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	President Bush"s approval falls to new low by NYT / The Independent / The Age USA   18 November 2005   “Bill Clinton: The big mistake of the Iraq war”, by Rupert Cornwell. (The Independent)   The dam has burst. Former president Bill Clinton"s verdict that the war in Iraq was "a big mistake" is echoing around the world.   The unease, the misgivings, and downright opposition can be contained no longer. From Senate Republicans, to one of the most influential Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday, the message has been the same. The Iraq war has been a disaster, and the sooner American troops leave the better. The alarm was sounded on Capitol Hill on Tuesday when Senate Republicans and Democrats joined forces to demand the White House explain every three months how it intends to "complete the mission" in Iraq.   The next day, Mr Clinton weighed in from the Middle East, saying the war as it unfolded was "a big mistake". It was a good thing Saddam Hussein had gone, the former president said, "but I don"t agree with what was done". The administration underestimated "how easy it would be to overthrow Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country".   On Tuesday, US senators voted 79-19 to endorse a Republican amendment demanding a regular accounting for the war from the Bush administration.   Vice-President Dick Cheney, arguably the driving force behind the invasion, delivered a vitriolic retort to a conservative audience on Wednesday, accusing Democrats of peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods".   But Democrats scornfully dismissed the "tired rhetoric" of a discredited vice-president. John Kerry, who was defeated by Mr Bush in 2004, said "few people have less credibility" than Mr Cheney, who said before the war that Saddam was "reconstituting" nuclear weapons, and the US invaders would be greeted with garlands. But the most significant developments have come on Capitol Hill, as both parties signal that enough is enough.   Chuck Hagel, a widely respected Republican senator from Nebraska, said that the bipartisan vote was a "historic turning point", with Congress reasserting its constitutional duty to oversee foreign policy.   And in another stunning development, John Murtha, an old-school Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania of 30 years" standing, demanded an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, "because they have become the target".   A decorated marine veteran and ranking Democrat on the House defence appropriations subcommittee, Mr Murtha has been a hawk on military matters, and voted for the 2003 invasion. But close to tears at times in a press conference, he said he had changed his mind.   "It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the US, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region." His call for an "immediate redeployment" not only flies in the face of the refusal of the White House to set any date for a draw-down of American forces. During a news conference, Mr. Murtha, thumped the lectern as he dressed down Messrs. Bush and Cheney. "I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don"t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done," said Mr. Murtha, who has served in Congress since 1975.   "I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he criticized Democrats for criticizing them. This is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public knows it. And lashing out at critics doesn"t help a bit. You"ve got to change the policy."   "I"m absolutely convinced that we"re making no progress at all. . . . Until we turn it over to the Iraqis, we"re going to continue to do the fighting. . . . They"ll have to work this out themselves. . . . We have become the enemy; 80 percent of the people in Iraq want us out of there; 45 percent say it"s justified to attack Americans. It"s time to change direction."   The latest polls show that up to two-thirds of Americans now oppose the war.   November 18, 2005   Bush approval falls to fresh low.   US President George W. Bush"s job approval rating has touched a new low of 34 per cent, according to a US survey published today by Harris Interactive. While one in three Americans rated Bush"s performance in the White house as "positive", 65 per cent said it was "only fair" or "poor", the poll shows.   Mr Bush"s approval rating has been slipping from 50 per cent when he was re-elected in November 2004, to 45 per cent in June to 40 per cent in August of this year, according to the New York-based pollster.   In 2001, at the start of his first four-year term, Mr Bush enjoyed a 56-per-cent approval rating, which shot up to 88 per cent after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.   In April 2003, as the US geared up for an invasion of Iraq, 70 per cent of Americans approved of the Republican president"s job performance, but his approval ratings had been steadily falling for a year. In the latest Harris survey, Vice President Dick Cheney fared even worse than his boss, with just 30 per cent of Americans believing he was doing a good job. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld matched Bush with a 34-per-cent approval rating.   Sixty-eight of those polled said the country was on the "wrong track," while 27 per cent said it was headed in the "right direction".   17 November 2005   A Timetable for Mr. Bush. (The New York Times)   No matter how the White House chooses to spin it, the United States Senate cast a vote of no confidence this week on the war in Iraq. And about time.   The actual content of the resolution, passed on a vote of 79 to 19, was meaningless. The Senate asked the administration to provide regular reports on progress in Iraq, and took the position that next year should be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty." It was a desperate - but toothless - cry of election-bound lawmakers to be let off the hook for a disastrous military quagmire.   Republican leaders, who supported the proposal, argued that the vote was a repudiation of a Democratic motion to set possible withdrawal deadlines for American troops. But the proposal would never have come to the floor if members of the president"s party had not felt the need to go on the record, somehow, as expressing their own impatience with the situation.   The ultimate Iraqi nightmare, which continually seems to be drawing closer, is a violent fracturing of the country in which the Kurdish north and Arab Shiite southeast break away, leaving the west, dominated by Arab Sunnis, an impoverished no man"s land and a breeding ground for international terrorism. While this page was completely wrong in our presumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we - and virtually everyone outside the Bush administration - warned about this danger from the beginning. Only loyalists who had bought the fantasy about dancing Iraqis throwing flowers before American tanks dismissed it as unlikely.   