After President Bush’s well-publicized speech and weeks of haggling, the United States finally secured a resolution from the UN Security Council on the future of Iraq. The resolution finally passed because everyone agreed to disagree: the U.S. will still run the show, and will transition to an Iraqi-led government “as soon as is practicable.” It contains no timetable, and no commitments of money or troops. Do not let anyone tell you that this is a diplomatic success: the actual positions of the Security Council members has not changed a bit.
The Beeb was good enough to point out that while the Security Council was voting, the U.S. Senate converted $20 billion in reconstruction costs into loans, despite heavy lobbying by the Bush Administration. “It’s very hard for me to go home and explain that we have to give $20 billion to a country sitting on $1 trillion worth of oil,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. More substantive discussion can be found at NewsDay.
This loss is especially stinging for the Administration, and is yet another indication that they are losing control of Congress on this issue.
Lugar
Last weekend, Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican of Indiana who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, publicly chastised the President for losing control of Iraq policy. This is the guy in charge of getting the President’s $87 billion budget request approved.
Morale Trouble
Stars and Stripes, hardly a mouthpiece of the liberal press, announced survey results that indicated low morale, and a lack of faith in the mission. At the same time, the Army admitted that 13 soliders stationed there had committed suicide. A shocking 35% of respondents said that they had no clear mission. This revelation, publicized by the Washington Post, was especially bad on the heels of what Josh Micah Marshall describes as the Great Push-Back, an effort by the White House to characterize media coverage on Iraq as overly pessimistic and unpatriotic.
All this, and the President’s approval rating has leveled off around 50%. Clearly, the wartime injection of goodwill has run its course. It looks as though Bush will now have to fight for re-election with both the economy and Iraq, pillars of his administration, flagging.
a technology job is no excuse 