Bush indecisiveness and poor planning once again leads to a crisis situation resulting in more war and death. The man can't read the reports given him, has to be led by the hand by the real power, Cheney, and he isn't allowed to speak off the cuff without prepared remarks. We don't even get press conferences anymore. You think his handlers would let him take questions from a room of reporters NOW? Bush is a fraud put over the voters by a massive Wall Street/Madison Avenue PR machine and GOP corporate interests that control the media.

Sadly, Americans and innocents around the world are dying for a man who only signs off on what he is told to do by a "cabal" of right-wing loonies.


Climate Worsens for Troops
The U.S. squandered its opportunity to send peacekeepers to Liberia during a cease-fire, analysts say. Now it faces 'a combat situation.'

Chaos, Killing Rock Capital of Liberia
July 22, 2003

Coverage of the civil war and refugee crisis in the embattled African nation.

By Robin Wright, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The renewed fighting and mounting chaos in Liberia make the proposed deployment of peacekeeping troops from West Africa and the United States far more difficult — and dangerous.

Intervention now could require a larger force prepared to deploy in a combat situation, according to military and regional experts. It may even be too late to oversee a peaceful transition from President Charles Taylor's rule to a new, democratic government, they said.

"It's never too late, but if we go in now it will be entering a combat situation, which is the worst possible point of entry," said Pauline Baker, an Africa expert and president of the Fund for Peace in Washington.

A number of factors accelerated the crisis — and have complicated the policy decisions as the United States, the United Nations and the regional Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, all scramble to figure out what to do next.

Among the factors were the drawn-out deliberations within the Bush administration and among the parties trying to work out a peacekeeping operation, U.S. officials and experts said.

The administration has "squandered the monthlong opportunity it had during which the cease-fire had held," said Susan Rice, a former Clinton administration national security staffer now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-area think tank. "The U.S. refusal to say what it was going to do led predictably to the situation deteriorating. Neither the rebels nor the government could be expected to pause indefinitely...




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