The consequences of such a breakup would be endless and awful: civil war, the persecution of minority populations in the new states, an alliance between the Shiites and Iran, and a complete breakdown of American moral and military influence in the Middle East.   No one wants that to happen, but Americans must ask themselves every day whether the troops who are risking their lives in Iraq are doing anything more than postponing the inevitable.   The one frail hope for a better outcome lies with the ongoing struggle to create a democratic central government in Iraq. We are encouraged by the high participation in elections, including the enormous increase in the number of Sunni voters in the last balloting, and by the declared willingness of leading Iraqi officials and sectional politicians to make political concessions to keep the country patched together. It is very possible that most of the voters are simply casting ballots on behalf of supremacy for their own religious or ethnic factions, and that the officials are only going through the motions, hoping to keep the United States minimally satisfied while they move toward their own self-serving goals. But at this moment, both the people and their leaders are clearing at least the lowest possible bar on measuring their progress.   A precipitous withdrawal at this point would be counterproductive. And while a timetable is certainly an option, the people who need deadlines are the Iraqis. Their government must be put on notice that the United States expects Iraq to show speedy, measurable progress in taking control of its own security, and that it must demonstrate that it is not just stalling for time when it comes to guaranteeing democracy and human rights.   The current constitution is unsatisfactory. It shortchanges the Sunni minority and fails to provide Iraqi women the guarantee that they will not wind up worse off under the new government than they were under Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leaders have promised to change it after next month"s elections. Washington needs to carefully scrutinize how quickly and how fully they honor that promise.   The Shiite-dominated government will be getting an early test of its commitment to building a just and inclusive society in how it responds to this week"s horrifying allegations that policemen who are members of a powerful Shiite militia have been abducting Sunni Arab men and torturing them in a secret prison in the heart of Baghdad.   President Bush has lost the confidence of the American people, and his own party, when it comes to handling Iraq. If he wants to win it back, he must come up with a very clear road map for what he expects, both politically and militarily, from the Iraqi government. If the Iraqis fail to meet those goals, he must demonstrate that the price of equivocation is American withdrawal. If the president fails, the American public has a timetable of its own. Elections for the House and the Senate are less than a year away.   Washington, November 14, 2005   "Guantanamo a haunted house for Bush", by Michael Gawenda. (The Age)   When the President of the United States, under repeated questioning and under pressure, has to declare, as he did last week, "We do not torture", you know that even his allies in Congress no longer believe him.   And when the US Supreme Court decides to hear a case that challenges the legality of the military commissions set up by the Bush Administration to try alleged terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay, you know that in the end, whatever the court ultimately rules, the commissions are fatally tainted.   The Bush Administration"s demand for unfettered executive power to fight the war on terror and the war in Iraq is under serious challenge in Congress and in the courts.   In Congress, that challenge is being mounted not by Democrats, but by senior Republicans who cannot be dismissed as wishy-washy liberals who oppose war and play down the threat posed by terrorism.   It is encapsulated in legislation passed by the Senate and sponsored by John McCain, a likely candidate for the Republican Party"s presidential nomination in 2008.   The legislation bans the use of torture, all forms of abuse and inhumane and humiliating treatment of all detainees held by the US military and by all US agencies, including the CIA, anywhere in the world. It was passed 99-9 in the Senate and will almost certainly be passed by the lower house as well, despite threats from the White House to veto it.   Vice-President Dick Cheney, who in an editorial in The Washington Post was labelled "the Vice-President of Torture, has been lobbying Republicans in Congress to vote against the bill or, at the very least, exempt the CIA from it. All in vain. Cheney"s credibility is shot, his approval rating is down around 19per cent and questions about his involvement in the CIA leak affair won"t go away.   But this is not primarily about Cheney"s credibility. It"s about chickens coming home to roost. It"s about the growing realisation in America that the systematic abuse and torture of prisoners and detainees held by the US around the world is a direct consequence of Administration policies and directives.   And the McCain legislation won"t be the end of this revolt by Congress. There is already talk about the harm to America"s standing abroad, especially in the Muslim world, that Guantanamo has wrought.   When the Administration decided that the rules of war would not apply to alleged terrorists captured in Afghanistan, the result was a US military that gave confused signals to its troops about the proper treatment of prisoners under their control. The result was Abu Ghraib and the indelible images of abuse and humiliation by American soldiers of detainees at a prison where Saddam Hussein"s henchmen had killed and tortured thousands of Iraqis.   Then there"s Guantanamo Bay, set up in the wake of 9/11 at the base in Cuba to ensure that captured alleged terrorists and Taliban fighters in the looming war in Afghanistan would not have access to US courts. The military commissions were cooked up in Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld"s office against the advice of senior military legal advisers and were designed to deliver swift and certain verdicts. These were not normal court martial proceedings.   Four years on, there have been no military commission hearings, the Supreme Court has ruled that detainees do have the right of access to US courts and even some senior prosecutors assigned to try detainees have concluded the system is rigged..   (Michael Gawenda is United States correspondent for the Age newspaper in Australia).
