Iraq and Iran: Cheney vs. Condi
Posted: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 9:04 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
White House, Congress, Security
The New York Times writes about the White House debate over the significance of Israeli intelligence that led that country to recently strike Syria. “The debate has fractured along now-familiar fault lines, with Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative hawks in the administration portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and arguing that it should cause the United States to reconsider its diplomatic overtures to Syria and North Korea. By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her allies within the administration have said they do not believe that the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach.”
Blackwater also stays in the news -- well sort of. The Washington Post: “Private security guards from an Australian-run firm opened fire on a white sedan in downtown Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, killing two Iraqi Christian women who were driving home from work. The killings came at a time of unprecedented scrutiny into the behavior of Western private security guards, seen by many Iraqis as reckless mercenaries with little regard for Iraqi life… Tuesday's shooting involved Unity Resources Group, a Dubai-based company founded by an Australian and registered in Singapore. The firm was employed by RTI International, a nonprofit organization that does governance work in Iraq on a contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to David Snider, a USAID spokesman in Washington.”
And, per the AP: “Congressional Democrats have put on the back burner legislation ordering troops home from Iraq and turned their attention to war-related proposals that Republicans are finding hard to reject. The legislative agenda marks a dramatic shift for party leaders who vowed repeated votes to end combat and predicted Republicans would eventually join them. But with Democrats still lacking enough votes to bring troops home, the party runs the risk of concluding its first year in control of Congress with little to show for its tough anti-war rhetoric.”
