2009, are merely an account of the failures of former President George W. Bush’s policy, and in many ways they have a point.
There is nothing in here remotely as explosive as the Pentagon Papers, which documented systematic lying about the conduct of the Vietnam war. But the Kabul War Diary catalogues the failures and problems of the Afghan conflict in huge detail, often from the perspective of ordinary troops. The documents record a constant stream of engagements in which civilians were killed, and help substantiate the allegations against Pakistan.
All this only serves to reinforce the popular perception that this war is unwinnable.
What is more: many of the problems highlighted in these reports still exist today – especially the allegations the Pakistanis are playing a double game, and the issue of Afghan government and police corruption. Pessimists say there is very little sign of progress on these fronts, or even a coherent strategy to address these problems. Here are our top stories from today:
Hillary’s mango diplomacy in Pakistan
Hillary Clinton has lots to worry about in Pakistan, but she has found one thing she can wholeheartedly embrace: Pakistani mangos.
The U.S. Secretary of State was treated to a mango dessert during dinner with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and they clearly won a fan — Clinton repeatedly raved about the fruit.
“We’ll get a lot of people hooked on Pakistani mangos,” Clinton told a “townhall”-style meeting in Islamabad, where she was on an official visit.
Mangos came up again at a press conference with Pakistan’s foreign minister, and yet again at a roundtable with Pakistani journalists.
Mangos Mangos Mangos.
Clinton suggested mangos might be one place to start when discussing benefits of better trade cooperation, including Pakistani requests for improved market access.
The fruit provided a sweet note to talks which otherwise focused on the hard details of the US-Pak relationship, which is increasingly under pressure amid the unfolding war in neighboring Afghanistan.
NewsBusters: CNN Correspondent Touts Mangos as Tool to Fight Militants
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rusty-weiss /2010/07/19/cnn-correspondent-touts-man gos-tool-fight-militants