	Korean Reconciliation inevitable: Former Diplomat by Graeme Dobell ABC News Online Korea   13 November , 2005   According to a former Australian ambassador to South Korea, it"s widely believed there that the United States is a rogue force in north-east Asia. Mack Williams was giving evidence in Canberra to a parliamentary hearing on Australia"s relations with South Korea.   The former diplomat, now a member of the Government"s Australia-Korea Foundation, says de facto reconciliation between North and South Korea is inevitable, but the process could take another 25 years. And he told Graeme Dobell South Korea worries that reconciliation could be derailed by the United States.   MACK WILLIAMS: A player in the game that is unpredictable, perhaps a better way of putting it. I think that"s fairly widely held among younger Koreans… younger South Koreans, because they"re just not sure what the real game plan is of Washington, other than of course to get the nuclear matter resolved.   But the tactics, and particularly since the axis of evil people are a little bit gun-shy about that.   GRAEME DOBELL: If there is that uncertainty in South Korea, what does that mean for the future of the alliance with the US?   MACK WILLIAMS: Well I think that"s bound to undergo change.   It"s starting to have some change anyway, as Korea moves to become more democratic, more independent, stronger militarily, stronger economically, the relationship has got to change overtime and it will change.   Now whether it changes quickly or slowly, I think that"s a problem.   But you know, theoretically speaking, dependency situations such as the South Koreans have been in with the Americans for the last 50 years or so do need to change before you can settle into a longer-term relationship.   GRAEME DOBELL: The alliance could actually split as South Korea is drawn more and more into what the Americans might see as a Chinese sphere?   MACK WILLIAMS: Well, not necessarily split, but probably reduce in intensity I think, yeah.   GRAEME DOBELL: And what does reduce in intensity mean for the alliance?   MACK WILLIAMS: Well that would mean that the influence of China will grow on South Korea, naturally. It will have, for the Korean"s point of view, they"ll have to see what that also… how that plays out in a sort of a quadrilateral exercise.   The US-China relationship is very much involved in this; US-Japan relationship is involved in this. Therefore, I think it"s going to be not a collapse of the relationship by any means, but I think a diminution of the relationship.   GRAEME DOBELL: Now you talked about the South Korean nightmare, that in a confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan, that Beijing would activate North Korea, would put North Korea into play.   What would that mean for the Peninsula.   MACK WILLIAMS: That"d be very unfortunate for the Peninsula, of course. It would mean that any thought of getting a longer-term reconciliation, maybe even reunification would be put aside.   China has always been the drip-feeder of North Korea.   They have in the past several years been, I think it"s fair to say, fairly constructive in what they"ve done with North Korea.   They"ve certainly been a major player in getting North Korea back to the table, keeping them at the table. Hu Jintao has just been to North Korea.   So, although I think the Chinese have been insistent that their own purchase on North Korea wasn"t as strong as people made out to be, because the North Koreans are actually not the easiest of people to work with, no doubt that they do have purchase there.   And in the past, for example, they have turned of the spigot of the oil of a couple of days on critical times to just get the message over that North Korea needs to sharpen up and get into line.   GRAEME DOBELL: You say though, also, that economic and social reunification of the North and South is inevitable.   What would that mean?   MACK WILLIAMS: I mean, reconciliation, I think is still inevitable and that that will get to a stage where the formalisation of reunification might be a much bigger thing to do, but daily things like people moving to and fro, like talking to each other on the telephone, reading each other"s media, selling to each other as major markets to each other, South Korean investment developing the industry on all the old collapsed industrial standards in the North – that sort of issue, I think.   We"ve seen some signs of this with a joint team, not a combined team, but a joint team at the Olympic Games, maybe in World Cup football and those sorts of things.   That"s the sort of issue we saw in the World Cup, some of that.   So I think they"re the things that we can expect to see a koreanism with a little "k" I suppose.   GRAEME DOBELL: You give a quite a long timeline for that though, you say reconciliation might take 20 or 25 years before you get to that big political issue.   MACK WILLIAMS: Oh yes, I think it could easily, give it… first of all you"ve got to grow the generations out, then you"ve got to get through the whole question of how does the regime change in North Korea. And the question would be that any forced regime change is something I think that many South Koreans don"t want to see happen, and it"s got to grow, it"s got to take time.   They know they"re the strongest economically, militarily, politically, but don"t force the North Koreans into a corner, because that"s when they"re most difficult to handle.
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