LAT: "Bush administration...scaling back ambitious diplomatic goals"-hahahaha

[laststeamtrain]

Bush officials narrow foreign horizons
In the final year, Bush administration officials are scaling back ambitious diplomatic goals, and appear more intent on managing crises than on reaching legacy milestones.
By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is beginning its last year in office by quietly scaling back its foreign policy ambitions as it struggles with new obstacles and rapidly dwindling influence.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-backtrack21jan21,1,676371.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
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Astoundingly funny in a sick sort of way.

What 'goals' did this cabal of war profiteering traitors have?

[saltpoint]

1. You just wait til Condi gets into the swing of things. Condi will fix everything.

[NewJeffCT]

5. she's the unsticker, after all

She was such a smashing success when she was in charge of things in Iraq in 2004-5

[saltpoint]

9. That's right. She's the fixer-upper, the high sage of world events!

Hi, NewJeffCT. I have to be flippant and jokey with Condoleezza Rice, otherwise I would fall into complete despair.

She is, by any measure, an atrocity.

[NewJeffCT]

12. A few months back...

Tweety had a lead-in saying, "Is Condoleeza Rice a failure as Secretary of State? We'll discuss that with our panel after the break."

Unfortunately, I was not able to watch or record.

But, it was interesting that the speculation was out there.

[laststeamtrain]

6. Incompetent doesn't even begin to describe her.

Her & Powell should have stood up against bloody-minded Cheney & the boys.

Now they're just footnotes to the dark times.

[saltpoint]

11. As wrong and immoral as Powell's address to the U.N. was (which went

such a long way toward persuading so many that mobile weapons labs were in fact an accurate account), I feel Rice has been worse.

She appears to have been marginalized by the Cheney wing of the administration and she brings nothing of operative value to her role as world negotiator.

She knows a lot about Russia and she can play the piano.

That's it.

[Gman]

2. The low expectations all started with the downplaying of Bush's performance

in the debates against Gore in 2000. They've lowered expectations every since and haven't disappointed ever.

[ccpup]

7. those expectations are currently BELOW basement level

how low can they go? the center of the Earth or something? :shrug:

[BridgeTheGap]

3. Does this have anything to do with their abysmal track record on

foreign policy? "Shock and Awe" as a policy was overly simplistic and far too violent!

[AndyA]

4. Now it's just a waiting game.

The whole world waits for that pathetic little man George Bush to pack up his shit and vacate the White House.

No one wants to see him, no one cares what he has to say, and no one wants to talk to him. For the next 12 months, the world will just wait for the American error to correct itself.

And hopefully, it will.

[bdamomma]

8. and if we screw up again, forget it.

but I will be hopeful.

[jimshoes]

10. All that "Political Capital" spent

eh mister war presidunce?

[gratuitous]

13. Scaling back?

I thought George was gonna get this Middle East thing squared away during his three-day visit. Just settle the whole mess, and then head out for a round of golf with the Head Jew and the Chief Ay-rab, like a good MBA? Did George Washington scale back expectations at Valley Forge? Are historians still discussing the finer points of Thomas Jefferson's foreign policy? Just you wait, a couple hundred years from now, we'll all recognize the genius that was George W. Bush.

[liberal N proud]

14. So are they admitting they are failures?